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Ball lightning/ Plasma Experiment



Some years ago I attempted some promising ball lightning experiments that
were forestalled by the untimely death of my partner Jim Thele. (No, not
killed by the experiment....run over by a car.) 

Have you ever seen pictures of the toroid created by large cannon ejecta?
We were working along those lines. An 8ft long plastic tube, 8" in
diameter, wound with insulated welding cable. The cable created a solenoid
around the tube, with the magnetic fieldlines compressed inside the tube.
Twelve 12 volt car batteries were hooked up to the cable, and when you
pulled the switch (we used a long wooden pole,) the field woiuld effect a
compass needle some 25ft away. The rear of the tube had a chamber with a
thin membrane wall sufficient to contain an explosive gas buildup; a
carbon arc was placed in the center of the chamber. I will now pause and
ask you to try this experiment: 

Get hold of a paper tube - kitchen tissue roll is perfect - and some cigs.
Gently fill the tube with smoke. Place your mouth on one end and say
"TOOK!" you should have created a wonderful smoke ring that will travel
right across the room if the air is still. 

Jim and I felt that the high temperature explosion in the shock tube may
be affected by the field lines; it was our notion that the end result
could be a compressed, magnetically polarised toroid. To get an idea of
what that would look like, think of the structure of an orange; the 'hole'
of this toroid is quite compressed at its center. 

I am personally of the opinion - Jim did not agree with me - that the
center of plasma filaments are devoid of conventional space and induce
gravity. I hope those plasma researchers out there try to combine their
plasma experiments with gravimeters in the future. Might be interesting. 

As I said, Jim was killed in the days leading up to our first trials.
Being no electrician, I decided to err on the side of caution and
discontinue. Nonetheless, the experiment has always been in the back of my
mind, so I thought I'd share it with others.

Stephen Goodfellow.



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