The article was originally published at The Conversation.
Giles Gasper is a professor at Durham University.
The Emeritus Professor of Physics at Durham University is Brian Tanner.
On June 7, 1195, a fiery spinning ball emerged from a dark cloud in a sunny sky close to the London lodgings of the bishop of Norfolk. The natural phenomenon that witnesses were seeing would defy scientific explanation for more than 800 years. The hallmarks of ball lightning are an atmospheric effect and the origin of it.
Gervase, a monk of Christ Church Cathedral in Canterbury, compiled an account of this extraordinary moment between about 1180 and 1199. It would appear that this is the first credible written record of ball lightning in England, and much more convincing than an earlier European description. It was thought that the earliest record was from the 17th century.
The work records historical events in England and further, the friends and enemies of the monastic house, and descriptions of noteworthy or unusual natural phenomena. There are descriptions of earthquakes and floods in the writing.
There are 7 solar system worlds where the weather is crazy.
We discovered the account of what appears to be ball lightning while looking at Gervase's records of natural events in his chronicle. We dug through hundreds of pages in Latin and found a detailed description in the journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. The records of natural events appear within the historical narrative. They were important enough for Gervase to be included. The deposition of the abbot of Thorney is sandwiched between the installation of a new abbot of St Albans.
There is no attempt to explain themarvelous sign in the sky. The reader is free to make their own conclusions. One abbot takes up his post while another is deposed. The chronicle says that.
A sort-of fiery globe threw itself down into the river.
Gervase appears to have been an astute observer. His description of the splitting of the image of the moon is consistent with the formation of a vertical mirage from activity such as iron working or bell casting.
Gervase describes ball lightning in the same way that modern reports do. It was the next earliest report of ball lightning in England. The storm of October 21, 1638 was at Widecombe. Nicholas Walsh claims that in 1556 ball lightning killed his family and left him heir to his father's estates, but the story was not recorded until 1712 by the historian Sir Thomas.
For a long time, lightning ball was seen with skepticism. Although it is accepted as a genuine phenomenon with thousands of reported occurrences, there is still no accepted scientific explanation for its origin. The burning of Silicon from the soil is a very complicated theory. A suggestion has been made for light to be trapped inside a sphere of thin air. It is one of the oldest scientific mysteries.
There are other long standing scientific puzzles. The moon illusion, in which the moon appears larger when near the horizon than when it is high in the sky, intrigued medieval natural philosophers. This was described by medieval thinkers, such as al-Haytham, who was born in Iraq and died in Cairo. The effect is not completely resolved. The medieval observers believed that it was a psychological effect and that it was associated with refraction.
The attraction between permanent magnets and iron is the origin of ferromagnetism. Experiments on magnets laid the groundwork for further investigation. It wasn't until 1928 that Werner Heisenberg provided a satisfactory explanation of quantum mechanics.
Understanding ball lightning can be difficult because of the inability to reproduce the effect in the laboratory and because of the different reports. The reported observation of ball lightning might be a first step towards providing quantitative data from which to explain Gervase.
Gervase, a Medieval monk, was fascinated by the natural world. Modern scientists and historians find their records stimulating.
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