Ball Lightning

I ran my head under the faucet for a long while, then walked stiffly back to the living room, where I sat down on the sofa and listened to the rain outside. It had turned heavy, a storm without thunder or lightning. Rain pounded on the windows, sounding like a voice, or perhaps many people speaking softly, as if they were trying to remind me of something. As I listened, I started to imagine the meaning of the murmuring, which became more and more real as it was repeated:

There was lightning that night, there was lightning that night, there was lightning that night, there was lightning that night, there was lightning that night…

Once again I sat in that house until dawn on a stormy night, and once again I numbly left home. I knew I was leaving something behind forever, and I knew I would never return.

Ball Lightning

Classes in atmospheric electricity started that semester, meaning I would finally have to face it.

The subject was taught by an assistant professor named Zhang Bin. He was about fifty, neither short nor tall, wore glasses that were neither thick nor thin, had a voice that was neither loud nor soft, and his lectures were neither great nor terrible. In sum, as average as a person could be, except for a slight limp in one leg, something you would not notice unless you paid close attention.

That afternoon after class, I was left alone in the lecture room with Zhang Bin, who was gathering his things at the podium and did not notice me. A late-autumn sunset sent its golden beams into the room, and a layer of golden leaves covered the windowsill. Ordinarily cold and detached, I suddenly realized that this was the season for poetry.

I got up and walked over to the podium. “Professor Zhang, I’d like to ask you a question completely unrelated to today’s lecture.”

He looked up at me for a moment before nodding and returning his attention to his things.

“It’s about ball lightning. What can you tell me about it?” I uttered the words that I had kept buried deep in my heart, never daring to speak aloud.

His hands ceased their activity. He looked up—not at me, but out the window at the setting sun, as if that were what I was referring to. “What do you want to know?” he asked after a few seconds.

“Everything,” I said.

Zhang Bin continued to look at the sun as its light bathed his face. It was still quite bright at that hour. Didn’t it hurt his eyes?

“The historical record, for example,” I prompted in more detail.

“In Europe, records exist from as early as the Middle Ages. In China, a relatively clear record was set down by Zhang Juzheng in the Ming dynasty. But the first formal scientific discussion only occurred in 1837, and the scientific community didn’t accept it as a natural phenomenon until the last forty years.”

“Any theories about it?”

“There are many.” After this simple sentence, Zhang Bin was silent. He turned away from the setting sun, but did not resume getting his things together. He seemed deep in thought.

“What are the traditional theories?”

“That it’s a vortex of high-temperature plasma whose rapid internal rotation exerts a force in equilibrium with outside atmospheric pressure and thus can maintain stability for a relatively long time.”

“And?”

“Others believe that it’s a chemical reaction within a high-temperature gas mixture, by which it maintains energy equilibrium.”

“Can you tell me anything else?” Asking him questions was like trying to move a heavy grindstone that barely budged an inch with each push.

“There’s also the microwave-soliton theory, which says that ball lightning is caused by an atmospheric maser with a volume of several cubic meters…. A maser is like a much less powerful laser, which, inside a large volume of air, can produce a localized magnetic field as well as solitons, which then create visible ball lightning.”

“And the latest theories?”

“There are lots. For example, one by Abrahamson and Dinniss at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand has gained a fair amount of attention. Their theory says that ball lightning is primarily due to the oxidization of a filamentary network of silicon nanoparticles. There are many more. Some people even believe that it is a cold fusion reaction in the air.”

He paused, but then came out with more information: “In this country, there’s someone at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who has suggested an atmospheric plasma theory. It starts off with magnetic fluid dynamics equations and introduces a vector-soliton resonator model which, under appropriate boundary temperatures, is theoretically able to achieve a plasma vortex in the atmosphere—a fireball—and whose numerical analysis explains both the necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence.”

“And your opinion of this theory?”