Abstract: A quasi-static electric displacement according to Maxwell's theory is considered in a novel context, that of a forced radial electric strain centred on a source of energy. The resulting balancing charge displacement in enveloping matter may have transient stability and should exhibit ionization if gaseous. Potentially hazardous pockets of migrant electrostatic energy may well be created in the vicinity of electric discharges. Analysis shows the energy content to be within the range applicable to the thunderball, that is between 2x109 J/m3 and 5x109 J/m3.
Commentary: Although the thunderball phenomenon is a curiosity in science, the author has long regarded it as evidence of the ability to store energy in the aether in a form that is quite different from Maxwell wave displacement or storage by magnetic induction. Indeed, although the author did not realize it when the subject paper was written, this 'aether spin' feature manifested by the thunderball was destined to play an important role in future 'free energy' devices. Notable in this connection are the unipolar Faraday-disc-type generators, the N-machines which it seems can be used to pump energy from the vacuum medium, the electrostatic machine invented by Hyde and the Wimshurst-disc type machines that have been reported as functioning in a recluse community in Switzerland. Also, given that two aether spheres in counter-spin might, when brought into collision, release their energy spontaneously to shed heat, one may wonder if this occurs in 'vortex turbine' type machines which develop heat anomalously. The rotation one way of a tubular spiral rotor system through which water is pumped to progress clockwise and radially outwards to develop a jet which drives the rotor itself anti-clockwise does comprise two counter-rotating systems of matter closely intermeshed. If each entrains aether which shares that rotation in some measure one can envisage their shedding tiny spheres or vortices of aether in spin and counter-spin and so contemplate the occurrence of those collisions.