Late night inspiration?

Conundrum, Wed Jan 30 2019, 06:04AM

that ball lightning may be a metastable superconducting ring or other circular structure of metallic hydrogen carrying a supercurrent of tens or hundreds of Amps. It may be produced in several ways but most likely by the intense pressure and temperature variations near an intracloud or cloud-ground lightning bolt first splitting water and then compressing the free hydrogen ions into metal. As the filament involved could be mere micrometres thick this could account for the lack of physical evidence but due to it having some level of cohesion due to the intense magnetic fields luminescence may originate in various locations similar to a superconducting magnet quench. As the instability grows the ball may move around more abruptly, change colour and size similar to an electric arc.
Eventually it reaches a critical point and explodes or in many cases just fades out.
It could also explain some observations of X-rays from thunderstorms as the densities involved would be more than adequate for accelerating leftover electrons to relativistic speeds.
This hypothesis borrows from three others but with some inventive steps based on postulated properties of MH and a Tc of approx 247K based on Silvera's original research.