It's interesting to note that the still unexplained and controversial phenomenon of ball lightning is derided as mass delusion, e.g., --
Is Ball Lightning Just a Shared Hallucination? http://www.universetoday.com/64560/is-ball-lightning-just-a-shared-hallucination/ - despite that probable ball lightning has also deluded video cams, e.g., "UFO" Shoots Missile with beams - Vandenberg Air Force Base http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO4FhJ3mjrE Challenging established orthodoxy endangers reputation, career, income, ... This recent (open source) paper -- Interrelation between ball lightning and optically induced forces http://iopscience.iop.org/1402-4896/88/3/035402 -- begins with the observation - "The phenomenon of ball lightning (BL) remains unresolved up to the present moment. No satisfactory explanation of enigmatic natural phenomena (observed and examined by scientists for many centuries) has been found up to now. More than 200 different BL theories are known, and their systematization and classification have been carried out. However, neither of them can even approximately explain the enigmatic and intriguing behavior of BLs, which to a certain degree reminds one of the behavior of some highly organized matter. Physicists cannot imagine an object, submitting to conventional physical laws, whose properties coincide with BL properties. This is something perfectly new." It seems that the same laws of social psychology are operating to discourage investigations of BL and LENR. BTW, the following paper -- Tracks of Ball Lightning in Apparatus? J. Condensed Matter Nucl. Sci. 2 (2009) 1332 http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LewisEtracksofba.pdf - speculates that micro-BL might explain the topography of pock-marked, streaked, ..., metal surfaces seen in LENR. Any opinions on the reality of ball lightning? -- Lou Pagnucco
