3 ms·
nit: would be helpful if the abstract or introduction gave numbers on how frequently ball lightning occurs, instead of just saying "rare". Is it 1 in 1,000 rare
by breck 10y ago
nit: would be helpful if the abstract or introduction gave numbers on how frequently ball lightning occurs, instead of just saying "rare". Is it 1 in 1,000 rare or 1 in a billion rare?
From some Googling, there are 8M lightning strikes per day on earth, so say about 3.5B strikes per year. Let's say 3% of those strikes are in populated areas. So ~250,000 lightning strikes per day in populated areas. In the past 5 years, that is ~500M lightning strikes in populated areas. Let's say that there's at least one person or video camera filming the sky during 20% of those strikes.
Given we only have 1 video of marginal quality of ball lightning, that makes 1 in a 100M strikes a reasonable guess. But that also makes me think it really could just be 0 and eye witness accounts are just some visual misperception.
- astrodust 10y agoThere's no way to compute an approximation here since reports of ball lightning are so infrequent. "Populated area" is somewhat subjective here since those that live in a rural, open area, especially the prairies, are able to observe more lightning activity. Most of the reports that I've read about involve those living in the country where the artifact of the strike, the resulting ball, can be readily observed. I'd read about a laboratory trying to recreate this phenomenon using submarine batteries and were more successful in blowing the roof off the warehouse than creating ball lightning.