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New scientist article on mini black holes

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Steve Conner

Mon Jan 01 2007, 04:26PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

There is no hard evidence for ball lightning, though. Just a million and one eyewitness accounts. IMO these can be explained by burning pieces of metal and metal vapour (this has famously been reproduced in submarine switch gear, which probably explains Bob Golka's decision to use submarine batteries for his experiments) or after-images of a flash in the observer's eyes. You can reproduce this at home by letting off a camera flash in your face in a dimly lit room, but don't come crying to me if you blind yourself! Tape a piece of cardboard with a round hole in it over the flash, since rectangular ball lightning doesn't look as convincing

Chris Russell

Sun Jan 07 2007, 11:58PM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to tackle this, and not very nicely. I don't mean anything against you personally, Conundrum, but this matter needs to be laid to rest now.

Conundrum wrote ...

This is interesting, seems that some of the higher energy types of ball lightning may actually be
miniature black holes.

The problems start right away. "Higher energy types of ball lightning"? Has anyone ever measured the energy of ball lightning at all, let alone measured their energy enough times that they've been subdivided into types? I wouldn't be surprised if some investigator out there has divided them into types based on observed luminosity, though. However, that's no direct indication of energy, and observed luminosity is really subjective in the first place. Worse, we don't even know if miniature black holes exist in nature, or if they can even exist anywhere at all. Worst of all, a black hole could never be described as neutrally buoyant in air. So what we're doing is using a theoretical phenomenon to (poorly) explain an alleged one. This makes for some nice speculation, but very poor science.

Conundrum wrote ...

I would also like to point out that the Department of Defence actually has ball lightning as a listed explanation for unusual aerial phenomena.

Since when is any country's DoD considered a scientific authority? Their choices for explanations were probably limited to aliens, ball lightning, or admitting they did not know. BL presents itself as a good choice, since many people accept it unquestioningly as a natural phenomenon, and its properties are so vaguely defined that it can explain away almost anything.

Conundrum wrote ...

I agree that jumping in with theories without knowing the exact nature of the phenomena may be seen as unscientific, however when hard evidence exists (which the pilots of Flybe aircraft over here will be happy to discuss with anyone who asks) denying its existence is equally unscientific.

Maybe defining ball lightning as three or more separate phenomena would help, as has been done in the TORRO archives, as well as UK WeatherWorld.

I don't think that anyone here believes that everyone who claims to have seen ball lightning is lying, and I don't think that's a good, scientific solution, I agree. The fact is that we don't know enough about ball lightning to say for sure if it even exists as a real, physical phenomenon, as opposed to a purely optical effect. Also, I think we've established that eyewitness reports of relatively little use. Hence, if there is to be any discussion about ball lightning, it ought to pertain to documenting it, measuring it, and collecting and analyzing scientific data about it. For example, would any of the pilots you've mentioned be willing to carry some additional instrumentation, such as a high resolution camera, a field strength meter, etc.? That would be an interesting thread, and a lot more scientific than storytime with some pilots.

At any rate, since we really don't have enough information to conclude that BL is *one* phenomenon, I don't see how classifying it as *three* of them is going to clarify anything.

Conundrum wrote ...

The phenomena that seems to have been documented here is the classic "Fireball" but in an energy range which is hard to explain with *current* scientific knowledge.

In addition, it may be possible that recent work at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has indeed discovered that miniature black holes can indeed be generated, although their lifetime seems to be very limited.

Given that other "super heavy" objects have been tenatively detected by seismic coincidence

it is probable that a slightly larger event might indeed generate the level of damage seen.

If something can't be explained with *current* scientific knowledge, it can hardly be called science, can it? It's more of a guess, or a speculation. Maybe future science will bear it out, maybe not.

At any rate, as I pointed out above, nobody even knows if minuature black holes can exist at all. The RHIC is working on it, and so are a lot of other people. The best they've got is "maybe." I wouldn't put any stock into them explaining anything just yet.

Also included are lots of eyewitness reports, which while interesting, don't prove anything. If they did, then I guess Bigfoot is real, Elvis is still alive and lives just outside of El Paso, and JFK was shot by 34 different people from various windows, knolls, umbrellas, and underpasses. Sorry, but this just isn't science, no matter how badly you want it to be.

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