Ball lightning is a rare electrical phenomenon. Scientists aren’t certain what creates it, and once disputed that ball lighning existed at all. Some argued that it was simply the electromagnetic field of an electrical storm causing visual hallucinations by exciting neurons in the brain, an effect called transcranial magnetic stimulation.

However, recent high-definition video proved that at least some instances must be a real physical effect. Spectrograpic analysis of this images suggests that ball lightning is made of vaporized silicon contained within a self-contained electromagnetic bubble, effectively making a naturally occurring electric arc lamp.

Laboratory experiments successfully replicated the glowing ball of plasma, which hovered for several seconds.

Unfortunately, other lab experiments create similar visual effects using wildly different methods, including electrically-excited nanoparticles, water shocked by capacitors to simulate lightning, and a bubble of ionized gas fuelled for many seconds by a vast atmospheric energy field.

The varying size of that energy-pumping field would conveniently explain the unpredictable size, duration, and electrical power levels observed in ball lightning.

So we’re still not sure what that thing in the video really is, but it may be possible to create something like that in a dozen different ways.