Electrical arc photo identification needed.

August 1, 2005 5:46 PM

Please help me find this great picture of electrical arcs. I saw this photo a while back. I'm pretty sure it was in a magazine. It was of a great big round room, with some sort of large apparatus, like a collider or something (it wasn't a collider I don't think). There were scaffolding and cat walks running everywhere. Lots of pipes and fittings. Everything was gold or copper or something. And the entire room is covered in arcs of electricity. Great big bolts running all around the room, with smaller and smaller branches and fingers breaking off to fill up every metal surface area with arcs. It was some sort of electrical discharge as a result of the experiment that was being run. I can't remember what it was, so I don't even know what to look for in Google. Any help would be appreciated. Even just a guess as to what the device was that would produce that, so I have a starting point to try and find it. Thanks.
posted by gummo to Science & Nature (12 answers total)

Best answer: it's probably the Z machine.
If all the google images are low-res, email me for a high-def jpg that was free for download when i saw it
posted by anadem at 5:53 PM on August 1, 2005

Could've just been a Tesla Coil, right?
posted by knave at 5:55 PM on August 1, 2005

Best answer: Was this the picture?

If so, then Slashdot has an explanation what it is.
posted by Tuwa at 5:57 PM on August 1, 2005

Wow, on second thought, anadem's answer appears to be exactly what you described.
posted by knave at 5:58 PM on August 1, 2005

d'oh! scooped by anadem. Would have saved some time if I'd thought to do a google images search before unnecessarily uploading the image and then removing it.
posted by Tuwa at 5:59 PM on August 1, 2005

Whoa. That thing rocks!
posted by jmd82 at 6:25 PM on August 1, 2005

I had this pic lying around too. Awesome!
posted by ikkyu2 at 7:55 PM on August 1, 2005

Gummo, please mark the best answer. Thanks.
posted by intermod at 9:00 PM on August 1, 2005

Wow - I've never heard of this "Z machine" thing, but it sounds very interesting!

This website also has a link to a large alternative image - awesome stuff...
posted by Chunder at 3:52 AM on August 2, 2005

Uh... what went wrong there? It was fine in the live preview...

Anyway - here's a link to a site that discusses the "Z Machine" (as I'd never heard of it), and here's a different (large) picture of the lightning effect...
posted by Chunder at 3:55 AM on August 2, 2005

...also, is it me, or does this thing look like the kind of hazard you'd find in, say, the Half-Life games?
posted by Chunder at 3:58 AM on August 2, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks guys. That's the exact same picture I was thinking of.
posted by gummo at 12:30 PM on August 2, 2005