Lightning protection topic: How to protect against spherical lightning?
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In gas production and transmission workshops, the use of open flames is strictly prohibited； Last summer, during a thunderstorm, a ball of fire in the form of ball lightning entered the gas compressor room, nearly causing an accident. How can spherical lightning be prevented from occurring? And how to prevent it from entering high-risk areas?
Common lightning protection devices such as lightning rods, lightning balls, and lightning grids are ineffective against ball lightning. Ball lightning resembles a fireball; it is slightly smaller than a football, and its colors can be white, green, yellow, or orange. It can float at low altitudes with the air currents and enter buildings through chimneys, windows, and cracks in doors. It sometimes disappears silently, and other times it explodes suddenly, causing injury to people. According to the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS, Ignatov concluded based on his research that the core of ball lightning is a strong magnetic dipole. It is a system composed of moving charges that are close to each other, have equal quantities, and have opposite magnetic poles, with a magnetic field existing around it. This characteristic makes ordinary lightning rods almost useless against ball lightning. Based on the above circumstances, Ignatov installed a permanent magnet on a regular lightning rod. If a ball of lightning flies past a permanent magnet, the magnet will attract the lightning toward it. When lightning comes into contact with either pole of a permanent magnet, the moving charges in the lightning rapidly penetrate underground through the metal rod of the lightning rod connected to the permanent magnet and the grounding system, and the lightning then disappears. This lightning rod can prevent attacks by ball lightning, and its invention has been patented.
Overall, there are currently no truly effective measures for protecting against spherical bombs, but the general principle of prevention is to disperse them.
Since ball lightning is a charged plasma, some experts suggest protecting the doors and windows of flammable and explosive production facilities with metal mesh and ensuring proper grounding. When the ball of lightning comes into contact with the grounded metal mesh, its charge is discharged through the grounding system, thereby preventing it from entering critical facilities and achieving protective effects.