Ball lightning as a shell of water molecules

Summary form only given. A theory is developed in this paper where the ball lightning (BL) is regarded as an electrostatically charged shell of water molecules with opposite sign charges arranged about opposite shell poles in accordance with cosinusoid law, the thickness of the shell being of the order of (0.004-100)/spl middot/10/sup -6/ m. Such array of the charges is sure to generate an electrostatic field which makes water molecules distribute in ordered pattern imparting the shell properties not unlike those of crystals. There was noted a striking correlation between BL shell and that of a soap bubble. The difference lies in that BL shell is a multi-layer one whereas the soap bubble features only two ordered layers of surface molecules.