BBC Focus Magazine

[Jamie]

Awesome.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120723.html

[M Paul Lloyd]

I'll second that.

[Shadowwolf]

Damn.

Nice catch there sir.

[Lateralman]

Its outline reminds me of an upside down tree in winter.

[katesisco]

Ball lightening is energized plasma. PIC of the day thunderbolts.
//www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/08/06/protostar-expostulation-2/
What Planck sees are dusty, filamentary clouds containing charged ions called plasma. Moving clouds of plasma generate electric currents within each other. Whenever electric current flows through plasma the current spirals into filaments, which attract each other. However, due to short-range repulsion of their electromagnetic fields, rather than merging they spiral around one another in “Birkeland current” pairs.

As the energy density increases, the filaments enter “glow mode”, while the magnetic flux density draws matter from the surrounding space. Eventually, they form a number of glowing globes of plasma like “beads on a string.”
It is not necessary to restrict our view of the energy of plasma to galactic formation; it can happen in your living room during a storm which produces 'ball lightening.'

[Shadowwolf]

This thread has nothing to do with ball lightning nor the EU.