Measurements are reported of the fluctuating lift acting on a sphere and the moment acting about the centre of a sphere at supercritical Reynolds numbers (R > 4 × 105). The lift and moment fluctuations are random functions of time which scale with the free-stream dynamic pressure and sphere dimensions. The power spectra of the lift and moment also scale with the above parameters and with the Strouhal number, nd/U. The spectra contain a maximum spectral density at very low frequencies (nd/U < 0·0003) and do not reveal appreciable effects of vortex shedding at discrete frequencies.

Hot wire anemometers were placed near the surface but outside the boundary layer along a great circle in the meridian plane in which the lift was measured. The fluctuating velocity component near the surface on the upstream hemisphere in this meridian plane is highly correlated with the fluctuating lift in the same meridian plane. The correlation betweeen the lift and tangential velocity near the surface suggests that the fluctuating lift is produced by the component of fluctuating bound vorticity about the sphere that is normal to the meridian plane in which the lift force is measured. The fluctuating moment measured about an axis passing through the centre of the sphere and perpendicular to the above meridian plane is almost perfectly correlated with the fluctuating lift (the measured correlation coefficients were 0·99 and 1·00). The fluctuating moment coefficient is very small ($\sqrt{C^2_m}\simeq 5\times 10^{-4}$) compared to the fluctuating lift coefficient ($\sqrt{C^2_L}\simeq 6\times 10^{-2}$). The exceptional correlation between the random lift and moment suggests that the unsteady moment about the sphere centre (which can be produced only by shear stress fluctuations) is caused by the fluctuations of bound vorticity (residing in the boundary layer and wake) that are responsible for the unsteady lift.