Apparently we are all in this deep Melancholic state, examining this damned thing. Click on inset image for larger version. It’s worth the click.
The heat of re-entry.
You mean, whatever was kept locked up inside has escaped??!
[nitpick]
entry
[/nitpick]
Could the outside just be a housing for something on the inside? The pipes and portholes look pretty robust. Maybe the housing holds insulation or something on to a more robust inner sphere?
Could it hold a sphere of Longellos? More importantly, could it destroy a sphere of Longellos?
Maybe this isn’t it’s first visit.
come for the probing stay for the food.
Oh I forgot to say it looks uncorroded for something outside for so long, maybe it’s not made of iron?
Way ahead of 'ya - post #27.
That’s pretty common. The ground is a much larger heat sink. It doesn’t take much sunshine to melt snow from cars, roofs, experimental fusion globes, etc.
After thorough investigation I have found the answer:
It is a critical component of the airport runway treadmill. If I told you what purpose it served in the treadmill I would have to kill you.
Here’s the target chamber for the National Ignition Facility. There is some visual similarity, but I don’t really see a functional or structural similarity here. For one thing, the target chamber (like all vacuum chambers I’ve worked with) is a welded steel construction.
If this mystery object is really made up of segments bolted together, I don’t see how it can hold vacuum or pressure. It would be very difficult to make those seams airtight.
I suppose it’s possible that it’s not actually bolted together. It could be a solid sphere that’s been lightweighted by making those square holes. But then, what are those “bolts” on the ribs?
Do not taut…
Ahem.
Do not quibble with our Hamster Overlords.
There’s no way it’s part of something like a neutron detector or plasmatotron or whatever other insanely expensive pieces of equipment have been mentioned; it wouldn’t’ve been discarded so casually like that.
I’m going with abandoned art project.
I like that this is a “visually similar image”, according to Google’s image search.
Could also be galvanized. Finding out what it’s made of would go a long way.
Have we definitively ruled out the possibility of it being an ocarina of some sort?
Welding professionals: Are there any metals that simply cannot be welded, hence the sophisticated arrangement on this sphere? And if there are such metals, perhaps that could narrow the scope?
Cast iron (it’s not strictly impossible, but it’s so difficult that nobody does it).
But, it’s not cast iron.
I had a thought: it’s an “inner mold,” a form around which some material is poured, providing a 3-D stamp for the inside of some object.
I’m thinking something like a lost-wax process. In which case this inner mold form should have been melted out. Or else molecularly rearranged when it’s job was done. But if they could do that, they wouldn’t need a mold. Maybe.
So: the structure (whose external shape we do not know) for which it was used is out there or has been destroyed.