When Jim Sanborn shows you his latest art, the jaw drops and elegant words fail.

Dr. Frankenstein's lab has nothing on Sanborn's studio in Maryland.

A polished aluminum sphere perches by the ceiling, coupled to a cylinder that could be a meat smoker from Mars. A glass tube the size of your thigh runs down almost to the floor, ringed with gleaming copper halos like a Buck Rogers ray gun. It's all totally Ed Wood -- except that Sanborn's scientific madness works.

What we have here is a real, honest-to-God, no-holds-barred, fully operational electrostatic particle accelerator.