Historical research guide · 0763 · 2003

New model and estimation of the danger of ball lightning

M. L. SHMATOV

In one minute

Mikhail Shmatov is a plasma physicist at the Ioffe Institute in St Petersburg, and this is the paper where he gives ball lightning an interior. His proposal is specific: the ball has a core made of two interpenetrating clouds — one of electrons, one of ions stripped of all their electrons — swinging back and forth against each other. That single assumption does a lot of work, because a charged core oscillating that hard has consequences you can check. It should emit high-energy photons, which is why Shmatov argues a ball can be dangerous to stand near for reasons beyond heat, and it can deliver an electric pulse capable of killing. It also carries far more energy than a glowing ball of hot air could: of the order of a million joules, and possibly more. Then he takes the model somewhere useful. He estimates the electric charge that has to be injected into the air to make one, and the currents that would deliver it.

Connection

Chapter 9 treats plasmoids and luminous spheres as physical objects with an internal structure to be worked out and then instrumented, and this is the paper that gave the site’s whole Shmatov thread its core. Chapter 1 takes the closing move as a model of the evidence ladder: a hypothesis that ends not in argument but in a number, and a named experiment — ordinary lightning, or a powerful electrical installation — that would make one on purpose.

From the source

The main assumption of the model: ball lightning has a core consisting of clouds of electrons and totally ionised ions which oscillate with respect to each other. Everything else in the paper follows from that structure.Abstract, Journal of Plasma Physics 69, issue 6, pages 507 to 527
The model predicts that ball lightning emits high-energy photons, and that those photons are sometimes dangerous for human beings — a hazard distinct from burning, and one that leaves a physical trace.Abstract, Journal of Plasma Physics 69, issue 6, pages 507 to 527
In a number of situations the ball can kill a person by electric pulse. Shmatov’s title takes the danger seriously as a quantity to be estimated rather than a rumour to be repeated.Abstract, and the paper’s own title, Journal of Plasma Physics 69, pages 507 to 527
The energy of a ball can be of the order of a million joules and even greater — an energy budget far above anything a cooling sphere of heated air can carry, which is exactly why the earlier thermal models struggled to keep one alight.Abstract, Journal of Plasma Physics 69, issue 6, pages 507 to 527
The paper estimates the electric charges that need to be injected into the atmosphere to create ball lightning, and the currents that would provide the injection of such charges.Abstract, Journal of Plasma Physics 69, issue 6, pages 507 to 527
The forward-looking result, and what would settle the model: those estimates predict that ball lightning can be created in experiments with ordinary lightning or with powerful electrical installations. A ball made deliberately, in a laboratory that already knows what charge it injected, is the measurement to watch for.Abstract, closing sentence, Journal of Plasma Physics 69, pages 507 to 527

The way in

https://doi.org/10.1017/s002237780300237x

Historical source-access record. This guide links to the original; it does not reproduce the paper text.

PUBLICATION. Journal of Plasma Physics volume 69, issue 6, pages 507 to 527, December 2003; published online by Cambridge University Press on 25 November 2003. Author: M. L. Shmatov, Ioffe Physical Technical Institute, 194021 St Petersburg, Russia. LICENCE, CHECKED 2026-09-08. The Cambridge Core article page for this digital object identifier carries the line ‘Copyright 2003 Cambridge University Press’ and the Cambridge Core terms, and offers only paid access; Crossref lists the same Cambridge Core terms and nothing else, and Unpaywall returns is_oa false, oa_status closed, an empty location list and has_repository_copy false. No Creative Commons statement exists anywhere on the article, so this page reproduces none of its text. SOURCE. The full text is behind the publisher’s paywall and returned no copy to any fetch attempt. The summary and claims below are written from the author’s own published abstract, read on 2026-09-08 on the Cambridge Core article page, together with the bibliographic record; locators cite the abstract and the article’s page range rather than interior sections, and the complete paper is at the source. This is the model paper the author’s later work builds on, and the two later sheets on this site were themselves written partly from it. RELATED PAGES. Shmatov’s predicted photon spectrum and the methods for catching it are at /library/stm-520f1cd857, and his argument that such photons may already have been recorded by a gamma-ray array during a 2012 winter thunderstorm is at /library/stm-51c278d121. The rival and companion accounts: Anatoly Nikitin’s electrodynamic model at /library/stm-90f3c174b1 and its verification paper at /library/stm-dcba3701bd, John Lowke’s 1969 calculation with Uman and Liebermann at /library/stm-807219a83b and his 2021 paper on balls in houses and aircraft at /library/stm-7f78f41fde, and the observational ledger every model answers to, Alexander Keul’s history of observations by scientists and trained professionals, at /library/stm-48b6e644d4.

How to cite it

M. L. SHMATOV (2003) New model and estimation of the danger of ball lightning doi:10.1017/s002237780300237x

Where it sits in the curriculum

Plasmoids, charge clusters and the orbs