House of Gauss

July 10, 2008 9:29 PM

"The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries." Very pretty, eerie, animated interpretations of the fields inhabit Semiconductor's "Magnetic Movie."

The Sun's very real field lines are featured in Semiconductor's 'Brilliant Noise', and there is more (non-magnet related) by the company.

posted by Kronos_to_Earth (25 comments total)

That's 1000% awesome.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:38 PM on July 10, 2008

Wow, very cool. I'm no physicist, though; would someone who knows about this stuff mind explaining to me what's going on here? I think I understand magnetic field lines, but what were the dancing black-and-magenta dots, and what was the device at the end that emanated glowing green spherical shapes that nullified the lines?
posted by wanderingmind at 10:37 PM on July 10, 2008

Lou Reed, eat your heart out. You too, Trent Reznor. Regarding Briliant Noise. I haven't watched the first one yet.
posted by vrakatar at 10:37 PM on July 10, 2008

If you wonder why EEs seem unusually prone to looking like crazy neckbeards... keep in mind this is how you begin to see the world.
posted by phrontist at 10:41 PM on July 10, 2008

Loved it.
posted by pointilist at 10:44 PM on July 10, 2008

Very cool. But as far as I can tell, it isn't real.
posted by eye of newt at 10:46 PM on July 10, 2008

Thanks, enjoyed this. Apparently it was sponsored by Animate Projects, who maintains a list of other great video projects they have funded. Some good stuff in there.
posted by sophist at 10:54 PM on July 10, 2008

This is one of the most amazing posts I've seen here. I was going to eat some psilocybe azurescens tonight, but then, why bother?
posted by sluglicker at 11:03 PM on July 10, 2008

But as far as I can tell, it isn't real.

Oh, it's real, goddammit! It's real!
posted by sluglicker at 11:09 PM on July 10, 2008

Or, for you old farts, it's Rael.
posted by sluglicker at 11:15 PM on July 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The scientists are describing magnetic fields on the sun.
The sounds are VLF morning chorus and "sferics".

Here's the real deal on VLF and sferics

Here are some real magnetic fields at work, on the sun, as seen by SOHO:

erupting filament (Feb. 26-27, 2000)

Dancing and erupting filaments

posted by the Real Dan at 11:25 PM on July 10, 2008

I still don't exactly know what I just saw. I mean, there's this:

Animated photographs, using sound-controlled CGI and 3D compositing.

What does that mean, exactly. Anybody know?

Otherwise and anyway, it's absolutely wonderful, and is the closest thing I've ever seen to certain visions (sometimes referred to as "hallucinations") I had many years ago while under the influence of certain chemicals or mushrooms.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:20 AM on July 11, 2008

Very good! But "Brilliant noise" would have been even better with some explanations of what we were seeing.
posted by Termite at 1:29 AM on July 11, 2008

I just watched it yesterday. I love the colors and the playful attitude towards the subject.
posted by namagomi at 1:42 AM on July 11, 2008

Ah physics, if only you were all pretty pictures and not filled with equations that make my head hurt.
posted by xchmp at 3:47 AM on July 11, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

...filled with equations that make my head hurt.

Used to make my head hurt too, but then I sat down with a notebook, a pencil and a textbook and conquered it.

Pretty awesome stuff. And what was that the woman said about "open field lines"? How can you have open magnetic field lines? Wouldn't that be equivalent to a monopole? I thought those didn't exist.
posted by DU at 4:58 AM on July 11, 2008

I sat down with a notebook, a pencil and a textbook...

...and a calculator and an internet to ask questions of and a year of time.
posted by DU at 5:04 AM on July 11, 2008

"Magnetic movie" is awesome. "Brilliant noise", however, is an artifact you can start a Dark Sun Cult around - it's absolutely mesmerizing.
posted by talos at 8:17 AM on July 11, 2008

... open field lines ...

I think she just meant field lines that go so far out that you can't "see" them curve back and return. On a certain scale, you can consider them open.

There's a lot of art there, but the science is restricted to the audio. I'm not sure what the particles or blobs were supposed to be, but at least the magnetic field lines weren't very realistic. As one example, the magnetic field lines around the wires were popping in and out of the wires; magnetic fields around conducting wires are actually concentric circles around the wire.

So the nerd in me seriously wants to see a video like this based on real physics. But this was still a very cool vision.
posted by whatnotever at 8:37 AM on July 11, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

What it means is that all that neat dancin' stuff was CGI. Not really real. For some reason many people on the net are seeing this and thinking there are literally pink and blue visible magnetic lines dancing around, like it's something you could step into a room somewhere and see some crazy, otherworldly magic science Akira auras.

But yeah, it's just CGI.
posted by BeerFilter at 8:58 AM on July 11, 2008

So the nerd in me seriously wants to see a video like this based on real physics

You can see the shapes of magentic fields with magnets and ferrofluid. Its really incredible how this stuff moves and the kinds of fields it makes. Not as Chris Cunningham sexy as this video but with a lot more beauty and symmetry. 26 bucks and you can do it at home.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:22 AM on July 11, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Magnetic field tree.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:38 AM on July 11, 2008

damn dirty ape: To be clear though, that's going to show the effects of the magnetic field, but in a round about way. Holding string between two points... it forms a curve due to a gravitational field. But that curve is more complex that the field lines.
posted by phrontist at 12:07 PM on July 11, 2008

(Which is to say, cohesion and other interactions between the particles are signficant forces in the formation of those structures. Ferrofluid is so cool.)
posted by phrontist at 12:08 PM on July 11, 2008

I just watched Brilliant Noise and now have this fear that I'm going to get a phone call telling me I have seven days to live.
posted by quin at 2:12 PM on July 11, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]