On his website, physicist Wal Thornhill writes:-
An electric star is formed by the equivalent of a lightning bolt in a molecular (plasma) cloud. Just like earthly lightning, cosmic lightning scavenges, squeezes and heats matter along the discharge channel. Where the squeeze is most intense, the current may ‘pinch off’ to give the effect of ‘bead lightning.’ In high-energy plasma lab discharges researchers have found that hot plasma ‘beads’ (known as plasmoids) form along the discharge axis before “scattering like buckshot” when the discharge quenches.http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=x49g6gsf
Plasma "beads" in the laboratory (a form of "ball lightning"?):-
The author of the video writes:-
Is ball lightning the earthly manifestation of stars?
First of all. How is "bead lightning" generally defined?
Bead lightning is most apparent when the current in a cloud-to-ground flash persists for an appreciable fraction of a second. In these cases, the luminosity also persists and the channel may have regions of enhanced luminosity that resemble a string of beads.http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ball+lightning
This persisting discharge may well give more of a chance for the "z-pinch" or "Bennet pinch" compressive force to take place and produce these beads. Here are some photos:-
What is a z-pinch?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinch_(plasma_physics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinch_(plasma_physics)
I produced this edited video of a slow-motion lightning discharge to make it even slower than the original video - in order that the viewer can pay attention to the plasmoid balls flying off one of the filaments and heading away into the sky. Some plasmoid balls remain pretty much stuck inside the magnetic fields of the discharge filaments. You have to watch the video carefully.
Of course, one possible criticism is the fact that the spherical plasmoids are very short-lived indeed in this video - but essentially, this is an argument for how they could be formed. There needs to be further research and more monitoring of lightning discharges to see how longer lasting plasmoids actually develop.
Star forming lightning bolts in space plasma........
Part of the Galactic Plane towards the contellation of Vulpecula. As well as bright regions where hot stars are warming up the dust, filaments of colder dust are seen. Young stars are currently forming in chains along these filaments. Image credit: ESA / SPIRE, PACS and Hi-GAL Consortia
This image from the APEX telescope, of part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud, shows a sinuous filament of cosmic dust more than ten light-years long. Image released Feb. 15, 2012.CREDIT: ESO/APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO)/A. Hacar et al./Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin
Dense filaments of gas in an interstellar cloud. The Herschel infrared space observatory has provided evidence that the sonic booms from exploding stars may sweep up interstellar gas into giant filaments where stars are born. Photograph: D. Arzoumanian (CEA Saclay)/PACS/SPIRE/Herschel/ESA
Image courtesy of Hubble Space Telescope.
The Milky Way sits in one of the filaments that make up the large scale structure of the universe (computer simulated image) (Source: ANU/Michael Boylan-Kolchin/UC Irvine)
As I stated in my article for Weekly Zaman:-
"It is important to realise that electromagnetism is 10^42 times stronger than the force of gravity. Hence, it is not unreasonable to argue that the formation of stars and indeed, much of the structure of the universe – owes more to this force, than the mass of particles following the law of gravity. Indeed, as the US governments’ Los Alamos National Laboratory states on its website “Plasmas are the most common form of matter, comprising more than 99% of the visible universe”.http://hozturner.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/weekly-zaman-is-there-revolution-coming.html
