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Tech

Why Is This Chandelier Made of Geiger Counters?

Shine bright like a Geiger (counter).

This chandelier is not something you'd find at West Elm.

Artist Phillip Stearns created this massive light structure that flickers and emits a clicking noise when it reacts to ambient radioactivity. It measures that through a Geiger counter—there's 92 of them—that's connected to each of the LED lighting panels.

Watching the fancy chandelier in action will drive you crazy because of its epileptic-inducing flashes of light and sounds. But that's a good thing, because if all of the panels light up simultaneously that means there's fatal levels of radiation in the air. Shit.

Although it resembles a hodoscope, an instrument that measures and tracks the trajectory of a charged particle, it's not. Since there's no connection between the counters, it makes a "coincident circuit impossible," ​explains Hackaday.

Who cares, that's for the nitpicky because it's still a sight to see. It's on display through April 12 at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York.