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Extreme Ball Lightning Second Installment and Final Installment Extreme Ball Lightning - first story installment FORTE satellite - its prior mission and present day importance Extreme Ball Lightning - Continued Although the current morphology of the site is consistent with the report by Fitzgerald, consistency does not constitute proof. The eyewitness recording by Fitzgerald is crucial. If we had seen the features described above without knowing what he described, we would have plausibly ascribed them to the remains of a sink-hole (hole), ridge and furrow cultivation (trench), an abandoned meander (semicircular channel) and undercutting of the stream bank (cave). Knowing Fitzgerald’s report led to a more rigorous investigation. Probing the underwater contour of the hole revealed the east end of a “20 ft square” hole that would be unusual. The semicircular channel to the south of the stream as recorded in the OS map of 1863 was also revealed by a closer look. Another alternative is that Fitzgerald labored to excavate the >100 tones of peat as a stunt to gain notoriety. However, there was no report of the incident in the local paper in the three months following the date of the event. The letter to the Royal Society was submitted in 1877, apparently stimulated by an observation of a waterspout in the area. The event does not seem consistent with a stunt and there is no motive for deception. Discussion We have no reason to doubt Fitzgerald’s report. The surviving evidence is sufficient to motivate serious analysis of the reported ball lightning event as he reported it. (emphasis mine_ KC4COP) Fitzgerald only reports that “the peat was turned up on the lea as if it had been cut with a huge knife” for the first excavation, does not report anything about the excavated peat in the second excavation, and reports that the peat in the last one was dumped into the stream. The excavations occurred over a long period of time, so explosive expulsion hurling the peat into the surrounding bog seems improbable and was not reported. He does not report any steam, smoke, or fire. It seems to have been a tranquil process. The energy problem for ball lightning is not new. Finkelstein and Rubinstein [3] show that the inferred energy densities are too high to be stored in the volume of ball lightning and propose a non linear conductivity model that could give a luminous ball in the middle of an ion channel. However, the sky overhead was clear during this event, so it is unlikely that an electrostatic ion channel from a cloud could have transported the energy to this site. Even if it could have created a visible ball, the non-linear conductivity model does not explain the principal result of this event—the excavation of >100 tones of water saturated peat. If the source of the energy had been chemical or nuclear, the interaction with the peat would have been thermal —generating pressure from steam. However, steam would vent to the surface and would not create a coherent hole, trench, channel, or cave. We tested the inference with 25 cm deep, water-saturated soil and compressed gas fed through a buried hose to simulate a pressure driven excavation. Even though the shallow depth and unpacked soil would have required much less force to excavate than the peat would have required, the pressurized gas quickly made a channel to the surface and continued to vent through that channel as the hose was drawn 1.0 meters under the ground. Pressurized steam does not explain this event. If the force had been from an injection of electrostatic charge, the low resistivity (1000 Ohm-cm) of the water in the bog would have quickly neutralized the charge in a time equal to the resistivity times the dielectric constant or ~ 10-9 seconds. Electrostatic repulsion cannot explain the event. -4- If the interaction is not through mechanical pressure or electrostatic repulsion, the only other known repulsive force is electromagnetic induction. The expulsion of the conductive, water saturated peat let’s us estimate the principal frequency of the alternating electromagnetic field inducing the current. If the electromagnetic skin depth is much less than the 1 meter depth of the excavation, then only a small volume would be accelerated and it would be heated until the resulting pressure was relieved by venting. If the electromagnetic skin depth is much greater than the depth of the excavation, then the force is distributed over a much larger area and requires an even larger mass to deform the peat and the deformation would be larger than it is. Therefore, the observed deformation and the measured conductivity imply f~1 MHz. Either the peat was expelled upward and outward by the ball lightning tunneling through the peat or it was pressed into the surrounding peat by the weight of the ball lightning. In both cases the weight of the ball lightning has to be sufficient to overcome the strength of the peat. Since Fitzgerald does not report any apparent expulsion during the event or debris field after the event, his report is more consistent with the later case. Since the compressive yield strength of the peat was measured to be P=2.5x105 N/m2 and the width of the depressions was ~ 1 meter, the footprint would have been A~ 1 m2 and the minimum mass of the ball lightning would have been P/A ~2x104 kg. The PdV work required to compress the trench (1.4 m wide and 1.2 m deep and 100 m long) would have been 2.5x105 N/m2 x 1.7x102 m3 ~4x107 Joules. If the energy for this work came purely from the gravitational energy as the ball lightning descended slope from the beginning of the trench to its terminus and if that slope were the same as it is today (~10%), then the mass would have been 4x107/gh=4x105 kg. Fitzgerald reports that the diameter of the luminous ball diminished from 30 cm at the beginning to 8 cm at the end. However, our survey shows that the width and depth of the depressions in the peat were about the same at the beginning and end. Therefore, the core of the ball lightning remained the same with a physical size of <8 cm diameter (a volume of <2.7x10-4 m3 and a density of >2x104/2.7x10-4 or >7x107 kg/m3. The only proposed structure that could have this density with the inferred mass is a mini black hole. Carr, et al, [4] has calculated that the formation of mini black holes with masses of <106 kg would have been highly probable. However, Hawking [5] has calculated that they would have all disappeared by quantum evaporation by now. Others [6,7] have concluded that the evaporation is an open question. There is no observational evidence of either the formation or the evaporation of these mini black holes. Nevertheless, the event observed and reported by M. Fitzgerald is consistent with a primordial black hole if they were indeed formed, if they do not dissipate by quantum evaporation, and if they produce an intense oscillating magnetic field. The levitation of such a large mass would require an oscillating magnetic field of >0.7 T at a distance of ~0.5 m. If mini black holes produce such a large oscillating magnetic field, it might be observable at a substantial distance. We have looked for compatible electromagnetic emissions in the data from the FORTE [8] satellite, which was operated in a mode that could have detected them in October and November of 1997. The FORTE satellite collected data in the 3 MHz to 300 MHz frequency interval in October and November of 1997 prior to the deployment of the high-gain (low noise) antenna system. Approximately 20% of the recorded events were not typical lightning events. In contrast to the ~10 microsecond duration, broadband signals from lightning, these signals, consists of long duration (>200 μsec) bursts in a series that lasts for 10s to thousands of seconds and consists of multiple narrow-band emissions that shift frequency from burst to burst and occasionally vary within a single burst. The bursts are inconsistent with known sources of terrestrial or astrophysical electromagnetic radiation. Although the state of health instrumentation indicated that the electronics were functioning well, we can not rule out a pre-amplifier irregularity as the source of this anomaly. While the signals may or may not be associated with extreme ball lightning from a primordial black hole, they have stimulated our developing a four station ground based detector system to look for such emissions, plot their trajectories by triangulation, and look for the seismic signatures of their impact on earth. We hope to be able to test the primordial black hole hypothesis in a few years. (Green emphasis mine KC4COP) During this investigation, we found a 3.4 m diameter depression in the peat about 10 km from the Fitzgerald event. It was formed at night in 1982 and produced a sufficient pressure wave to shake windows a kilometer away. The next day, two park rangers and a policeman investigated. Although the policeman has since died, the two park rangers were separately interviewed and both reported that the depression was unusual in that the sides were smooth and the peat had been pressed into the ground with no ejecta surrounding the hole, unlike the craters produced by an explosion in the peat. The depth was approximately 1 m and there was a small hole in the center, reportedly 1 cm wide and about 10 cm deep. A photograph taken shortly thereafter also shows no ejecta on the surrounding turf. The report is qualitatively consistent with a magnetically decelerated compact body hitting the peat. -5- In addition, the ball lightning event [9] near Santiago de Compostela, Spain on 18 January 1994 is consistent with a large magnetically decelerated mass striking and compressing the forest floor, which rebounded and tossed all the trees (some were up to 20 m high) and soil within a 29 m by 13 m by 1.5 m volume in an arc that landed between 50 and 100 m down the 24o slope. Since the mass per unit area of the ejected soil and trees varies by orders of magnitude, the tight spread of the debris field indicates a uniform ejecta velocity of ~31 m/s-- not a uniform accelerating pressure. If the density of the ejected material was ~1000 kg/m3, the total mass of ejecta was ~6 x 105 kg. The ball lightning had a speed of 2+/-1 km/s at an inclination of 18o+/-3o. If it transferred its vertical momentum to the underlying rock which rebounded and transferred the momentum to the ejecta, the mass of the impactor must have been > 3x104 kg, which is in reasonable agreement with the range estimated for the Fitzgerald event. Peat makes an excellent witness plate since it deforms at a well-defined yield strength, has a uniform consistency and electrical conductivity, stays deformed, and grows back over centuries. Therefore, we looked for other events in the peat bog. We conducted an aerial survey of about 100 km2 and found four candidate holes but could not confirm that they were associated with impacts since no one reported their being formed. This primordial black hole hypothesis for extreme ball lightning raises many questions, among the most obvious is the fate of nearby matter (including the earth) if mini black holes impact and are absorbed into the earth. The solution [10] of the Schrodinger equation with a Newtonian metric, which is appropriate since the Schwarzschild radius of these mini black hole is much smaller than the locus of normal matter around it, for a central gravitational field, shows that normal matter is bound to the central mini black hole in quantum mechanical energy levels like those of electrons bound to the atomic nucleus. The configuration is called a Gravitational Equivalent of an Atom (GEA) and shows that mini black holes do not readily absorb matter, as nuclei do not readily absorb electrons in an atom. The next most pressing issue is how a primordial black hole can generate a large oscillating magnetic field that is able to levitate 104 to 106 kg. If the four-station sensor network allows us to detect the electromagnetic signals observed on the FORTE satellite and confirm their high velocity and mass through the seismic signature, the detailed spectrum may stimulate a productive approach to this issue. Summary The reported ball lightning observations by Fitzgerald are consistent with the extant geomorphologic evidence. The large depression of the moderately conductive peat is most consistent with a mini black hole of mass between 2 x104 kg and 106 kg that is magnetically levitated by a large electromagnetic field. Although other geomorphologic and electromagnetic observations may be consistent with this hypothesis, much more work is required to support or invalidate the hypothesis. References
3. Finkelstein D. and Rubinstein J. Ball Lightning. Physical Review. 1964. V. 135. No. 2A. P. A390-A396 4. Carr B. J., Gilbert J. H. , and Lidsey J. E. Black Hole Relics and Inflation: Limits on Blue Perturbation Spectra. J. E. Phys. Rev. D. 1994. V. 50. P. 4853. 5. Hawking S. W. Particle Creation by Black Holes. Commun. Math. Phys. 1975. V. 43. P. 199. 6. Helfer A. D. Do Black Holes Radiate? Reports on Progress in Physics. 2003. V. 66. P. 943-1088 7. Unruh W. G. and Schützhold R. Universality of the Hawking Effect. Phys. Rev. D. 2005. V. 71. P. 024028. 8. Jacobson, A.R.; Knox, S.O.; Franz, R.; Enemark, D.C. FORTE Observations of LightningRradio-frequencySignatures: Capabilities and Basic Results. Radio Science. 1999. V. 34. No.2. P.337-354. 9. Docobo J. A., Spalding R. E., Ceplecha Z., Diaz-Fierros F. , Tamazian V., and Onda Y. Investigation of a Bright Flying Object over Northwest Spain, 1994 January 18. Meteorites & Planetary Science. 1998 V.33. P. 57-64. 10. VanDevender, A. P. and VanDevender J. P. Structure and Mass Absorption of Terrestrial Black Holes. 2008. Submitted for publication. -6- -7- |