Window glass with a 7-centimeter hole fitting glass circle believed to have been created by ball lightening.
In the Autumn 1992 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, A.I. Grigor'ev et al collected 43 eyewitness accounts of ball lightning penetrating into closed rooms. Most of the reports came from the former USSR and are new to Western scientists.
The majority of these balls entered through closed glass windows. Sometimes the balls penetrated the windows without damaging the glass at all, but in a few cases neat circular holes were somehow melted or punched through the glass. The accompanying photograph illustrates an incident in which lightning (supposed to be ball lightning) surgically excised a coin-like piece of glass.
(Girgor'ev, A.I. et al; "Ball Lightning Penetration into Closed Rooms: 43 Eyewitness Accounts," Journal of Scientific Exploration, 6:261, 1992. Journal address: ERL 306, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4055.)
Reference. An entire chapter of our catalog Lightning, Auroras is devoted to ball lightning. Ordering information here.
"Before opening the book, I set certain standards that a volume which treads into dangerous grounds grounds like this must meet. The author scrupulously met, or even exceeded those standards. Each phenomenon is exhaustively documented, with references to scientific journals [..] and extensive quotations" -- "Book Review: The moon and planets: a catalog of astronomical anomalies", The Sourcebook Project, 1985., Corliss, W. R., Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada>, Vol. 81, no. 1 (1987), p. 24., 02/1987
