A few years ago, Nicolas Cage starred in a movie called Knowing, where (spoiler alert) when all was said and done, the world was decimated by a solar flare, burning it to a crisp. We assume (and hope) this won’t happen in real life, but thanks to the YouTube channel All is Art, we can imagine what it might look like (from space) pretty easily.

First reported by BoingBoing, the project started with two matches glued together. Then two more were added. Then two more, and so it goes. The goal was to see how many it took to create a perfect sphere. After months of gluing, the answer was found in 42,000.

What do most people do when they take months out of their lives to create something that looks really cool? Use 30 seconds to destroy it in spectacular fashion. After a few false alarms, the sphere was finally lit, and a wave of flames washed over it, rendering its emerald green exterior to charcoal black in seconds. We were half expecting a tiny spaceship to come flying out of the flames, whisking a small, infant match away so it can protect the rest of the planet thanks to the powers granted to it by Earth’s yellow sun.

You can check out more videos from All is Art on their YouTube channel here.

So what do you think? Was this a worthy use of 42,000 matches? What projects have you worked on where prep time vs. execution time were this misproportioned? Let me know on Twitter @donnielederer or sound off in the comments below.

Need More Weird Science?

• These rodents are seriously, seriously, Princess Bride-level big.
• Watch a bunch of baby octopuses hatch with shocking camouflage.
• And finally, here’s how—scientifically—eating tide pods could kill you.

Images: All is Art