Ball Lightning as a Self-organized Complexity

TL;DR

This paper explains ball lightning as a self-organized plasma structure resulting from complex space charge configurations, highlighting its formation, evolution, and potential link to prebiotic structures.

Contribution

It introduces a self-organization model for ball lightning based on plasma experiments, connecting natural phenomena to prebiotic complexity formation.

Findings

Ball lightning can be modeled as a self-organized plasma structure.

Self-organization explains the formation and short lifetime of ball lightning.

Similar mechanisms may lead to prebiotic structures in Earth's atmosphere.

Abstract

The ball lightning phenomenon is explained in the frame of a self-organization scenario suggested by experiments performed on the spontaneously generated complex spherical space charge configuration in plasma. Originated in a hot plasma, suddenly created in a point where a lightning flash strikes the Earth surface, the ball lightning appearance proves the ability of nature to generate, by self-organization, complex structures able to ensure their own existence by exchange of matter and energy with the surroundings. Their subsequent evolution depends on the environment where they are born. Under contemporary Earth conditions the lifetime of such complexities is relatively short. A similar self-organization mechanism, produced by simple sparks in the earl Earth's atmosphere (chemically reactive plasma) is suggested to explain the genesis of complexities able to evolve into prebiotic structures.