Ball Lightning

Herbert Boerner obtained his PhD for experimental work in High Energy Physics from Bonn University in 1981. After postdoc positions at KEK in Japan and CERN in Geneva he joined Philips research in 1986, first working in the Hamburg laboratory, and from 1995 on in the Aachen laboratory. From this year until his retirement in 2012 he worked on the physics and engineering of organic light emitting diodes (OLED).

Introduction.- Ball Lightning: Observers' Tales.- The Search for Photographic Evidence.- A Bit of Philosophy, or What Has a Razor to Do with Ball Lightning?.- Organizing and Analyzing the Observations.- Electrical Discharges, Coronas, and Streamers.- Thunderstorms and Lightning.- BL: Well Documented Cases of Copious Production.- The Link Between Lightning Physics and Ball Lightning.- Some People Just Won't Believe It: The Skeptic's View.- Ball Lightning Theories.- BL Experiments.- Wrapping It All Up.- Appendix.- References

"This very readable and informative work is well constructed ... . At the end of each chapter Boerner gives a bullet-point summary of all the important points discussed in that chapter; this I found invaluable. ... Anyone with a background in physics and mathematics will easily be able to follow Boerner's informative text. I will go as far as saying anyone with a curious mind, even without the background knowledge, will find it difficult to put this book down." (Graham Denye, Weather, June 8, 2021)

“This very readable and informative work is well constructed … . At the end of each chapter Boerner gives a bullet-point summary of all the important points discussed in that chapter; this I found invaluable. … Anyone with a background in physics and mathematics will easily be able to follow Boerner’s informative text. I will go as far as saying anyone with a curious mind, even without the background knowledge, will find it difficult to put this book down.” (Graham Denye, Weather, June 8, 2021)