The luminous orbs the size of ping-pong balls persisted for up to 8 seconds, with smoke trails that formed spiral shapes, suggesting the balls were spinning (Images: Gerson Paiva

Ball lightning could soon lose its status as a mystery, now that a team in Brazil has cooked up a simple recipe for making similar eerie orbs of light in the lab, even getting them to bounce around for several seconds. Watch a movie of the bouncing balls here.

Thousands of people have reported seeing ball lightning, a luminous sphere that sometimes appears during thunderstorms. It is typically the size of …