How to make Langenberg figures

How to make Langenberg figures




A creator known as Electron Impressions caught the attention of the scientific community by using a particle accelerator to create something unprecedented, a fully three-dimensional Langenberg figure formed inside a cylindrical acrylic tube.


The visual result is reminiscent of branching lightning bolts frozen in time, shining as if trapped inside a bottle. Langenberg's figures normally appear on flat surfaces such as blocks, discs or sheets of acrylic. In this case, the challenge was to bring the phenomenon to a cylindrical format, something that had never been demonstrated in this way.




The process begins with high energy electrons fired by a linear accelerator, these electrons penetrate the acrylic, an insulating material, and deposit electrical charge inside, when that charge is suddenly released, dielectric breakdown occurs, the material fractures internally, creating branching lightning-like patterns.


In flat pieces this is relatively simple, but in a cylinder shooting electrons from a single side would concentrate the charge only in one region, the solution was ingenious, as the accelerator could not rotate, the cylinder rotated, the acrylic tube was placed in rotation at about 150 revolutions per minute, passing several times under the electrons during an exposure of just 1 to 2 seconds, thus, the electrons impacted the material from all angles, creating a uniform radial distribution of charge.



Sorry for my Ingles, it's not my main language. The images were taken from the sources used or were created with artificial intelligence