Report
Nearly two years after the meeting in Taiwan,ISBL-06 brought 35 investigatorsfrom 14 countries on 4 continents toEindhoven University of Technology (TUE) in the Netherlands. As before Russia led with 9 colleagues, followed by Belgiumwith 5,Japanwith 4, the USAandthe Netherlandswith 3 each. Germany and Switzerlandeach sent2 participants, including one science journalist.Austria, Egypt, Georgia, Greece, Romania, Spain, and Tanzania each brought 1 colleague. A significant boost for these record numbers came from theInternational Symposium on Unconventional PlasmasII(ISUP-II) organizedonthe two preceding days at the same location.
The down-town TUE campus grounds bode visitors a festive welcome with waving banners celebrating the 50 years jubilee of the host institute. Its Le Corbusier-style Main Building housesconvenient and classyrooms for lectures as well as administrative and social activities.The organizers thank the Department of Mathematics and Informatics for making their state-of-the-art facilities and well-stocked services available to ourISBL-06 meeting. Participants could maintain external communication throughout the symposium by logging their laptops into the local TUE network. Continuing a good custom Symposium Proceedings were available at registration, this time containing 39 articles written by 56 authors on 267 pages.Its editorial quality owes much to M. Lu’s skill and dedication. With each Proceedings copy came a CD-ROM recording all articles and displaying its numerous pictures and photo sequences in full colour, also for the preceding ISUP-II meeting. The organizers thank Mr. Wevers for attending to this useful asset. With full nine-to-five occupation the 2.5 daySymposium Program could allow speakers no more than 25 minutes floor time spread over 8 sessions.
After registration on Wednesday morning ISUP and ISBL participantsgot together for a guided tour of the Corona Laboratory offered by the Department of Electrical Engineering. We witnessed an impressivedisplaybearing on past and present BL research: wireless lamp ignition by RF power as Tesla did around 1900, pulsed gigahertz discharge as in Handel’s atmospheric maser concept, and megavolt DC sparks producing gamma radiation as Dwyer’s rocket-triggered lightning discharges do in Florida, USA. Thank you, Dr. Guus Pemen and your team for this inspiring “hands-on”-experience of current high-voltage technology in your laboratory.
After lunch break in the Auditorium cafeteria, participants filled the Seidel Lecture Room to capacity for the Opening Session of ISUP-6 chaired by G. Dijkhuis. Official wordsof welcome were spoken by Mathematics Group Administrator Dr. E.E.M. van Berkum.Searching for “light at the end of the tunnel” in recent BL research our ICBL President Stanley Singer quoted a Navajo tribe chief saying “maybe many lights at many tunnels”. Next Dirk Callebaut considered resistivity and run-away electrons in spherical Lüst-Schlüter solutions of force-free magneto-hydrodynamics as applied in several BL models. Hiroshi Kikuchi treated “sprites” observed above thunderclouds by satellites as stratospheric analogues of ball- and/or bead lightning. And Peter Handel ended the opening session proposing a klystron experiment for validation of spiking and cold emission in his maser-caviton BL model.
After coffee break Stanley Singer took the chair for the day’s closing session. Masashi Kamogawa told us about mysterious lights seen in the 2001 Shizuoka earthquake in Japan, with radio wave precursors presumablycoming from rock crushing. Irwin Wieder entered the spirit of argumentbyquestioning atmospheric maser action of water molecules at resonant wavelengths proposed by Kapitza. In the face ofunidentifiable energy levels with suitable Einstein coefficients Peter Handel countered with “let experiment be the final judge”. The closing talk by Anatoly Nikitinreported his levitation testsfor BL by currents induced in a conducting surface, and also considered levitation alternatives by space charge from corona discharge.
On Wednesday night a combinedISUP and ISBL Banquet united54 guestsfor a New World-style steak dinner at the Gauchos Restaurant in downtown Eindhoven. It proved a pleasant setting stimulating informal meetings with colleagues, accompanyingspouses and their children from four continents. And followed bysome additional beer- and wine-tasting elsewhere in convivial spirit prevailing over academic dissent.
Allowing for “nightbefore/morning after”leisure, V.L. Bychkov called the Thursday morning session on new BL reports to order. Referring to the explosive 1908 Tunguska event Ph. M. Papaelias expounded on antimatter meteorites as BL cause.Eyewitness D. Tar drewmaps and time-sequence pictures of his close encounter with BL some four decades earlier whenstudying physicsin Budapest. And from Rijswijk, Hollandless a year ago G.C. Dijkhuis reported ona bright, long-livedand immobile BL event recorded on two digital cameras, looking much likewelding arc images.
After coffee break H. Kikuchi took chair forthe second morning session focussing on BL data and statistics. Drawing onindependent data banks A.G. Keul established time-constant and space-invariant statistics for eyewitness as well as BL parametersin Central Europe. Applying his dynamic capacitor theory, A.I. Nikitin calculated diameter, velocity, mass, charge and energy validating the Sochi 1960 photo as a descending BL trail. As important challenge to BL physics, V.L. Bychkov presented several samples with strong thermal and electric impact, and one event fragmented bygunshot fired at close range.
After lunch break laboratory BL and diagnostics took centre stage in the first afternoon session with P.H. Handel as chair. High-voltage tests on partially submerged electrodes by A.G. Krivshich reproduceluminous fist-size plasmoidswith negative surface charge lasting up to 1 second in air. An inserted talk by W. Heilshowedhis rendition of a luminous event in the sky over Berlin.Considering a long furrow left by BL in tree bark V.I. Bychkov showed that his unipolar charge and hot surface model will vaporize water by Joule heatingaselectric fields approach breakdown strength in air. From BL events causing radiation sickness withoutinducing radioactivity M.L. Shmatov argued that high-energy photons, but not particles cause its medical hazards.
After coffee break H. Ofuruton took the chair for theory and models in the second afternoon session. Outside the lecture room Nature obliged our symposium by staging a modest thunderstorm. Finding light from ion recombination undetectable, and corona emission too weak, I. Wieder proposed thin film electroluminescence as sufficient source of light from cool BL plasma.For BL with very high energy storage A. Shchedrin combined relativistic density profiles in globallycharged vortex with local magnetic precession for its spherical shape. Eyewitness experience ledD. Tar to model BL formationbylightning impact on a bumpy surface breaking axial symmetry. And finally Ph. M.Papaelias’sliteraryhistory survey quoted Jules Verne’s 19th century vision: “that ball of fire reversed the poles of our magnet”.
On Friday morning the theory and models session resumed with I. Wieder as chair. For energy storage beyond virial constraints J.M. Donoso treated force-free fields in BL as filamentary plasma structure with linked streamer topology in knotted solitons.Various bizarre features on BLsurfaces remindedS. Kawano of corona discharge producing leaders, streamersand electron avalanches known from Lichtenberg figures.
After coffee break the second morning session returned to laboratory BL and diagnostics, with A. Nikitin as chair. Fromwaveguide testswith ceramic plates in Fibonacci sequence H. Ofurutonreported sound of sparksbearing out expectedmicrowave localization. A comprehensive test program in A. Klimov’s laboratory generates sizable charged cluster plasmoids,and documents their motion in electromagnetic fields, and passage through holes and glass plates on photo and film.The remaining session timetook ISBL-06 participants outdoors for an animated photo sessionon the entrance steps of the TUEMainBuilding.
After lunch break M. Kamogawa took the chair for the third session on theory and models. To save atmospheric maser action from collisional de-excitationP.H. Handelendowed it with a huge active volume, presenting a klystron-powered field test for its empirical validation. From his paper on chiral plasma at the companion ISUP-06 meeting M.Erokhintranslated the vital role of helicity to cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons. And in two consecutive talks A. Vlasov specified his vortex model of BL as a Tokamak-type current layer of relativistic electrons accelerated by lightning impact on aweakly conducting surface. Up-scaled versions of his condenser-powered explosion of copper wire spirals bent into a ring could create laboratory analogues of BL reaching lifetimes of ten seconds.
After one last coffee break G.C. Dijkhuis chaired the closing session tabling an inserted talk, technical discussions, and official closing words. From Japan less than a year agoH. Ofuruton relateda BL event seen in a rice field in cloudy November weather. On behalf of the ICBL boardits secretaryreported Moscow as optional location for the next BL symposiumin 2008, with Cairo in Egypt as possible back-up. And his closing words thanked all participants for their contributionsmaking ISBL-06 as interactive and pleasant as it turned out scientifically and otherwise.
Meanwhile some lady supportershad much obliged organizers and participants alike by spontaneouslyorganizing a smashingfarewell partyupstairs in the Diamant lobby room.Thank you, Anja Dijkhuis, Natalya Bychkova, Tamara Nikitina and Tamara Klimova for attending to this endearing finale of our symposium week. It inspired our resident psychologist to grant ISBL-06 the ultimate accolade, saying: “it also was a social event”.
On Saturday morning our traditional cultural excursion brought us to the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhovenfor a guided tour of Modern Art.Amid daring architecture,works by Picasso, Braque, Kandinsky and Chagall set the standards, with Dutch painting holding its own in colourful geometryturned into art by Piet Mondriaan.
Geert Dijkhuis
Terneuzen, 23 February 2007