Qinghai, 2012: The Ball Lightning That Got Caught on a Spectrograph
One late-evening thunderstorm in July 2012, a team studying ordinary lightning on China's Qinghai Plateau recorded a glowing ball rising from a ground strike about 900 meters away. Their spectrum found silicon, iron and calcium, the stuff of soil. It's the best instrumental record of natural ball lightning, and it doesn't settle what ball lightning is.