The Collaborative International Dictionary
Fireball \Fire"ball`\, n.
(Mil.) A ball filled with powder or other combustibles, intended to be thrown among enemies, and to injure by explosion; also, to set fire to their works and light them up, so that movements may be seen.
A rare phenomenon often associated with or caused by lightning, resembling a luminous ball of fire passing rapidly through the air or along solid objects, then disappearing, and sometimes exploding. It seldom lasts more than a few seconds. Also called ball lightning, globe lightning, globular lightning, or kugelblitz.
A large mass of fire caused by a large explosion, as of inflammable liquids or a nuclear device. The larger fireballs, as of nuclear explosions, rise seemingly intact into the air and may reach high altitudes while still glowing.
Wikipedia
The Flakpanzer IV Kugelblitz ("Ball Lightning") was a German self-propelled anti-aircraft gun developed during World War II. By the end of the war, only a pilot production of five units had been completed. Unlike earlier self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, it had a fully enclosed, rotating turret.
In theoretical physics, a kugelblitz (German: "ball lightning") is a concentration of light so intense that it forms an event horizon and becomes self-trapped: according to general relativity, if enough radiation is aimed into a region, the concentration of energy can warp spacetime enough for the region to become a black hole (although this would be a black hole whose original mass-energy had been in the form of radiant energy rather than matter). In simpler terms, a kugelblitz is a black hole formed from energy as opposed to mass. According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, once an event horizon has formed, the type of mass-energy that created it no longer matters. A kugelblitz is so hot it surpasses the Planck temperature, the temperature of the universe seconds after The Big Bang.
The best-known reference to the kugelblitz idea in English is probably John Archibald Wheeler's 1955 paper "Geons", which explored the idea of creating particles (or toy models of particles) from spacetime curvature. Wheeler's paper on geons also introduced the idea that lines of electric charge trapped in a wormhole throat might be used to model the properties of a charged particle-pair.
A kugelblitz is an important plot element in Frederik Pohl's novel Heechee Rendezvous.
Kugelblitz may refer to:
- The German Kugelblitz self-propelled anti-aircraft gun used in World War II.
- Kugelblitz (astrophysics), a concentration of light so intense that it forms an event horizon and becomes self-trapped
- The German word for ball lightning, an atmospheric phenomenon
Usage examples of "kugelblitz".
Very near to us were the bright lights of the Watch Wheel, and off to one side were the dozen sulfur-yellow blobs of the kugelblitz.
There was nothing to be seen except the pearly whirl of the Galaxy below, the distant external firefly galaxies, the smoky yellow blobs of the kugelblitz.
I had a lot more fits of agitation and depression when I thought of the gang of them, out there in their kugelblitz, ready at any time to come out and do to us what they had done to the Sluggards and the starwisp people and the ones buried under the ice.
The energy density of black-body radiation goes up as the cube of the temperature-that's the old StefanBolzmann law-but the number of photons goes up linearly with the temperature, too, so effectively it's a fourth-power increase inside the kugelblitz.
Their assignment was to monitor the most important object in either Heechee or human cosmology, the kugelblitz that hung outside the galactic halo.
I recalled a picture of the kugelblitz, the dozen turd-colored smears turning restlessly by themselves in intergalactic space.
So the Wheel had been built and flown to a position only six AU from the kugelblitz, in its lonely position in near-intergalactic space.
They were the ones who helped us build the Watch Wheel, to stand on sentry duty at the kugelblitz, and helped us locate all the caches and centers of mothballed Heechee apparatus all over the Galaxy .