# What is this thing? \[Strange grid ball\]
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 12, 2013, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989 "2013-01-12T20:37:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/21 "2013-01-12T22:27:50Z")
> [@Tangent](#):
>
> Could it be a sculpture? You said there appears to be a dismantled sculpture nearby. Maybe this is one, too.
Seems unlikely. This has a very industrial/sci/tech feel to it. The sculpture is quite evidently one of those swoopy-bits-of-metal things by a half-talented grant artist ca. 1980 that probably stood in a quad somewhere until people realized it was full of dead pigeons and the artist had long since gone to jail for spousal abuse.
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### Author:  [@stuyguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stuyguy)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/22 "2013-01-12T22:28:26Z")
Simple… robot gerbil Habitrail!
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/23 "2013-01-12T22:30:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> I don’t know what it is, but I do know how to find out. It almost certainly came from the physics department originally, and even if the original user has died or moved on, he almost certainly has collaborators, former grad students, or labmates still around who would know what it is. Call up (or e-mail) the physics department and ask.
I’m not affiliated with the U and at this moment, don’t care enough to spend time running it down - I am just photographing a large complex of abandoned buildings adjacent to the main campus and keep finding weird things like this.
I didn’t think of a vacuum chamber - that makes sense from the construction. But a lot of high-frequency comm gear uses evacuated chambers and waveguides, too.
If I go back on a better day and the ground isn’t so sloppy and there’s no maintenance crew around, I might try to roll it over and see if there is an opening or port on the bottom, and take some shots through the small portholes to see what the interior looks like.
Well, hell, whatever it is, I can see it from space. It’s quite clear on recent Google Earth images, back to 2009, and I think I can see it in a blurry 2006 shot.
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/24 "2013-01-12T22:34:00Z")
I showed the photo to someone who works at a particle physics lab, who looked at the photo and said, 'that looks like the kind of shit I build at work all time. Could be anything. Never seen anything like it."
So, there ya go. Don’t bother to thank me.
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### Author:  [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/25 "2013-01-12T22:51:12Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#):
>
> I just noticed that around the center, there’s a row of bolts facing inward. Something is or was bolted to the inside. The go up towards the edges as well.
You’re right and I noticed something else. The top (pole) looks funny and there are spokes. If it were meant as a vacuum chamber, wouldn’t it be easier and more effective to have all the majority of the grid squares the same shape and size? Instead, they get larger closer to the equator.
We really need to figure out what this thing is.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/26 "2013-01-12T22:51:54Z")
Okay, no thanks to you. 🙂
I worked with some ancilliary equipment for the National Ignition Facility project, and the main ignition sphere looked a lot like this - but a helluva lot bigger.
Since it looks like the thing has been here for at least 6-7 years, I don’t know if anyone in the physics department would even remember it.
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### Author:  [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/27 "2013-01-12T22:56:54Z")
Judging by the color of the metal, it may be made of some exotic alloy (like titanium), which might be hard to machine, and could explain why it’s made from little sections.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/28 "2013-01-12T23:01:12Z")
> [@](#):
>
> If it were meant as a vacuum chamber, wouldn’t it be easier and more effective to have all the majority of the grid squares the same shape and size?
How would one manage that?
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### Author:  [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/29 "2013-01-12T23:00:48Z")
> [@NitroPress](#):
>
> I’d guess it’s about three feet in diameter. Maybe a tad bigger.
Three feet? so each grid is maybe 1.5-2 inches? Wow my assumed scale was way off.
Although looking at it again now,noticing the bricks in the background, makes it unlikely to be the 30ish feet I had assumed unless that university builds its buildings pyramid-style with 50 ton blocks.
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### Author:  [@ducati](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ducati)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/30 "2013-01-12T23:02:58Z")
This is the housing for an older style [turbo encabulator.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag)
I remember my dad working on them when we lived in Detroit. Running down faults could take 2 people all day long.
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### Author:  [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/31 "2013-01-12T23:03:51Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> How would one manage that?
Like a soccer ball.
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### Author:  [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/32 "2013-01-12T23:06:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> How would one manage that?
You can’t, with squares. You could however greatly simplify the number of different shapes you need if you used a geodesic pattern instead of a grid, tiling the sphere with pentagons and hexagons, or differently shaped triangles. It seems to me that the sphere would have been stronger and easier to make if built that way.
This thing’s really puzzling me. It’s built in a really structurally impractical way, and IMHO isn’t strong enough to hold a vacuum - and when vacuum chambers are off-the-shelf commercial products, why would you bother? If the goal was modularity, a geodesic patterning would work a lot better - this design has a lot of differently-shaped pieces in its surface, so you’re not gaining much by making it modular.
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### Author:  [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/33 "2013-01-12T23:11:52Z")
Holy crap, it’s a prototype of the time sphere used to send Frank Parker back in time 7 days!
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2013, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/34 "2013-01-12T23:50:13Z")
> [@AndrewL](#):
>
> You can’t, with squares. You could however greatly simplify the number of different shapes you need if you used a geodesic pattern instead of a grid, tiling the sphere with pentagons and hexagons, or differently shaped triangles. It seems to me that the sphere would have been stronger and easier to make if built that way.
>
> This thing’s really puzzling me. It’s built in a really structurally impractical way, and IMHO isn’t strong enough to hold a vacuum - and when vacuum chambers are off-the-shelf commercial products, why would you bother? If the goal was modularity, a geodesic patterning would work a lot better - this design has a lot of differently-shaped pieces in its surface, so you’re not gaining much by making it modular.
It has the look of something made within constraints of engineering equipment scale and capability.
It’s composed of multiples of only a couple of dozen different parts - each of the parts is small enough to have been cast and machined in an amateur-scale workshop - I suspect the sections may have been deliberately made small so as to be able to ignore curvature for the joint flanges - and a large number of small parts allows for greater ‘wiggle room’ during assembly (although that’s also a risk).
Machining the joint angles on geodesic sections would be more difficult to get exactly right than with this design..
Furthermore (although there’s no way to guess if this is relevant) repositioning of ports and openings is easier and more flexible with this design than it would be with a geodesic sphere made from larger sections.
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2013, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/35 "2013-01-13T00:20:53Z")
> [@ducati](#):
>
> This is the housing for an older style [turbo encabulator.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag)
> I remember my dad working on them when we lived in Detroit. Running down faults could take 2 people all day long.
Double 😃
We should all watch that clip. By force if necessary.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2013, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/36 "2013-01-13T01:31:28Z")
BTW, I want one too.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2013, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/37 "2013-01-13T01:40:01Z")
Simple. Someone was trying to recreate John Galt’s motor that ran on static electricity . . . also abandoned as useless. I knew this would happen someday.
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### Author:  [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2013, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/38 "2013-01-13T02:27:14Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#):
>
> I showed the photo to someone who works at a particle physics lab, who looked at the photo and said, 'that looks like the kind of shit I build at work all time. Could be anything. Never seen anything like it."
>
> So, there ya go. Don’t bother to thank me.
The first and last sentences don’t match.
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### Author:  [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2013, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/39 "2013-01-13T02:34:46Z")
> [@AaronX](#):
>
> The first and last sentences don’t match.
I read that as showing someone something made out of Legos or Construx or showing an engineer something made out of gears and motors and them saying the same thing. They’ve seen those items before, they’ve worked with them, they’ve built similar things, but that specific item…never seen one like it, could be anything.
It’s like back when I was in college working towards my math major and someone would show me some random math equation they found in a book (novel) or in a movie and ask me what it means and I would say “well, without knowing what any of the variables mean, it could be a formula for anything”.
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [January 13, 2013, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-thing-strange-grid-ball/646989/40 "2013-01-13T02:51:03Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#):
>
> I read that as showing someone something made out of Legos or Construx or showing an engineer something made out of gears and motors and them saying the same thing. They’ve seen those items before, they’ve worked with them, they’ve built similar things, but that specific item…never seen one like it, could be anything.
>
> …
This. I think what he meant was, “yep, that’s very much like the crazy unrecognizable gizmos I make at work, for all sorts of experiments, each object singular and rarely made again.”
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