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Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
- Demcox 10y agoI did not know this, so I guess it can qualify as news for me lol
- cyphar 10y agoCongratulations, you're one of the lucky 10,000 today! https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- bdcravens 10y agoI've read it before, still more enjoyable to read than someone's blog about the new MBP.
- DennisP 10y agoI thought I knew the story, but I didn't know that lives were at stake.
- boatymcdickwad 10y agothis article is 5 years old! hackernews is for news, it is not a library.
- Coding_Cat 10y agoSo you would have been fine if this article was posted here on the day it was written instead? That's a bit arbitrary because the story itself is much older than five years and wouldn't have been "news" than either.
- adtac 10y agoDid you know about this before this was posted today? Even if you did, I'm sure several others got to know of this just today - which makes it worthwhile IMO.
- EvilTerran 10y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site."
- sctb 10y agoWe've banned this account for trolling.
- emiliobumachar 10y agoRelevant smbc: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-05-29 http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-05-29
- lordnacho 10y agoI find it a little bit hard to believe that finding a couple of medals would be a priority as you're invading Denmark and Norway. Sure, the Danes basically lay down and let the Germans march in, but really? The Germans needed to get to Norway asap, and were probably more concerned about that. Secure airfields, harbors, that kind of thing. More likely the Danish cooperation policy helped later on, after the Germans had established themselves. Basically, the Danish government decided to save everyone a lot of trouble by cooperating with the invaders, a policy that is much discussed in Danish politics. It came to an end in 1943 after the Germans had done a number of hard to tolerate things.
- maxerickson 10y agoSo the thing to do then is to track down the source quoted in the article When the Nazis ransacked Bohr's institute and figure out if it is exaggerated. Your mere disbelief is rather weak in the face of statements like that one.
- lordnacho 10y agoFlipping through the book, it doesn't give much detail as to when exactly the German stormtroopers came knocking. The notes and errata at the end of the book don't seem to specify it either. The point is the article makes it look like "oh crap the nazis have invaded, let's dissolve these medals" rather than "they been here for a few weeks and look like they're about to settle some bits of nazi business".
- maxerickson 10y agoHis autobiography is not detailed: https://archive.org/stream/adventuresinradi01heve#page/27/mode/1up https://archive.org/stream/adventuresinradi01heve#page/27/mo... I imagine they were thinking about hiding them pretty soon after the city fell though. I agree that overdramatizing the timing is unfortunate.
- greenshackle2 10y agoThey weren't looking for the medals specifically, they were looking for evidence of wrongdoing. If you're going to search for evidence, you're going to do it at least semi-thoroughly , cause you don't expect that sort of thing to just be sitting on a workbench (though you probably wouldn't go as far as digging holes in the backyard, unless you have specific reasons to think evidence was literally buried).
- erelde 10y agoI like how the author of this piece talk about Sir Martyn Poliakoff. But the article predates his knighthood. (and presumably youtube fame) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyn_Poliakoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyn_Poliakoff
- dr_zoidberg 10y agoActually, the piece barely mentions Poliakoff, and not even by name: > As you can see in this video from the University of Nottingham, dissolving gold is a slow business. The narrator (who looks like he was cast by Mel Brooks, but is presumably, the real deal) explains that nitric acid loosens the gold atoms, after which hydrochloric acid moves in, using its chloride ions to surround and transform the gold. I really don't see where you read that he's been knighted, other than Wikipedia. From the videos YouTube page I didn't get his name either, and there are no comments in the article.
- erelde 10y agoThat I was able to know his name without even knowing what was the video (I was behind a firewall which blocked youtube) should tell you that he has become pretty famous in the "internet famous" sense. The description was a giveaway and I remembered the video in question. There's absolutely no need to be condescending... That description (which you quoted) was genuinely funny to me because I know who he is.
- dr_zoidberg 10y agoI wasn't being condescending, but you said: > I like how the author of this piece talk about Sir Martyn Poliakoff. > But the article predates his knighthood. (and presumably youtube fame) And there were no mentions to Sir Poliakoff around, neither in the article nor the video. Still, it was interesting reading about him, and he surely has become an internet celebrity, but that doesn't change that your comment was out of place to begin with.
- zorked 10y agoAnd this is how incredibly smart people can over-engineer a solution to a simple problem...
- Practicality 10y agoWhat is the simple, appropriately engineered solution?
- edblarney 10y ago"What is the simple, appropriately engineered solution?" To hide them. The Germans are not going to spend a division of soldiers 4 years to dig up all of Copenhagen. There are innumerable places to hide them. They also could have simply been deformed i.e. markings removed, then they're just clumps of gold and evidence of nothing.
- jandrese 10y agoUm, they were stealing everything not nailed down. Your response reads like "now it's just worthless gold!" Yes, they probably could have buried it in the woods somewhere, but that wouldn't have made for the cool story to tell the grandkids.
- varjag 10y agoTuring did that with his silver, look how that worked for him. And there weren't even Nazis around!
- tim333 10y ago>"I suggested that we should bury the medal(s)," but Bohr thought no, the Germans would dig up the grounds, the garden, search everywhere in the building. Too dangerous. Though I guess they could have found somewhere else...
- endisukaj 10y agoI took that to mean that there was not much time as Nazis were patrolling the streets, going out with two large gold medals would be extremely dangerous as they might have been stopped and searched.
- edblarney 10y agoThere are many places they could have been hidden and never found.
- kbart 10y agoAgree. While it's a cool story to tell your grandchildren, burying medals (of course, not on your own property) would be much faster solution.
- harveywi 10y agoI believe a there is a plot line in Pulp Fiction that touches on a solution satisfying both constraints.
- edblarney 10y agoIf he had hidden it, and it was never recovered, then it would be like a really cool 'Copenhagen mystery' - the 'lost Nobel Prize'. They could have a little festival every year to look for it ...
- pavel_lishin 10y agoThe Nobel Prize medal appears to be about 2.5 inches wide, which would make it immensely unsatisfying in at least one constraint.
- nilved 10y agoYou'd need to start with smaller medal first.
- Practicality 10y agoIs there some method of digging holes that I am not aware of that doesn't make it obvious there is a freshly dug hole? I mean, that spot in your neighbors yard that looks freshly dug would probably be a good place to look. (They were occupying the whole country)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- fivre 10y agoReminds me vaguely of https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-it-s-like-to-carry-your-nobel-prize-through-airport-security/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-it-s-...
- mikebay 10y agoIt's sad that Obama have one for peace also. Wrong man & wrong agenda from day one.
- nilved 10y agoYes, that really tarnished the entire thing for a lot of people.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoIt's a minor blemish compared to Henry Kissinger winning one.
- kafkaesq 10y agonow that Denmark was suddenly part of the Reich Actually, rather than being annexed into the Reich itself, Denmark was made into a protectorate (so the government and king were left in place -- but instrumented to serve the Reich's purposes). Similar to the status of the Netherlands and Norway.