Chinese physicists create a tiny analog of ball lightning
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, using an ultrashort laser pulse on a tungsten needle, produced a glowing plasma ball that lived longer than the pulse that created it. The observations match the model of an electromagnetic soliton. The work, published in Nature Photonics, provides a controllable model for testing hypotheses about the nature of ball lightning, but is not considered an exact copy of the atmospheric phenomenon.
Otabek Yusupov