Extreme High Voltage: Terella Anode Plumes and Cathode Scintillation

The central sphere is connected to the Positive output of the flyback transformer, and I’ve placed a grid made from coarse copper screen mesh in between the anode sphere and the cathode ring. The grid is “floating”, not hardwired to anything (yet).

Note the green flashes from the cathode copper tube. The green color is usually associated with the presence of copper ions. Am I sputtering copper off of the tube somehow? Even at the tiny input energies I’m using?

Doing these experiments has made me give a lot of credence to the Electric Universe theories of Wal Thornhill and David Talbot, and others going back to Birkeland and Alfven and before them to Nikola Tesla. Many of the displays I’ve seen from this apparatus seem very similar in appearance to astronomical observations of things like solar coronas, electric arc excavation and sculpting, cometary tails and jet-like plumes, Io’s electric volcanoes and mottled surface appearance, and so on.

The fractal nature of electrical phenomena has long been known. Tiny, low energy discharges exhibit the same basic forms and behaviours as discharges at huge energies and vast spatial extent…. only the time scale can differ. The tiny sparks from my TinselKoil resemble in every detail the incredibly more powerful phenomenon of lightning. Why not have a planet or sun model in a jar, showing the same kinds of electrical events that happen out in space, but in rapid miniature right on the lab bench?

DANGER WARNING: High Voltages, Lethal Currents, Implosion Hazard. Professional idiot in closed room. Do Not Attempt unless you think you know what you are doing, and have someone nearby to record the carnage and call the ambulance after your cheap glass cheese-cover implodes when you drop a wrench onto it. YOLO. Seriously.

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