The ball lightning I know exists but have never seen it in real life. Read about it entering via a window and roaming through the room a long time ago. Can't remember if it did damage. (Before internet) Interesting phenomena as is lightning itself.
Yep; lots of anecdotal evidence, but darned hard to replicate (except in microwave environments).
Fortunately, in the last two decades, it has become a serious research subject. Before that, it too had the stigma of "no sensible physicist would touch
that subject". As far as I know, in 2014, some Chinese researchers happened to catch
the spectrum of one during ordinary lightning research. The
article on it was published in Physical Review Letters, one of the most prestigious physics journals.
Advances in ball lightning research by Schmatov and Stephan, 2019, would be an interesting read on the subject, if one had access.
Theft to some extend can be understood as a way of life support, but vandalism is just crazy.
No, it's just kids roaming around and poking stuff; they don't know any better.
Such devices are best placed in hard to reach places – and high up anyway, to maximize the solid angle of visible sky. And that in turn requires official contacts and wide official support. The money isn't that big of an issue, Linux SBCs and good camera modules don't cost that much,
it's the general support for such projects. Shielded Ethernet landlines to a central box also providing PoE (enough to use small fans and heaters to keep snow and ice off the fisheye lenses too) and an upstream connection.
All you need is a national news deciding the project is laughable (without zero understanding of the various benefits), and it'd be dead due to politics and face-saving.
I mean, look at the Hessdalen EMBLA 2000 mission two decades ago. It's leading research institutions were
Østfold University College (
hiof.no, which does not even have a Faculty of Science, only a Faculty of Computer Science and Faculty of Engineering; but otherwise a reputable university: ranked 5th in Norway and 900th in the world) and
Italian CNdR. But really, Project Hessdalen is just a municipality-supported volunteer and
student project.