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Medicine Australia Science

Astrophysicist Gets Magnets Stuck Up Nose While Inventing Coronavirus Device (theguardian.com) 99

Posted by BeauHD from the don't-breathe-this dept.
An Australian astrophysicist has been admitted to hospital after getting four magnets stuck up his nose in an attempt to invent a device that stops people touching their faces during the coronavirus outbreak. The Guardian reports: Dr Daniel Reardon, a research fellow at a Melbourne university, was building a necklace that sounds an alarm on facial contact, when the mishap occurred on Thursday night. The 27 year-old astrophysicist, who studies pulsars and gravitational waves, said he was trying to liven up the boredom of self-isolation with the four powerful neodymium magnets.

Reardon said he placed two magnets inside his nostrils, and two on the outside. When he removed the magnets from the outside of his nose, the two inside stuck together. Unfortunately, the researcher then attempted to use his remaining magnets to remove them. "As I was pulling downwards to try and remove the magnets, they clipped on to each other and I lost my grip. And those two magnets ended up in my left nostril while the other one was in my right. At this point I ran out of magnets." Before attending the hospital, Reardon attempted to use pliers to pull them out, but they became magnetized by the magnets inside his nose. At the hospital, a team of two doctors applied an anesthetic spray and manually removed the magnets from Reardon's nose. "Needless to say I am not going to play with the magnets any more," Reardon said.
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Astrophysicist Gets Magnets Stuck Up Nose While Inventing Coronavirus Device More

Astrophysicist Gets Magnets Stuck Up Nose While Inventing Coronavirus Device

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  • Hey, at least he didn't try super glue. (Score:5, Funny)

    by piojo ( 995934 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @02:05AM (#59895972)

    Look at the bright side. At least he didn't try super glue. Sounds just barely feasible: dab some glue on a screwdriver, bond the screwdriver tip to the magnet, and pull it out. Except after you try it, you will have both a magnet and a screwdriver stuck to your nostril.

    • Re:Hey, at least he didn't try super glue. (Score:5, Funny)

      by michelcolman ( 1208008 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @03:47AM (#59896164)

      "At this point I ran out of magnets." - That was probably a good thing.

      • This was my thought as well. Kind of like a typical astrophysicist approach to things. We haven't found the Higgs Bosson yet, MORE PAWER!! Smash things together, we found it. We haven't found what makes up the Higgs Bosson yet.... "at this point our collider ran out of power".

        • Nothing makes up the Higgs. It's fundamental. It's the "vibrations " of particles moving through different ground states whenthe ground states are all the same energy.

          • Nothing makes up the Higgs. It's fundamental.

            Said the physicist about every discovery ever. Me, I think it's made up of small strings holding together the n-dimensional plane of existence. ;-)

            • It's all just small bits of silly putty. You smash two balls of silly putty together and then little bits fly off. Then the silly putty scientists get together and try to come up with names for the lumps that are tiny versus the lumps that are large. And some other silly putty scientist notices that some of lumps are spinning while some are not, so those need names. Some other silly putty guy ties them together with strings so that they don't fly apart. Eventually they all start squabbling with each ot

    • Perhaps he can then use the screwdriver to tighten his loose screws!

  • Ugh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by neuro88 ( 674248 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @02:06AM (#59895974)
    It's April 1st again...
  • When reality gets weirder then an April fools joke.

  • When a booger is really deep in there you can use magnets to get at it. Beginners should stick to one magnet, and leave multiple magnets to experts such as astrophysicists.

    • Works much better if they are super-cooled superconducting super-magnets. But harder to stick them inside, because they get a bit big.

      • You also have to wear magic anti motion sickness wrist bands otherwise there is a danger your brains will get sucked out of your nose according to Fox News.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sls1j ( 580823 )
      Just make sure to sniff iron filling first to magnetize those buggers.
    • Sounds practical! Yet, how do you magnetize a booger?
      Do you have to snort metal filings first?

  • Big Bang Theory (Score:3, Insightful)

    by An0nYm0u5c0wArD ( 6251996 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @02:21AM (#59896002)

    Alas, Big Bang Theory is no longer in production. We will never get to see Sheldon Cooper do this.

  • Can we get a mythbuster on this? (Does Buster have a usable nose?) The story sounds far too plausible for it to be just an april fools joke.

  • Academia (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DCFusor ( 1763438 )

    I think of things like this whenever someone questions the validity of something because "you don't have a degree in ...".
    It's been obvious for a long time that you can collect that piece of paper without owning common sense or much general knowledge.

    Guy didn't understand that logic inverters exist?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      I'm sure he could probably answer a question on, say, cosmic microwave background radiation, better than you or I could.

      So the objection, "you don't have a degree in X" still stands, as long as we're talking about X.

      The real problem is the *other* end of the illusory competence stick when someone with a degree in X thinks that makes him qualified to weigh in on Y. We're seeing a lot of that in this crisis, from economists attempting to correct biologists' ideas about virus evolution to sociologists weighi

      • We see a huge amount of that regarding the 'climate change' crisis.

      • We're seeing a lot of that in this crisis, from economists attempting to correct biologists' ideas about virus evolution to sociologists weighing in on the effectiveness of protective equipment.

        Sociologists weigh in on everything, so no surprises there :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Or the guy simply did not have any laying around, or did not know how to rig something up for an analog circuit. That is not really 'common sense', that is specialized knowledge and access to uncommon parts & equipment.

  • The Register had this story 2 days ago (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @02:50AM (#59896060) Homepage

    Do try and keep up Slashdot, its not like you have much else to do these days.

  • The biggest problem (Score:3, Funny)

    by meglon ( 1001833 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @03:22AM (#59896112)
    Obviously the biggest problem here was he didn't have enough magnets.
  • There's nothing like stale news

  • Aha (Score:3)

    by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @04:24AM (#59896226)
    You know what we need? That nose filter thing from the movie Ultraviolet!

  • Unusual (Score:5, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @05:11AM (#59896298)

    Usually Astrophysicists pull medical inventions out of some other body orifice.

    • I have heard claims that astrophysicists pull most of their astrophysics from the same orifice.
      It's not called 'dark matter' for nothing....

  • Bipolar Disorder

  • Occasionally, some of them forget that...

  • Sad tale of when a theorist tries experimenting (Score:5, Funny)

    by jdougan ( 11426 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @06:04AM (#59896376) Homepage

    And this is why it is standard practice to NEVER let the theoreticians anywhere near the experimental equipment.

  • Astrophysicists can never seem to stay in their lane.

  • April Fools Day (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jisom ( 113338 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @06:50AM (#59896460)

    This seems like a better use of April 1st. Post true stories that are hardly believable.

  • Not with magnets in ym nose of course, that would be silly. No, I was trying to germinate beans. In my ears.

  • And now for something completely different (Score:4, Funny)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @07:17AM (#59896514)
    An astrophysicist with a magnet up his nose...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      If I had mod points, I'd mod you up.

      Or at least slap you with a fish while dancing.

  • Imagine how much we would save on health care if children stopped sticking weird things up their noses and adults stopped sticking weird things up their butts. Or, in this case, an adult sticking weird things up his nose.

    • Yes, but the entertainment value in being an EMT would go down and they'd expect higher pay.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by anegg ( 1390659 )

      Imagine how much we would save on health care if children stopped sticking weird things up their noses and adults stopped sticking weird things up their butts. Or, in this case, an adult sticking weird things up his nose.

      At least it wasn't up his butt first.

  • Before removing magnets... (Score:3)

    by ctrl-alt-canc ( 977108 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @07:39AM (#59896566)
    ...they should have checked their position with a MRI scan!
  • I've noticed, I think the British do it the most, that they do not go to "the university" but they go to "university". The same is true for the hospital. They usually drop out the preceding "the". Does anyone know why that might be?

    • Any instances of "the," which have been removed from these places are prepended to highways. In the US, we take I-95 to New York (but please don't do this right now). In the UK, they take the A420 to Oxford.

      • It's regional. You might say I5, or you say the Pasadena freeway. There are people born in California who say "the 101", and other people in California who would say "what kind of moron says 'the' before '101'" and assume the previous person was a transplant. There is no universal language, and no universal English, even within a single country there is no universal variant of English.

        At least no one ever says "the El Camino Real". I hope.

    • Because 'going to the university' has a different meaning from 'going to university'. You need to brush up on the use of the article (all three options of 'a' / 'an', 'the', and no article at all ) in standard English, at least as spoken in Britain. I don't believe there are major differences with American English, but I might be wrong there.

    • Life is short and "the" is a time waster.

    • I guess that for us, use of the definite article implies that there was one specific hospital in mind, whereas we intend to imply that we're going to some member of the class of hospitals, and it's not important to state which one. Same goes for universities.

  • And a subtle observation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dalmarf ( 1455985 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @08:04AM (#59896622)
    My favorite part of that article is the medical notes that end with denies further magnets.
  • I'm starting to see why Buckyballs caused such a stir. It's one thing when we're talking about kids, but this was a 27 year old astrophysicist. On top of that, he was worried about the COVID19 virus and through his own actions had to go to one of the more likely places where he could come in contact with it.

  • Intro to Science 101 (Score:3)

    by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @09:12AM (#59896822) Journal
    "Hi students, welcome to the first day on your trip towards becoming a scientist or engineer! Today we're going to cover basic things every good researcher should know. First off, never put anything in any of your orifices..."

  • An Australian astrophysicist has been admitted to hospital after getting four magnets stuck up his nose in an attempt to invent a device that stops people touching their faces during the coronavirus outbreak

    Looks like he invented a device to get many people to touch his nose.

  • Astrophysicist get magnets stuck up nose while trying to invent the face shield.

  • I think "They became magnetized by the magnets inside his nose" could be a C&W song title.
  • Actually, he was researching personal magnetic fields to protect from damaging solar winds.
    The intended magnetic field around his body was expected to allow a mini atmosphere to maintain around him,
    allowing freedom to work in space without a spacesuit.
    One of the issues was the distracting aurora personalis that affected his vision.
    Another issue was that the actual magnetic field covered only his head.
    So, the new discovery, while not feasible for space, will surely find application for folks in COVID19

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