I'm putting this here because I think Tesla was first to study it:
Thanks for that grumpy, who would of ever thought that the universe is such an unknowable place,
now I will try to comprehend what i am reading... I think it relates to plasma also the so called
fourth state of matter
http://www.aip.org/png/2003/191.htm
Dirt
Gathering more info on it - trying to slay the boredom of this day.
Glad to see you are "back in the saddle".
Edit:
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:yMiHcsbDu8QJ:home.dmv.com/~tbastian/files/balllite.txt+Ball+Lightning+%26+Tesla%27s+Electric+Fireballs&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us
(see references at bottom)
http://amasci.com/tesla/ballpprs.html
Hmmm, it looks like this company has found the unique properties of toroidal plasma or ball
lightning useful in power generation.
http://www.electronpowersystems.com/
Also, an interesting link from nasa, like sparks say,s on his site "Big ol tpu" here is a quote
QuoteEven more impressive was the substorm's power. Angelopoulos estimates the total energy of the two-hour event at five hundred thousand billion (5 x 1014) Joules. That's approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/11dec_themis.htm