In March 1963, Eastern Airlines Flight 539 was cruising through a violently heavy electrical storm when a blinding flash and a deafening crack enveloped the aircraft. Seconds later, a glowing sphere of light roughly the size of a bowling ball emerged from the cockpit and calmly floated straight down the passenger aisle, maintaining a constant height before vanishing. This historic account, observed firsthand by a university electronics professor, is one of the most famous modern documentations of ball lightning—a profound, rule-breaking anomaly that has completely stumped atmospheric physicists for centuries. For millennia, these long-lasting, floating, and occasionally explosive orbs of light were dismissed by mainstream science as mere folklore, religious myths, or demonic visitations.

The paradigm finally shifted during  ...