From Switching Arcs to Ball Lightning to Curing Cancer!

Authors

  • J. J. Lowke CSIRO Manufacturing, Lindfield (Sydney), NSW 2070, Australia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14311/ppt.2019.2.194

Keywords:

switching arcs, current zero, SF6, ball lightning, cancer

Abstract

Previous modelling of switching has been through calculation of reductions in temperature of the arc at "current zero". "Enthalpy density" as a function of temperature is found to be an important property. New calculations now include an account of non-equilibrium electron density as a function of time through current zero and it is found that electron attachment rates, which are very large for SF6, could be a dominant property. Modelling discharges is having other successes, for example in explaining "ball lightning" observations inside of houses and aircraft, which suddenly appear, usually at glass windows. Discharge modelling suggests these observations might be explained by the production of "singlet delta" metastable molecules of oxygen in electrical discharges in air. If metastable densities are sufficient, electrons can be produced from the detachment of negative ions to produce radiation and explain ball lightning. An exciting new development is that plasmas from electric corona in air have been found to reduce the size of cancer tumours. These excited oxygen molecules have also been proposed as having a role in this remarkable interchange between classical electrical engineering and medical science.

References

J. J. Lowke. Progress in arc theory, Proceedings of Sixth Int. Conf. on Switching Arc Phenomena, Lodz, Poland, Sept 12-15, 1989. In Sbornik, Bulletin Tech University Brno, pages 11–30, 1992.

J. J. Lowke. Calculations of circuit interruption after current zero: Predictions of electron densities rather than temperatures. In Proc. 22nd Inter. Conf. on Gas Discharges and their Applications, volume 2, pages 347–350, 2018.

J. J. Lowke. Theory of electrical breakdown in air - the role of metastable oxygen molecules. J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys., 25(2):202–210, 1992. doi:10.1088/0022-3727/25/2/012/meta.

J. J. Lowke, D. Smith, K. E. Nelson, C. R. W., and A. B. Murphy. Birth of ball lightning. J. Geophys. Res., 117:D19107, 2012. doi:10.1029/2012JD017921.

J. S. Sousa, G. Bauville, and V. Puech. Arrays of microplasmas for the controlled production of tunable high fluxes of reactive oxygen species at atmospheric pressure. Plasma Sources Sci. Technol., 22:035012, 2013. doi:10.1088/0963-0252/22/3/035012.

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Published

2019-09-10

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 2 (2019)

Section

Review Papers

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