Ball Lightning Bamboozles Physicist

March 20, 2008 -- Scientific theories and experiments have failed to convince at least one physicist what's behind the mysterious natural phenomenon of ball lightning.

Emeritus Professor Bob Crompton of the Australian National University gave a presentation in Canberra this week on the latest scientific investigations into ball lightning, something once considered as likely as UFOs.

"I don't believe there is any satisfactory explanation so far," said Crompton, for the small bright lights that are reported to appear after a lightning strike.

"[The theories] don't satisfy me, and I don't think they satisfy anyone who looks at the evidence objectively," he said.

Crompton, an expert in atomic and molecular physics and electrical discharges in gases, has been interested in the science behind ball lightning for decades.

He's collected records on dozens of sightings over a period of about 10 years, with the help of Australian meteorological services.

"In those early days I would have had enough to fill two inches of manila folders," he said.

According to the reports, the phenomenon is a bright light -- anywhere in size from a golf ball to larger than a football -- that hovers above the ground. It moves slowly, able to pass through walls, until it vanishes minutes later.

Crompton said he first became interested in ball lightning after an eyewitness report in the Canberra Times in 1970.

The eyewitness was the wife of a colleague and someone who Crompton thinks is a reliable witness.

She awoke in the early hours one morning after a fierce lightning strike on a power pole near her home, according to her account.