Ball lightning as a spherical plasma configuation of relevance to industrial plasma engineering

Summary form only given, as follows. One of the most interesting spherical plasma configurations found in nature is ball lightning, which has been extensively observed in atmospheric air, usually in association with thunderstorms. Ball lighting has been observed to last as long as 90 seconds, to have diameters from one, centimeter to 1.5 pammeters meters. (Ref. 1). If the physical processes responsible for ball lightning were understood (they are not), this knowledge would have very interesting implications not only for fusion research (Ref. 1), but also for industrial plasma engineering. The ability to create a steady-state atmospheric glow discharge would allow many surface modification and other plasma processing applications to be carried out under atmospheric conditions, rather than in expensive vacuum systems wich enforce batch processing operations. The existence of ball lightning offers encouragement for the belief that a steady-state atmospheric glow discharge may be possible.