Watch: A man lights a sphere made of 42,000 matches and it's stunning

boing
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Dunno, but ain’t it cool? My presumption was the residual heat radiating off the sphere reacting to the air temperature pushed the airflow around, perhaps combined with any slight wind? Though it seemed calm, maybe there was wind enough to affect the travel of the smoke and/or heat?

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I think it might be a non-visible flame front, consuming unburned volatiles in the smoke. Just too optically thin to see the flame.

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cool if true

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Track 6, Pets (16:09 - 19:46) is one of my all-time favourites.

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I just love the fact that someone thought: “What happens if I build a great big sphere out of matches and light it?”.

George Lucas should substitute this re-take for the Death Star Explosion in Ep.4!

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Well, it’s a good thing he kept a few on hand to ignite the thing. Imagine the embarrassment of setting all this up only to have to ask around to find someone who could give you a light.

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That’s my favorite, too! Fills me with nostalgia for the ‘good ol’ days’.

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Presumably he would have still had one of the many boxes that the matches came in?

I’m actually a little disappointed the matches weren’t ignited by spinning the ball against a friction surface.

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At first I was more thinking of the Genesis Effect from ‘The search for Spock’, actually… but then came the slo-mo part. Yep, definitely Sauron.

Edit: @kaibeezytentroy beat me to it…

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Ready when you are, Mr deMille.

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Hasn’t anybody noticed how they are doing this experiment IN A FOREST??

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How flammable was the glue? I used to play with matches until I discovered glue burns too.

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The Trump presidency.

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I was waiting for the moment when he would tap the black shell of ashes and see it fall (or not fall) in dust.

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I wonder if the surface of the sphere is uniform enough to act as a green screen. There are some video editing opportunities here.

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No wonder the Klingon ambassador was so concerned about the Genesis Project

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