Z

[Queso]

http://hypography.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=768&catid=20

 

what the hell is this thing????:cup: :)

[nemo]

Just guessing here:

 

• A scale model of the web of communications between ordinary citizens and terror groups, thereby justifying the phone taps in place and the probe you're about to receive.
  
• The energy provided through the regenerative braking that we'd all be able to use if the big three detroit automakers would just release all those *secret* patents for hybrid automobiles and associated technology.
  
• The secret behind the movie "Cocoon"
  

[Tormod]

It's a super collider for accelerating particles and crashing them at extreme speeds. :)

[alexander]

This looks like a Van De Graaf generator, aka Tesla coil Tesla coil.

Basically a generator is connected to a large transformer, transformers have a small amount of copper wire loops on their outer/incoming coil and a huge amount of loops on the inner, making the transformer step up the electricity, decreasing current, and in order to acheive such effects, you are talking on the scale of tens of thousands of volts, maybe even over a hundred thousand... Those are connected to a wire with very thick shielding and those connect to a metal pole (talking generaly, maybe a cage or anything else for that matter). On the onter side, and it seems on one level here, there are rods that eventually conect and usually go deep into the ground. Now the properties of electricity come into play. Electricity is always looking for a way to the ground, usually the fastest way. The positively charged rods create an electromagnetic field around them, so strong a field, that it causes the surrounding air to start separating into positive ions and electrons, the electrons and ions separate more and more, just until the electrons break off and the air becomes what is known as plasma, or a cloud of positive atomic nuclei surrounded by a cloud of electrons, and that makes air much a gas, that is normaly a semi or non conductor, many, many times more conductive. (this is known as ionization) Once ionization occurs, it starts creating paths, and paths are not created instantaniously, many times there are many plasma ways created at once, also any kind of dust or any air particle may prevent some paths from fully completing their creation. These paths, or what referred to as step ladders, because of the way they form. When a step ladder approaches anything, the high electric fields cause other objects to react, they form what is called streamers, those are usually more of a purplish color and are more direct. Human body, and well, everything on this planet has the potential to produce those when subjected to a strong EM field.

The other property of electricity is that every time there is an electric current going through anything, there heat that is associated with the electron movement. When the now conducting plasma meets a streamer, the path for the electron flow from the positively charged rod to a ground is created, since there is a huge amount of electric current going through this "tunnel" plasma is superheated and gives off a bright whitish/blue light, and those are the things that you are seing in that picture, orb...

[C1ay]

http://hypography.com/forums/technology-news/5720-sandia-s-z-machine-exceeds-two.html

[GAHD]

?? i saw "Z machine" In the discription, i thought it was a z-pinch rig.

[Tormod]

http://hypography.com/forums/technology-news/5720-sandia-s-z-machine-exceeds-two.html

 

:) Should have known the answer was lying somewhere around Hypography.

[TheBigDog]

Isn't it one of those machines that makes a nanosecond of fusion by having a few hundred lasers converge on a hydrogen atom?

 

Bill

[UncleAl]

It's the power supply for the Z-machine at Sandia discharging in its pool of ultrapure water (electrical insulator and coolant).

 

Google Images

"z-machine" 316 hits

 

You discharge a big (oh yes indeed, big!) capacitor through a small forest of parallel tungsten wires thinner than human hairs. Low inductance and impedence connection suggested. The fun part is about the size of your fist. The wires flash to plasma and current flows big time. Inflating magnetic fields then add and compress radially centrally, parallel to the wires' z-axis. The highest core temp measured to date is two billion C (or was it K?).

[alexander]

eeh, i was close enough...