Physicists create great balls of fire
Date: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 @ 22:00:19 UTC
Topic: Science
18:13 07 June 2006/ NewScientist.com news service/ Amarendra Swarup
Ball lightning – the mysterious slow-moving spheres of light occasionally seen during thunderstorms – has been created in the lab.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and the Humboldt University in Berlin have used underwater electrical discharges to generate luminous plasma clouds resembling ball lightning that last for nearly half a second and are up to 20 centimetres across.
They hope that these artificial entities will help them understand the bizarre phenomenon and perhaps even provide insights into the hot plasmas needed for fusion power plants...
More: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9293&feedId=online-news_rss20
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