Discharge in humid air, rotating plasma and the problem of ball lightning

Summary form only given. There are two real opportunities of practical modeling of ball lightning. the first is in spherical-configuration volume and the second is in opened space, but at air humidity of 95-98 percent and in the specific conditions of discharge generation. Under these conditions a luminescent object of quasi-spherical shape is formed. Our experiments with high-frequency discharge in humid air and in spherical volume have not revealed any positive results. Nevertheless, our investigations of various types of HF-discharges in the conditions of variable air humidity have shown that a significant decrease of plasma recombination velocity is observed in the experiment due to plasma cooling in the ionized medium of charged and neutral particles. We call this phenomenon an "effect of plasma conservation". It is described in detail in the paper. Among all types of ball lightning formation methods, rotating plasma practically is not investigated. This seems to be a wrong approach. Even in 1944 when studying the flame of rotating hydrocarbons, local energy liberation during the contact of the flame with a metallic surface and melting of the surface were found. Since a flame is a special case of plasma, studies of rotating plasma in humid air are of interest for the ball lightning modeling. The results of such experiments are presented in the paper of the author. At maximum energy liberation the velocity of plasma rotation was 10 kHz. The concept of rotating plasma can well explain melting of metal parts during the contact with ball lightning, and also the presence of whistling and hissing sounds accompanying the ball lightning. The time of rotating plasma luminescence in humid air in our experiment was about 1 second. When using laser radiation in the conditions of optimal humidity and normal atmospheric pressure this value was about 8 seconds.