You've no doubt heard the phrase "a ball of lightning" before. Turns out it's real. Lyrically known as St. Elmo's fire, it is a phenomenon where electrical storms create a moving glowing sphere that just sort of hangs in the sky.

The whole thing has never been observed in nature before, up until now. The scientists in the Qinghai region of China were observing a thunderstorm in 2012 using video cameras and a spectrometer and they managed to record a five meter wide flash of ball lightning that stayed in the air for 1.6 seconds.

[American Physics Society via Medium Image: Flickr / StormWlf]