I honestly can't tell if this is a testament to human genius or proof that boredom can result in some truly amazing things. A Japanese Lego virtuoso who goes by the name of Akiyuki on the Internet apparently spent 600 hours engineering this gargantuan, 17-module long Rube-Goldberg-esque contraption. Alone.

I have no words for this.

Measuring 1.5 meters by 6.5 meters (roughly 5 feet by 21 feet) with a path length of 31 meters (almost 102 feet), the Lego Great Ball Contraption is both mind-bogglingly intricate and just plain cool.

One of the things that makes it so impressive is the fact that it is a largely self-sustaining machine. The 500 balls rattling through the system? They eventually get deposited back at the beginning, allowing the cycle to begin anew.

In case you were wondering if Akiyuki's miraculous machine is the first of its kind, it isn't. The idea for a Great Ball Contraption was apparently first publicly proposed by Steve Hassenplug on a LUGNET forum back in October 2004. Since then, numerous parties have worked on manufacturing Great Ball Contraptions, which are essentially machines that receive balls from one module before passing them to another, of their own. Nonetheless, according to Brothers Brick, Akiyuki is apparently one of the rare few that have successfully conceived a Great Ball Contraption all on their own.

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