Relativistic-microwave theory of ball lightning
nature.com
nature.com
In its most simple form the thin layer of the bubble is a plasma made of electrons oscillating radially. Like soap bubbles, a plasma bubble may have multiple ecapsulated bubbles.
A plasma ball is a dynamic system at an equilibrum using ions like ozone as energy source. The plasma ball will follow ions gradient. It explains why lightning balls may follow complex path like circling in a room and suddently going through a cheminey or a key hole.
He explains why plasma balls can traverse windows which are electrical and chemical reaction insulators.
This theory is now ready to be tested experimentally.
Some articles may be rejected or strongly frowned upon by referee just because the author has also published on controversial topics like UFOs while the submitted article is not addressing a controversial subject. Again this is to protect the credibility of the journal.
Finally, the fact that the author is known or not also strongly influence the referee's criticism. An author which is known through conferences and communication exchange is more likely to be trusted on the seriousness and validity of his work. A submission of a much less known author will be examined with circonspection and strong criticism, against just as a protection measure.
You don't take in account those bias while what should really matter is the scientific validity of the content. If you don't have the compentence to judge the content, then your red flag raising has nothing to do with science. It's just gossip.
People woes career is research tend in general to focus on one specific research domain and do publish in peer review journals or perish (loose financial support and eventually their job). But this is not the case for everybody and especially not for Prof.Meessen woes job was teaching physics in a university. He had the luxury to be free to chose any research topic he wanted and found interesting (not possible anymore). This explains the diversity of his research topics. Also as a theorist all he needed was a very good chair, paper and pencils. He had no dependencies on budgets, lab space and instruments, or personnel.
The assumptions I read in this thread apply to career researchers but can't be used as a tautology.
Another wrong assumption is that referee are always perfectly competent, impartial, objective and honest judges. Referee are humans raised in school of thoughts, have opinions and have limit in their domain and depth of competence. Implying that a rejected article MUST be crack-pottery is completely ignoring this and is thus also a bogus logic.
If an article is rejected, the scientific validity and pertinence is thus a priori UNKNOWN. What IS determinant to evaluate the scientific validity of an article are the ARGUMENTS of rejection. You don't even consider them.
As an example Prof. Meessen submitted an article on his study on the rotating compass. In his article he used as example a testimony involving multiple military ships and I think documented in the project blue book. Based on the theory presented in the book a referee computed the intensity of the EM field that should have been produced by the UFO. The intensity was many Tesla if I remember well. The referee said something along the line that no known material could sustain such EM magnetic field or an EM field of this intensity can't be produced. I'm not fully sure because I heard of it more than 25 years ago.
The objective and true reality is that we DON'T KNOW if it's possible or not. The article was thus rejected because of the ASSUMPTION (belief/opinion) of the referee that it was impossible and the editor buying it. Of course Prof.Meessen didn't waste more time to confront with such types of referees and clueless journal editors who can't distinguish good referees from impostors. He than published his work in the Book on the Belgian UFO flap. Red flag you say ?
Another wrong assumption of yours is that articles are always rejected because referee reject articles. It may happen also that referee say they can't decide and don't want thus to endorse the publication of the article. In these rare case, met by Prof. Meessen for his space time quantification theory, it is then common practice that the journal editor ask the author to suggest referees. These then act in fact as endorsers. If you have a strong network and are in close contact with well known people working on the same research subject, you can provide them to the editors and these people know if you are a crook or a respectable scientist. But if you worked mainly alone as did Prof.Meessen you are stuck. So in this case the lack, or small number, of publications doesn't prove anything beyond the fact that he doesn't have many publications. Again completely bogus logic.
If you are a scientist I would advise you to reconsider your career because your reasoning is deficient and wrong in so many ways. I guess you know where to put your red flag now.
[1] http://blog.oup.com/2015/11/einstein-planck-general-relativi...
Anyway, I don't see why a red flag would have to be raised if it wasn't screen by peer review. This is a logical fallacy. The scientific value should be judged on its content, not the context.
Something is very wrong in your logic.
International Symposium on Ball Lightning (ISBL-10), June 21-27, 2010, Kaliningrad, Russia. Proceedings: Journal of Unconventional Electromagnetics and Plasmas (UEP, India), Vol. 4, 163-179, 2012.
Which journal was it published exactly, and what is "well before"? You're linking to a generic homemade PDF file served in his personal site, which answers none of those questions.
Unless he's a world renowned top scientist, I personally don't even bother reading such "publications".
And I'm sorry but adding "Prof." in front of his name sounds a little... off/insecure to me, assuming that "Prof." isn't actual a part of his name. How are you related to him, exactly?
Edit: I'm ready to bet he's a crackpot http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/
"Principle of an EM Cancer Detector"
"Apparitions and Miracles of the Sun"
Also, one of the top google results:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave
Related: About a month ago, I bumped into another user who's promoting some other crackpot's ramblings (probably himself): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11790818 Just like this Meessen guy, he had 0 papers in respectable physics journals.
It seems such people are becoming more and more attracted to HN.
Prof stands for Professor as Auguste Meessen was physics professor at the Université Catholic de Louvain in Belgium. He is now retired. This is a title one associate to the name like Dr for doctor. Your ignorence of these conventions tells a lot.
Obviously you are also not competent to judge the scientific pertinence and validity of the content because none of your arguments address the content.
Your arguments to consider him a crackpot boils down to the diversity of his research topics and the number of papers in respectable physics journal. According to the latter argument you would consider Higgs as a crackpot. I don't see a correlation between the diversity of research topic and the scientific invalidity of the work.
You write that you don't bother reading such publications. Who cares what you read ? My point is that if a scientist elaborates a new theory on a subject, it is expected, at least in the scientific community, to do a research of prior art. What I pointed out is that this was not properly done and the referees did not do their job too. It is very likely that the referee were not well aware of the Ball Lightning research domain. Looking at the publications of the International Symposium on Ball Lightning sounds to me like an obvious source. It's not a random pdf text on a random web site. Even then, a google search should have located it.
Your arguments have nothing to do with true science and you completely missed the point I made.
Prof. auguste Meessen is not following Hacker News. He is too busy with his research. He currently finalize the elaboration of a theory explaining dark matter. It is a follow-up of his theory on space time quantization. I hope it can be published soon. Prof Meessen is 87 years old. My relation to him or the color of my hair have absolutely nothing to do with the scientific validity and pertinence of his work.
[1] International Symposium on Ball Lightning (ISBL-10), June 21-27, 2010, Kaliningrad, Russia. Proceedings: Journal of Unconventional Electromagnetics and Plasmas (UEP, India), Vol. 4, 163-179, 2012.
1. He gave lessons to the Physics students;
2. He created and managed a pedagogic lab for school students where he developed and exposed many educative and entertaining physics experiments;
3. He regularly performed what is called "school teacher recycling education" where physics school teachers could refresh their pedagogic methods with new, simple and entertaining experiments;
4. He wrote multiple school books on physics and this started before the time we had home computers, text editors and laser printers (it's a huge work he did all alone);
and many other activities and responsibilities I'm not aware of.
In addition to that he also had an intense research activity on many topics related to physics and his domain of competence. As can be seen on his web site, ufology is one of the domain he worked on, and as you can easily imagine it's nearly impossible to publish in a scientific journal on this subject. It is a remarkable opportunity that was given to him to present the results of his research on UFO propulsion at the Progress In Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS) in 2012. The link between Electromagnetic UFO propulsion and Ball Lightning is obvious.
But the most important research topic, in duration and result, is his space time quantization theory. He worked on it totally alone for 50 years. He focused on working on the theory instead of showing up and shaking hands at conferences to build up a network. This has later proven to be a huge handicap he is paying a high price today. As I said, he is currently finalizing a big article on his most recent results which is an explanation of dark matter and other things.
As a true scientist he always expected that his work would be judged on its scientific value, not the strength of his network or the number of publication in high ranked journals. The reality is apparently sadly different and in my opinion shows a poor state of science. But this is not news.
People might have various opinions on the validity of his theories. The last word should now go to experimentalists that will give a shot at it. These theories are not pies in the skies. They can be tested and I'm sure Prof. Meessen would be happy to give advise and help the audacious as long as he is still alive.
I wasn't able to find a journal, but his website (and the pdf) have May 2013 for the dates. The same person appears to have given talk with a similar title at a conference in 2010[0]. But, if it wasn't published in a journal, it's tough to insist that someone else in the community should know about it.
He does seem to have a few peer-reviewed publications[1], though they're all from the 1970's.
> Edit: I'm ready to bet he's a crackpot http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/
> "Principle of an EM Cancer Detector"
> "Apparitions and Miracles of the Sun"
Yes, the titles seem crackpot-ish, but if you look at the abstracts, they seem a bit more reasonable. I don't know enough about human tissue to comment on the "EM Cancer Detection" paper but recall that MRI's use radio waves and CT scans use X-rays to detect cancers, both thus employ EM waves. So I'm not comfortable discarding it solely on the basis of its title.
However, the abstract of the second one you mention seems to be a reasonable study of possible origin of phenomena reported by other people:
This extensive study of “miracles of the sun” leads to the conclusion that they can be explained by means of natural physiological processes, while “apparitions” are related to altered states of conscience.
[0] http://q-mag.org/abstracts-of-papers-on-ball-lightning-prese...
[1] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/#search/fq=%7B!type%3Daqp%20v%...
Why am I not surprised?
> He does seem to have a few peer-reviewed publications...
...in no-name journals.
> But, if it wasn't published in a journal, it's tough to insist that someone else in the community should know about it.
In fact, if it wasn't published in a respectable journal, it's tough to take it seriously. Especially when it's coming from a guy who's talking about UFOs and miracles in "scientific" context.
No, thanks. I'm not going to waste any of my time convincing people he is a crackpot in myriad ways.
Edit: Since I can't reply to the reply below, I write it here: yes, that is the definition of a no-name journal. A physics journal with impact factor 1 is not a respectable journal. A non-respectable journal doesn't mean its contents are crack-pottery, where did you even get that?
Crackpots with PhD have a few valid works, usually from old times, given that they got a PhD under some (presumably) normal scientist and maybe did a few postdocs here and there.
Foundations of Physics isn't a high-prestige, cutting-edge journal, but it's also not a crackpot journal. It seems to be a respectable source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Physics
Edit:
> A non-respectable journal doesn't mean its contents are crack-pottery, where did you even get that?
What? I never said that.
I'm not saying the guy is not a crackpot. I'm just not willing to say he is, based only on paper titles and 2-sentence abstracts that can be interpreted multiple ways.
> Especially when it's coming from a guy who's talking about UFOs and miracles in "scientific" context.
I think you're drawing too sweeping conclusions from just titles and 2-sentence abstracts. It is possible to talk about UFOs and miracles in a scientific context in a reasonable way; e.g., by discussing whether reported phenomena are optical illusions or internal mental constructions. That's seeing to understand things other people report as reasonable processes. Of course, I agree that people can also purport to discuss these things scientifically while spewing bullshit. However, I can't tell from just the titles and abstracts which of those two things he is doing. I'd have to read the text of the papers to determine that. Absent less ambiguous information (and the time/willingness to read what he's written), I'm just not willing to condemn someone I know little to nothing about as a crackpot. If you've read the papers and have still come to the the conclusion that he's a crackpot, I'd certainly buy it. But, with the limited information I have, I have no real opinion about the guy or his work.
> Foundations of Physics isn't a high-prestige, cutting-edge journal, but it's also not a crackpot journal.
>> A non-respectable journal doesn't mean its contents are crack-pottery, where did you even get that?
> What? I never said that.
You're contradicting yourself.
If you put every English sentence (which is screaming crazy ---mind you, and single one of those bullshit will cost an actual physicist his credibility) from his homepage http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/ together with his disastrous publication record, you get a very simple conclusion.
Pick anything. Say, his homemade "paper" which is the topic of this thread:
> Ball Lightning (BL) is a natural phenomenon that is very complex and mysterious. We solved this enigma by starting with an analysis of observed facts, in order to find clues for its understanding. Then we applied the hypothetico-deductive method, by construting a theory that uses also known physical laws. Finally, we apply this theory to show that it is verifiable and accounts for very diverse observed facts. BL is a remarkable system, since it organizes and feeds itself somewhat like a living being.
What-the-fuck? Enigma? Hypothetico-deductive method? Organizes and feeds itself somewhat like a living being?!? No real physicist would dare to use such crazy crackpottery language for god's sake!
We're talking about a guy who says apparitions of sun are related to altered states of conscience!
Still doesn't raise any red flags? Try to find one paper with such charlatanish language in APS or Nature group journals!
> It is possible to talk about UFOs and miracles in a scientific context in a reasonable way
Apparently, you're not an academician. Let me tell you this as a physicist: No, you can't. And that's a big NO.
Unless you're ready to commit career-suicide, you can't talk about such bullshit in a peer-reviewed paper, physics conference, proceedings, books, even in a press release or social media.
Mind you, he's not trying to explain how "UFOlogy" (seriously, what do I know, it's a science now!) is crazy to layman. It's the opposite!
> I have no real opinion about the guy or his work.
Yeah? And yet for whatever reason, you're overly attached to defending him, desperately try to clear his name.
You know what, I'm done with you. Crackpots exist because they apparently attract certain kinds of people, and I don't wanna waste any more of time time with either group. Enjoy your crackpottery!
I agree that his English is not very good. But that's because it's badly translated from French. The French versions are perfectly coherent. Your English is better than his, but it's not very good either; for example, "bullshit" is not plural. Hopefully nobody will declare you to be a "charlatan" or a "crackpot" as a result.
Surprisingly, the actual paper of his that I read is mostly lacking such gross errors.
> We're talking about a guy who says apparitions of sun are related to altered states of conscience!
"Conscience" here is a mistranslation of the French "conscience", which means "consciousness". Also, he's not talking about "apparitions of sun" — that's your invention. He said "apparitions", which are cases where a Catholic believes they have seen the Virgin Mary. (Note that he is a professor at a Catholic university.) Sometimes these are accompanied by reports of bizarre, stereotyped changes in appearance of the sun, known as "miracles of the sun".
His overall conclusion, from the paper, is as follows:
> [A]pparitions and miracles of the sun cannot be taken at face value. There are natural mechanisms that can explain them, but they are so unusual that we were not aware of them. Miracles of the sun result from neurophysiological processes in our eyes and visual cortex, while apparitions involve more complex processes in our mind's brain.
He specifically considers and rejects the possibility of a supernatural or extraterrestrial origin for these phenomena, although those explanations are popular. He goes into some detail in the paper about explanations from neuroscience, psychology, and meteorology.
You're right that it isn't physics to investigate why people might see colored lights, grey discs, or other things that aren't there. But you are wrong to say that it isn't science.
Let me turn back to you your expression : What-the-fuck ? You judge the scientific validity and pertinence on the words he used ? You said you are are Physicist ? What kind of scientist are you ?
When he started working on this subject the common wisdom among scientist was that Ball Lightning was nothing more than a popular belief.
It is thus an enigma.
Do you know what a Hypothetico-deductive method is ? I start to doubt. Let me try to explain.
The problem with Ball lightning (as with UFOs) is that our main source of information are testimonies. You could then discard the data, as do wrongfully skeptics, by saying there is doubt on the data so we can't do anything with it. Some go as far as using this uncertainty to justify the REJECTION of possible validity of the phenomenon while it is only UNKNOWN. This is a logical fallacy. If all scientists behaved like that in the past we would still be building our tools today by cutting flint.
The Hypothetico-deductive method boils down to say "Ok I don't know if its real or not, but let's assume its real. What can we deduce from the data." The resulting deductions can lead us to elaborate a theory explaining the phenomenon that can then be tested. If the test fails, the theory is proven incorrect, but the reality of the phenomenon is still unknown. If the test succeed, the theory is proven valid and becomes a strong candidate for the explanation.
This method is common science and led to the most remarkable breakthrough in our understanding of the universe we live in. Where is the crack-pottery in referring to that method ?
> Unless you're ready to commit career-suicide, you can't talk about such bullshit in a peer-reviewed paper, physics conference, proceedings, books, even in a press release or social media.
So you explain by yourself why he didn't manage to publish on this subject in high ranked scientific journal. But have you considered why it can't be done? No one publishes on these subjects in scientific journals because no one publishes on these subjects on scientific journals. No Editor wants to risk the credibility of his journal regardless of the scientific quality of the work. You claim it's bullshit but on what base ? What are your arguments ? It's bullshit because no peer review article publishes an article on this subject ? Because of the words he use ? Your arguments are bullshit. Nothing else.
Oh! Maybe you mean it must be crack-pottery because a scientist would ruin his career by publishing such work even on social media. Prof. Meessen is a true scientist not someone who tries to make a career in science. He work on research topic he believes he can provide a significant added value to it because this is the most valuable for humanity. People like you who are trying to discredit his work on the base you use are a shame for science (supposing you are really a physicist).
If all scientists behaved like you the theory of relativity would never have been published and we would still be teaching classic mechanics.
The poorness of your argumentation say it all. I don't believe a single second that you are a scientist. Having a diploma in science doesn't make you a true scientist.
This is a logical fallacy. We agree that peer review journals apply a peer review filter on published articles that guaranties (in general) the scientific quality of the published articles.
You deduce from that that articles not published by peer review journals are crack-pottery. This is of course untrue. The scientific quality of articles that didn't went true the peer review filter is a priori UNKNOWN.
> Especially when it's coming from a guy who's talking about UFOs and miracles in "scientific" context.
So you judge the scientific quality of an article by its subject and not it's content ? You didn't even considered what he wrote about these subjects ?
Let me explain you. His article on the miracle of the sun report a study of the Fatima event where many witnesses reported seen strange effect of the sun (change in color intensity and rotation) as well as ambient color changes like everything turning violet or else. A big crowd reported these observations and this was carefully collected.
Prof.Meessen's interest to this case came from his study of UFOs. He was not the first who considered and explored the possibility that the Fatima event was due to a UFO. As a physicist he considered the possibility that ambient color changes could result from refraction effects like we see with a prism. The initial hypothesis was that this refraction could have been induced by EM field surrounding UFOs in a particular way. To make a long story short, his conclusion is that this idea is wrong and what people experienced was visual effects resulting from starring too long at the sun. He found an old articles documenting this effect and he also tested it himself at the risk to turn blind.
He then investigated the other aspect of the Fatima event reporting the viewing of the Holly Mother. I mean he investigated as a true scientist. He discovered to his surprise that such events are very frequent. Most are not well known. Some even occurred close to where he live, so he could talk to the Priest who had access to the info. He concluded that these are very likely rooted in psychologically induced effects.
Sorry but the only crack-pottery I see around here is your reasoning.
What happened was that lightning struck the ground at the edge of our yard while we were waiting at the front door for the rain to slow (so we could get to the car). I jerked my head to the right because of course the sound and flash scared the heck out of me, and right as I looked there was what looked like a glowing ball of electricity, the size of a beach ball, just above the ground, for what seemed like a few seconds.
Impressive that the model has "passed all the tests" for an acceptable theory of the origin of ball lightning.
From some Googling, there are 8M lightning strikes per day on earth, so say about 3.5B strikes per year. Let's say 3% of those strikes are in populated areas. So ~250,000 lightning strikes per day in populated areas. In the past 5 years, that is ~500M lightning strikes in populated areas. Let's say that there's at least one person or video camera filming the sky during 20% of those strikes.
Given we only have 1 video of marginal quality of ball lightning, that makes 1 in a 100M strikes a reasonable guess. But that also makes me think it really could just be 0 and eye witness accounts are just some visual misperception.
"Populated area" is somewhat subjective here since those that live in a rural, open area, especially the prairies, are able to observe more lightning activity.
Most of the reports that I've read about involve those living in the country where the artifact of the strike, the resulting ball, can be readily observed.
I'd read about a laboratory trying to recreate this phenomenon using submarine batteries and were more successful in blowing the roof off the warehouse than creating ball lightning.