I actually work with high voltage for a living, and I have high skepticism about this story. While it is technically possible if you work out the math and somehow get an extremely dense e-field flux, from a practical standpoint it might well be impossible. HV like they describe, especially in high humidity, really likes to equalize itself in a big flash.
I strongly suspect instead is that there was a spot where you could really feel the e-field, and people just through rumor and story telling morphed it into "the wall".
Ever notice how UFO and Bigfoot sightings mostly went away once everyone had a 4K60 video camera in their pockets?
One thread about this in 1995, and then the phenomenon is never seen nor heard about again . . .
Previously discussed:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16299441 (2018)
Electric fields really like to be linear, but the described anomalous effects are highly nonlinear
The non-anomalous effects, like high electric field readings, could linear
The wall only effects living things- birds, bugs and people
My guess is that the wall is mediated by the nervous system and muscle contractions, which unlike electrostatic forces, are free to have thresholds, nonlinearities, and psychological effects. Basically, everyone involved was getting zapped all to heck and any subjective experience is plausible downstream of taking a megavolt to the spine
Silly physicists spent generations trying to confine plasma with magnets and lasers when all along we could have just used plastic wrap.
I've read this many times over the years, sort of enamored by how such a strange phenomenon popped out of a factory setting.
In the most 2016 update the relative says it's common to see weird effects from the spools. If it's so common it should be reproducible I would think, yet I've never seen it done.
This reads like a good SCP.
There's a lot of interesting ideas in the experiments section, here: http://amasci.com/freenrg/iontest.html
The Board <denies/demands> comprehensive analysis of this <occurrence/breach>.
All that static discharge is coming at the expense of the mechanical energy in the system is it not? I’m surprised they let it zap like that video and don’t try to recuperate it somewhere.
One of the weirdest power scavenging solutions I ever saw used a spark gap and a bespoke transformer to make a reverse Tesla coil - taking the very high, very brief voltage spike of a static discharge and stepping it down to create low voltage over a a longer interval. They attached it to their shoe.
The phenomenon in question has been discussed before, and its underlying mechanism can be attributed to electrostatics. A simple thought experiment illustrates this concept: imagine a person with a net electric charge approaching a similarly charged object. As they draw closer, a force of repulsion builds up, increasing exponentially with the inverse square of the distance.
However, a crucial aspect of this phenomenon remains unclear: how does the charge maintain its containment? What prevents the opposing charge from breaking through the insulating barrier and neutralizing the charge? A fascinating analogy from the Boston Science museum offers some insight. Picture yourself inside a gigantic, electrified sphere – akin to a Van De Graff generator. If your charge polarity matches that of the sphere, you'll experience a repulsive force, pushing you toward the center. The harder you try to reach the sphere's edge, the stronger the repulsion becomes.
This phenomenon becomes even more intriguing when considering the context in which it allegedly occurred. A company renowned for its innovative prowess, 3M has consistently demonstrated its ability to harness unexpected effects and transform them into groundbreaking products. The Post-it note's origin story is a testament to this innovative spirit. Given this track record, it's puzzling that 3M seemingly failed to capitalize on this electrostatic phenomenon. One would expect the company to rigorously investigate and replicate the effect, with the potential for a multi-billion dollar industry hanging in the balance. Instead, the story suggests that 3M dismissed the phenomenon as a mere curiosity.
Why would an electrostatic force repel humans? We are neutrally charged.
And if anything, in metals I think (???) you can get attraction as free electrons in the neutral body are attracted/repelled towards the charge and the neutral body becomes a dipol (so eg. if the charged body is positively charged then the negatively charged electrons are attracted towards it, and vice versa). But that's weak and acts the wrong way.
I wish Mythbusters still existed to test stuff like this.
Van de graaff generators discharge with painful shocks. I would expect something like described in the article to kill someone.
Selling tickets on those non-humid days would have been more profitable than fixing anything.
It's been a while since I took electrostatics, but I don't understand the theory behind this. If the rolls become charged and you are presumably neutral, wouldn't they attract you rather than repel you? That's what makes me think this story is apocryphal.
Wow - nice to know that this old story has survived for so long! I remember reading it a long time ago. Has this phemomenon been repicated by someone or has someone invented something because of that?
> He said it was actually known to the technicians for awhile before he experienced it and they just were kinda like "meh".
I think this was my favorite part of the article. These workers apparently hit this force field prior and just figured that was a normal part of the job, who cares.
We are talking about a sci-fi style force-field here! I'd be surprised if the military didn't secretly experiment with this.
Wouldn't a field strong enough to somehow produce this effect be more likely to short out on anything, taking you out like a bug zapper?
I remember reading about this many years ago but have never been able to find the story again. So regardless of its veracity, I'm happy to see it come up.
Time for a YouTube video to be made
Can this be used in a bank vault?
A sheet of plastic. With a heavy static charge. Moving at 10mph. Assumedly in the vicinity of a big ground.
Is that the whole experiment?
If this was reproducible I could think of so many real world uses. Invisible force fields that can move hundreds of pounds is a holy grail in several fields.
“So that’s what an invisible barrier looks like.”
[dead]
Yet another request that HN reject any URL that isn't https.
Anyone clicking on a link like this is open to traffic injection. With several free automated cert services available, there's no excuse for this other than gross incompetence or laziness.
Reminder to everyone to divest of your 3M stock. They lied about the dangers of PFAs for decades. Suppressing science to create the biggest mass poisoning in human history needs some pushback from reasonable people.
Reminds me of the time I turned myself into a Van de Graff generator at work.
I was a theater projectionist, back when you had 20 minute reels you had to constantly change, while babysitting two high-voltage, water-cooled, carbon arc projectors. Sometimes the film would break and you’d have to splice it. So when the theater got a print in, you had to count and log the number of splices for each reel, then the next theater would do the same and retire the print when it got too spliced up (plus, sometimes if it was the last night of a run, some lazy projectionists would splice it in place with masking tape and then you’d have to fix it). Sometimes you had to splice in new trailers or remove inappropriate ones as well.
Anyway, you counted splices by rapidly winding through the reel with a benchtop motor with a speed control belted to a takeup reel while the source spun freely. Then, while letting the film slide between your fingers, counting each “bump” you felt as it wound through. I was told to ground myself by touching the metal switch plate of the speed control knob with my other hand. One night I forgot and let go until my hair started rising. I’d gone through most of the reel at a very high speed and acquired its charge.
I reached for the switch plate and shot an 8-10” arcing discharge between the plate and my fingers.
Lesson learned, I held the switch plate from then on.