Physicists Create Great Balls of Fire 87
dylanduck writes "Talk about having fun at work. These guys have created luminous clouds of ball lightning up to 20 centimetres across and lasting up to half a second, longer and more realistic than before. There's a cool video too. They say it may even help understand how to contain the plasmas needed for nuclear fusion."
Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:1)
/me drops a smokebomb and vanishes into the night
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:2)
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:2)
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me be the fourth to say (Score:2)
An oldie, but a goodie. Pick your favourite artist from the list there, it's certainly been covered a whole bunch of times, though I don't know which of the groups there produced the iconic (if iconic works with sound) version with enthusiastic lyrics and poprock backing.
Re:Let me be the fourth to say (Score:2)
Big balls (Score:2)
Then, there's Steve Vai, but his Giant Balls are instrumental.
Beware!! (Score:2)
If you think you're safe because you only showed people where to find it and don't actually have it yourself, don't come crying to me when 50 cops break down your door and steal your computers! [wikipedia.org]
Do I really need a
Video? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Video? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Video? (Score:2, Insightful)
Damn (Score:3, Informative)
p.s. But I'm right
Re:Damn (Score:1)
Re:Damn (Score:2)
Re:Damn (Score:2)
That's unpossible.
And rediculous!
Re:Video? (Score:2)
Let's parse the new word, and find out what they actually mean:
re-di-cul-ous:
ous = "worthy of," therefore the object is worthy of re-di-cul.
re = "to do again," therefore the object is worthy of di-cul again.
di = "twice" or "two," therefore the object is worthy of cul twice again.
What is this "cul?"
http://dict.die.net/cul/ [die.net] says there are two meanings:
1) a noun, meaning "a passage with access only at one end."
2) a verb-acronym, meaning "s
Re:Video? (Score:1)
Cul is also the slang French word for "ass."
So...rediculous could also mean: "your ass is worth doing twice again."
I'll be in the other room until everyone has finished with your ass. I really don't need to see it.
Re:Video? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Video? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe they were having trouble with the initiation of the event, and running at low framerate/long duration to make sure they captured the event at some point.
Re:Video? (Score:1)
As for ultra high speed cameras (around 1 million fps), well they're film based systems, where a reel is shot through like a rocket.
Re:Video? (Score:5, Informative)
Modern ultra high speed cameras of at least one type (the type with which I'm very familiar) consist of several effectively separate digital still cameras looking down the same optical axis via a beamsplitter. Special image intensifiers are used on each still camera module to provide "shuttering" and coincidently to amplify the light enough to get a decent picture at the ridiculously short exposure times used. In order to achieve frame rates of up to 1 billion frames per second (yes, billion), and exposures down to a few hundred picoseconds, a pulse is applied to each of the image intensifiers in rapid sequence. Although the exposure times may be less than a nanosecond, the captured image glows on the phosophor screen for many milliseconds, plenty of time to capture it on the CCDs.
Film-based cameras involving a rapidly spun reel as mentioned in the parent aren't capable of speeds of more than a few thousand fps. However film-based cameras involving a rapidly rotating mirror and a stationary loop of film can achieve frame rates in the millions.
Re:Video? (Score:2)
cool "video" (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:cool "video" (Score:1)
weapons (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:weapons (Score:4, Funny)
Ah! Now that's the way to get your research funded. Forget about applying for NSF grants. Could my research potentially kill someone? If so, let the DOD fund it. No worries.
Re:weapons (Score:1)
Re:weapons (Score:1)
Re:weapons (Score:1)
No, not really. (Score:3, Insightful)
Although (Score:2)
I really wouldn't underestimate mankinds ability to turn anything into a weapon, especially balls of sizzling plasma. Actually, what this put me in mind of was the ancient "batteries" [world-mysteries.com] discovered a while back. FTA
The tank contains two electrodes, one of which is insulated from the surrounding water by a clay tube.
Sounds remarkably similar. A lightshow, the remnants of some yet earlier technology, or a weapon of the ancients? Or just a battery? The scientists note that they produced this effect by mimic
Re:Although (Score:2)
"This experiment proved that electric batteries were used some 1,800 years before their modern invention by Alessandro Volta in 1799."
Err... no, it doesn't. At the most it proves that somebody made a battery in a 2,000 year old pot at some point during that pot's lifetime. I'm figuring it's more likely to be entirely coincidental, and there's nothing there that doesn't.
"Iraq has a rich national heritage. The Garden of Eden a
Re:Although (Score:2)
Bleh. they found a lot of them. And that article was just the first thing that came to hand, you can find far more authoritative sources if you look.
Re:No, not really. (Score:2)
Oho yes and I just found the wikipedia article about ball lightning. Apparently fireballs of this sort can carve trenches in peat bogs [wikipedia.org] (and if you have ever gone turf cutting, you will know thats no mean feat).
Re:No, not really. (Score:1)
Re:No, not really. (Score:2, Interesting)
We seem to want to spend a fortune on developing new ways of killing each other when there are plenty of tried and tested methods - guess that's where the research money tends to be although I would p
Re:No, not really. (Score:2)
Well, Duh! Photon Torpedoes of course.
Re:No, not really. (Score:2)
Re:No, not really. (Score:2)
Where would the phased array of microwave emitters have to be positioned on a battlefield? Could it move while the shot is still being fired (as from a moving vehicle)? What range would it be effective at?
Re:No, not really. (Score:2)
We're talking about a bunch of people who will beam into a highly volatile combat situation with a short-range low-powered raygun, or, if the situation is truly desparate, a medium-range low-powered raygun with effective ranges in the tens or hundreds of feet for all but the most expert users.
Grenades? Armor? Vehicles? Artillery of any kind, including simply "bigg
Re:weapons (Score:1)
That's great (Score:3, Interesting)
Can someone tell me how playing Zeus is going to help nuclear technology?
Re:That's great (Score:2)
Re:That's great (Score:3, Informative)
This has nothing to do with the nuclear reaction itself, but rather than with the mean the nuclear reaction is triggered into a torus-shaped plasma. One of the great
Re:That's great (Score:1)
Thanks for the explanation though. I think I'd doing pretty good for an English major who married technical.
Re:That's great (Score:2)
Ah yes, Science (Score:4, Funny)
Almost the best excuse to have fun, second only to reproduction.
Dad was a Bush Pilot (Score:5, Interesting)
Ball lightning experience (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ball lightning experience (Score:2)
Or as a musician... imagine a concert with all the big speakers having blue spheres of light!
Re:Dad was a Bush Pilot (Score:2)
So, you inherited the trait from your mother?
Re:Dad was a Bush Pilot (Score:2)
Well, because "bazillion" is an indefinite [wikipedia.org] number, the grandparent was neither lying nor telling the truth ;)
Re:Dad was a Bush Pilot (Score:1)
Re:Dad was a Bush Pilot (Score:1)
Maybe it's all the Sci-fi (Score:2)
I recall the balls of fire in the movie were significantly larger and were not lightning/plasma, though.
the arcane (Score:5, Funny)
Re:the arcane (Score:1)
-JM
These Physicists are Pretty Slow (Score:3, Informative)
Wow. (Score:2, Funny)
So it's finally decided... (Score:1)
Mad Props (Score:2)
BRILLIANT!
NewScientist Requires Skepticism (Score:1, Troll)
I expected more from the article . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the statements in the article bug me too. They say it must not be hot because we put a piece of paper over it and it didnt catch fire! Er, I can hold a match under a piece of paper for
The statement in the article that bugged me the most, which I think is just bad writing was: "Most accounts describe a hovering, glowing, ball-like object up to 40 centimetres across, ranging in colour from red to yellow to blue and lasting for several seconds or in rare cases even minutes." Ranging from Red to Yellow to Blue eh? So they are not . . black? If you range from any of the 3 primary colors to the other 3, don't you about cover everything that isn't a shade of grey and outside of our vision?
If it was on cnn.com I guess I could let it slide since this'd be closer to their norm, but a site dedicated to science articles? Come on . . .
I'd love to know how they reacted... (Score:2)
Were they wearing white coats?
Were they dignified? ("Indeed, Dr. Fussman, you must write up this notable phenomenon for the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society.")
Or did they behave like Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in "Back to the Future?"
Did they shout "Eureka!" Or "Holy s---!" or "What the f---?" Or the German equivalents thereof?
DId they run out into the hallway and say, "Hey everyone, this is cool, some se
Re:I'd love to know how they reacted... (Score:1)
> "Were they wearing white coats?"
Embarrasingly - probably.
> "Were they dignified? ("Indeed, Dr. Fussman, you must write up this notable phenomenon for the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society.")"
No!
>"Or did they behave like Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in "Back to the Future?"
> Did they shout "Eureka!" Or "Holy s---!" or "What the f---?" Or the German equivalents thereof?"
The standard phrase/word is "WOW!" but som
longer and more realistic than before (Score:2)
Tesla (Score:3, Insightful)
m:tg (Score:1)
Re:m:tg (Score:2)
More realistic? (Score:2)
More realistic than before? What, were the ones from before drawn imaginary or something? How can you be more realistic than real?