Orcas do go in for fads (look up 'orca salmon hats') but experts oftentimes dismiss things as coincidence because they don't have a theory and don't want to look stupid by speculating. When I was growing up reports of ball lightning were dismissed as hallucinations or optical illusions until video and spectrographic technology advanced sufficiently to capture the phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning
I had climbed a tree (at night) and looked down and there was a red glowing ball of light that drifted and bobbed along horizontally maybe 6 or 8 feet off the ground, and then disappeared. It was maybe a foot across or a little less. A friend was with me, we both watched in amazement.
I never knew what it was and halfway thought maybe I imagined it (except my friend saw it too). Until today I never knew what it might have been as this is my first time hearing of ball lighting. But it seems likely that is what it was.
After so many decades, glad to have a rational explanation at last! Thanks HN!
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_psychic_abilities
> An optical spectrum of what appears to have been a ball lightning event was published in January 2014 and included a video at high frame rate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bBNeyrMOJE
I think what that sentence is saying is that we don't know how to reproduce it in a lab. We don't know what exactly is happening in the real world that is causing us to perceive this. It could be an illusion I guess, but I think it's undisputed it's a real phenomenon.
That describes Bigfoot. I’d hope your epidemic standard is beyond anecdotes + videos that report to show what they report they’re showing. Else you can be made to believe anything.
I don’t know enough about ball lightning to care one way or another.
No one has dressed up and walked in front of a camera as ball lightning
I personally agree that ball lightning probably exists. However, there is another interesting phenomenon where a brilliant blue/white "spark" of electricity can travel along a wire. I don't have a name for it but power companies are certainly familiar with it. I've seen footage of it happening repeatedly along the same stretch of wire after a storm as an automated system tried to restore power a few times before keeping the power shut off.
It’s possible it was a mass delusion or a ghost but both of those strike me as less likely.
Ball lightning is one of those things that you'd expect to be easier to detect because of the increased use of cameras. Why isn't Youtube flooded with dozens of videos showing lightning balls? There are a few, but none of them are convincing. (One is clearly a drone being flown in a thunderstorm.) Most are fakumentaries. (3 seconds of shaky zoomed-in "proof" and 5 minutes of a so-called expert breathlessly talking about it.) How can ball lightning both have lots of people claiming to see it, but is infrequently caught on video?
My suspicion is people are encountering normal lightning discharges at close range and the "ball" is an illusion caused by how eyes work. If someone attempted to get ball lightning on camera they'd be disappointed to see the recording look nothing like how they remembered it.
Link for context https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/14/66693872/and-now...