The formation of moving plasma balls (also called “bubbles” or “fireballs”) and filaments (figures
10,11) in a SW produced plasma column has been first reported in [11]. The typical plasma parameters
are as follows: plasma density of 1×1011cm-3, electron temperature of 1eV, tangential SW electric field
amplitude of 10 V/cm, absorbed microwave power varying from10 to 100 W c.w. The contracted core
transits in plasma balls and filaments, the latter evolving with increasing pressure to “strings of
fireballs”. At lower pressure the fireballs are comparable in size to the column radius and they gently
“swim” immersed in the background plasma (figure 10). When increasing pressure the size of the
fireballs decreases to few millimeters, their movement becomes chaotic and one could even hear them
bouncing the tube walls (figure 11). The behavior of the strings of fireballs is similar to that of the
filaments, commented in Section 5, e.g. the splitting of a string into two strings (figure 12), but with
increasing microwave power from 10 to 100 W c.w. may become more complicated, as for example,
the cascade decay of strings of larger fireballs into strings of smaller ones (figure 13) or strings’
entanglement (figure 14). Dark and light halos surrounding the plasma balls, looking very much like
the usual strata in the positive column of DC glow discharges could be seen on figures 10 and 13 – 15.
standing-wave striation-like structures (plasma balls) similar to those observed in high
frequency electrode and electrodeless discharges have been theoretically explained
(with a convincing experimental support) as nonlinear/bifurcation phenomenon, severely
dependent on whether the ionization rate is proportional to the electron density or to its
square; in our experiments the confinement by the tube seems to be important for the behavior
observed
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/63/ ... 012025.pdfThe physical mechanisms involved in the creation of these structures include ionization and heating
instabilities, non-uniform neutral gas heating, connected with the electromagnetic wave skin effect,
bifurcation phenomena due to step-wise ionization, plasma density profile modification due to
ponderomotive effects of the surface wave and more (we could add here also the excitation of static
electric fields and the appearance of the associated double layers). It seems, however, that the simple
explanations on a fundamental/elementary level have been exhausted and the system should be studied
in its complexity instead.
Interesting how these ball striations are circular and others seem more squashed. That's sort of mirrored in space:-
http://www.holoscience.com/wp/squashed- ... ar-theory/
You can also note the evolution here of "ball striations" along the discharge filaments with some being quite spaced out and then eventually much closer together:-
http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/ar ... o0409b.jpg
The same can be seen in interstellar filamentary clouds - with some showing "beads" at closer spacings between each other within the filaments and others with "beads" at much greater spacings:-
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/ipbrow ... 883_ip.jpg
All of this suggests a slow dynamic process, again analagous to the different gaseous striations that we're seeing in supernova remnants:-
http://danspace77.files.wordpress.com/2 ... 13-020.jpg
But no, that's not an explanation of physical processes. Calling it "physical" actually constitutes fraud, since they know full well that magnetism just doesn't act that way. 
If you're on the look-out for such bastardizations of physics, they're easy to spot. Then you have to look carefully for whether or not there are actually any real data in there at all. Sometimes are there are none. 
