Here’s an interesting photo from Matthew Wahl’s Flickr showing the glow from fluorescent tubes as a direct result of the electromagnetic field surrounding overhead power lines. The fluorescent tubes are not plugged in to any power source.
Photo: Peter Dibdin
Richard Box, an artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics department, was one of the first people to discover the phenomenon. He describes it below:
A fluorescent tube glows when an electrical voltage is set up across it. The electric field set up inside the tube excites atoms of mercury gas, making them emit ultraviolet light. This invisible light strikes the phosphor coating on the glass tube, making it glow. Because powerlines are typically 400,000 volts, and Earth is at an electrical potential voltage of zero volts, pylons create electric fields between the cables they carry and the ground.
Box denies that he aimed to draw attention to the potential dangers of powerlines, ‘For me, it was just the amazement of taking something that’s invisible and making it visible,’ he says. ‘When it worked, I thought: ‘This is amazing.’’
Check out this Quicktime panorama of Richard Box’s FIELD project.
Keep in mind that the bulbs do not necessarily glow that bright on their own. Many of the images taken of bulbs in these scenarios are long exposures. However, the bulbs do glow enough to see with the naked eye, so the awe in seeing this occurrence will surely still be there if you were to try this for yourself.
Cool! I’d love to try this one day. :)
that’s like the prestige!
It’s like the movie ‘The Prestige’ because the character played by Davie Bowie in that movie was Nikolai Tesla, the guy who discovered this years ago. Like way back in the 30′s or something. Richard Box, an artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics department, was NOT one of the first people to discover the phenomenon. Tesla was alive from 1856 to 1943. Many thought he was either an alien who fell to earth or had some kind of secret alien info. There are probably tons of things that he discovered that have been suppressed… not to mention all the stuff that Edison stole from him and claimed to invent himself.
like remote controll before 1910. Look Tesla up.. it’s amazing… but you wont find him in the smithsonian… Edison had controll over that.
AAAAhhh Tesla… the father of Alternating Current.
‘ OR SELECT *’
this reminds me of bleach.
What, does bleach glow in the dark under electrically loaded fields too? :P
FAIL.
LOLOLOLOLOL hoemuhgawd.
*facepalm*
nerds.
Nerds = A group of people that’s more knowledgeable and culturally integrated than you.
I thought of it too.
RE: hoho
like the cleaning solution?
I think he means the band, but I could be wrong.
funny how the one on the ground in the first picture is not glowing.
umm thats because the conductor on the end of the tube is not touching the ground. it has to be a circuit, by sticking one end in the ground you are making the magnetic field go through the upper conductor through the tube out the bottom conductor and into the ground, if it doesnt stick in the ground it cannot light, pointing this out would be stating the obvious and expected results.
Actually, it has to do with the orientation of the EM field and its interaction with the ground. There’s no need for the metal conductor to come in contact with the Earth in this case since the field propagates through space. Even if a person held the bulb above his head it would still glow. You see this a lot when people are playing with Tesla coils.
You’re right Rich. In this case, I think it’s because the ground was moist. And because it’s not as close to the power lines. Interestingly enough, When you grab the tube in the middle (and even hold it up over your head), it glows brightest by your hand.
(I took the picture, inspired by Box)
lol Beantown …..
I was thinking the same thing !
Why has knowone else picked this up ?
Funny coincidence. I just today watched a lecture explaining this exact phenomenon (electric potential), with a demonstration:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-02Electricity-and-MagnetismSpring2002/VideoAndCaptions/index.htm
Lecture #4 … the demonstration starts around 43 minutes into it.
They’re doing the same thing here on a bigger, more artistic scale. Pretty cool.
The lecture I just mentioned is on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldJhMDuOGxY
Similar to Tesla’s energy field experiments that was intended to provided free energy to everyone
You seem stunned…
I’m most stunned by the fact nobody has noticed this is an ‘overlay’… Check the guy in the picture… so electromagnetic energy causes you to become semi-transparent… you can see the background through him… follow the treeline if that helps..
“Many of the images taken of bulbs in these scenarios are long exposures. ” Walk into the scene – walk out of the scene, both you and the background is captured in the picture (double exposure). This is not an overlay.
You can do this with a 5 – 10 watt transmitter and a small tube. Hold the tube next to the antenna and have someone key-up the mic. I’ve done this with the old CB radios and a black light tube. New meaning to cool light. The EM radiation is probably not too good for you though. I’ve also heard loud static come from a car radio when it was turned off while I drove by a large high-powered radar site. I try to avoid those places.
“”I’m most stunned by the fact nobody has noticed this is an ‘overlay’… Check the guy in the picture… so electromagnetic energy causes you to become semi-transparent… you can see the background through him… follow the treeline if that helps..”"
The guy says in the post that the pictures are taken with a long exposure. Try again.
I took the picture at the top. The subject walked out of the frame halfway through the 30 second exposure to get that effect. I’m stunned you don’t have power lines, a fluorescent, and 10 minutes to try it yourself. Then again, I didn’t believe it until I tried it.
Same thing happened on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier when someone was carrying bulbs in front of aircraft when the technician “accidentally” activated the radar. This was before the days of safety switching that prevented from happening when the plane wasn’t actually flying.
I learned the same trick when I was in the Navy!
This isn’t new, and the guy from Bristol didn’t “discover” it. This has been known for a long time. Around 1983 I went to the Museum of Science(?) in Denver, Colorado, and they handed out flourescent tubes to the audience during a demonstration of a Tesla coil. They said the same thing would happen under power lines, so when we got back home, of course we had to try it. So I can guarantee this was known at least 25 years ago.
It is a neat art display, though!
The one laying on the ground doesn’t glow because both of its ends are at the same potential (same distance from the power line). The ones standing vertical experience a greater potential at the part of the bulb closest to the power lines (and are grounded where they touch the ground.)
As for him being translucent, they stated that it’s a time-lapse photo…maybe he started the camera and then ran into position causing a transparent effect.
Maybe it’s all photoshopped four our amusement.
This is old stuff – almost 100 years old. Nikola Tesla was running *incandescent* lights from high-voltage fields. Fluorescents are much easier to illuminate – require a much less intense field to get the effect.
I don’t know what those guys in Bristol were up to, but they certainly didn’t “discover” this effect.
Nothing new.
We used to do this when we (friends of mine and me)
were teens, back in the early 70′s
Man….you’re old!!
“Richard Box, an artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics department, was one of the first people to discover the phenomenon.”
yeah really. they make it sound like he was making a breakthrough disovery or something. stupid media hyping up semi cool storys. do your research bastards
It was on the prestige because Tesla was on of the originators of the phenomenon. He was one kooky son of a bitch.
it makes sense, in that, as part of our electro-magnetic field, (as one would surmise the electrons are ‘rushing’ upward’ to meet the poles to which they are attracted naturally) they would receive their charges and only as they can confrontationally output it in their electronic sources….
FAKE FAKE FAKE
TEXAS TEXAS TEXAS… go bother someone else…you don’t belong.
That’s awesome. Imagine finding a spot you like, plug a flourescent bulb into that spot and watch it light up.
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reminds me of radiohead….
This is obviously shopped! And you people are trying to sound like you know anything about science. You don’t. It is photoshopped. duh!
maybe it is shopped but it has nothing to do with the fact the tubes are lit, maybe he photoshoped a zit off his forehead, as far as the lights no reason to photoshop reality…
@jason Kidd: Wow, a retard on the internet? Poor Kidd. At least your mother thinks you’re special.
I have tried this at my home – major overhead power lines border my property. Nothing I tried produced any sort of glow. Might not be a bad thing, really, but I could not get it to work. My neighbors were probably wondering what in heck that odd man was doing in the field at night wandering around with light bulbs!
depends on what type of wires you have, if they are direct current (HVDC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC) transmission lines they won’t light up a tube at all.
Technically, the effect Tesla demonstrated (like in The Prestige) wasn’t the same thing, even though this is commonly shown with Tesla coils. Tesla electrified the actual ground around his laboratory, so that sticking a lightbulb in the ground was essentially the same as screwing it into a socket. The effect shown in the article wouldn’t work with typical lightbulbs because they don’t have the same florescent coating on the inside, as they work by heating a tungsten resistor to the point where it becomes white hot.
As other people have said, look up the works of Nicola Tesla for more information. Some of his work is fascinating, including the idea of long range wireless energy and electricity transport using the earth itself as a conductor.
its photoshopped. i can tell from the shadows and from having seen many in my time.
congrats you are like the 50th person to make this incorrect statement!
You’re completely retarded.
Where do all these “it’s shopped” people come from? I need to know where to place the roach motels!
You can thank an xkcd joke for that (pretty good webcomic actually).
On the other hand: The Joke Has Gotten OLD!
Yeah, thanks for the no big deal internet science thing. Almost a good Hoaxbusters.com item. My science class in 1966 (nineteen SIXTY SIX) did this experiment in high school. We had power lines running over the track field. We had a great science teacher butwe had no internet, so we could not pretend we were smart as the owners of Doobybrain say they are. We got the same result they did. Oooh! What a “current” discovery (get it..?). The only thing truth about this segment of Doobybrain is the doobie part. They must’ve smoke a few this time. Best regards, Orenthal-NuclearGlowB.S.113M
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I wouldn’t stand there too long
I’m just glad I’m not paying for it. Near field blah.
No way did he ‘discover’ this phenomenon. It’s been known about for decades. Back in the late 70s I wrote a newspaper article about a trailer park which was right under power lines. The residents all lit their homes for free with tubes and covered them over when they wanted the lights out.
and now they all have cancer…
similar thing happens if you touch one end of a flourescent bulb to a Plasma Ball…the entire thing lights up like a christmas tree!
COOL!
So, instead of wearing the magnetic jewelry we can just move under the tranmission lines?
Interesting. Thanks for taking the time to post this.
A “long exposure,” huh?
Well, those clouds don’t look like “long exposure” clouds. Clouds are rarely motionless, so they show blurring in a long exposure. And if that person walked into the frame and then out again, there would be some evidence of his entry and exit. Unless, of course, “long exposure” allows x-ray vision. LOL
I took the first photo (30 second exposure). It wasn’t photoshopped, except to make the colors and contrast better (and to get rid of a zit). My friend stood in the frame then he left halfway through exposure. The slower the exposure the less evidence of something moving through the frame (this is nothing new I can assure you). As for the clouds, there probably is a little movement or blur, but it wasn’t a windy day either.
i heard that you can make glow-in-the-dark fluid using bleach and ammonia
no but you can kill yourself… give it a try!
@ EFG
omg it works!!! i love you man
@EFG
my grandma told me that they used to always do that back-in-the-day
looks fake to me…photoshopped
Wow, I thought the same exact thing the first time I saw your mom.
totally photo shopped, look at the kids shirt you can see the mountains through him
long exposure ever heard of it fuck-face
Your idiots. Science is science. 1 = 1
Fluorescent bulbs glow in electromagnetic fields.
I’ve never seen it done But I do know of Tesla.
As was pointed out. Quite a lot was known and discussed, in the 50′s and 60′s, reguarding Tesla’s researches in High freq. and magnetic fields. Such a display is possible I suppose and may be the cause of the mild electric shocks I received while viewing planets through a high powered telescope which was mounted nearly under a run of high tension lines. 1962, Lakewood. calif.
Flatly stating that Tesla was some sort of Kook, as was done on this forum recently, really bothers me quite a lot.
I’ve been a bit surprised to see that the children of the 80′s and 90′s grew up to believe this.
Winding a coil specificly to light a floresent was information easily found in the 60′s in widely published Boys hobby publications.
If you really think Tesla is some sort of Kook then I advise you to disreguard the fringe alien Tesla web sites and read what Tesla wrote about his own researches.
Follow the example of a bunch of 14 yr. old boys in the 60′s, wind a coil for yourself and stick a floresent into the field….
Definately not an overlay.
They knew this stuff back in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico. My mother was glowing some tubes underneath some powerlines when that UFO hit the ground. The government still will not admit they actually have an alien in the basement of the Smithstonian – and that he is actually still alive! One day all of this will come out and everyone will know of the great UFO coverup. Meantime, these pictures were shopped – I have seen a few shopped pictures in my day, and these are really poorly completed. For one thing, if the tubes were really glowing from EMF’s, there would be a rainbow hue around each tube – I know this because I called my momma last night as asked her – and that is one of the few things she remembers from 1947.
What your momma didn’t tell you was that she rescued a body with SEVERE head trauma from some crash and nursed it back to health…just around the time you were born. Coincidence?
R U my daddy??
fake.
i would love to run through there with a big stick and just break them all.
your fucking stupid
I’ve seen tubes light up from nearby lightening bolts too.
fake. the guy is transparent, thus proving that picture is photo shopped.
Read comments before posting.
(If this is an attempt to mimic xkcd’s ingeniousness than: The Joke Is OLD)
Wouldn’t this officially be theft? The juice powering those lights isn’t free.
its not taking “juice” its using the magnetic field
The magnetic field is induced from the current in the wire. Using this field to generate a current does remove power from the line. The energy in those bulbs doesn’t come out of nowhere. You can do the same thing on a larger scale to steal electricity from power lines, you don’t ever have to touch the power line. You set up a coil of wire close to the line and a current will be induced in the coil. Definitely theft, cool theft, but theft none the less.