Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Physics in 2011, had a close encounter with the airport security in
Fargo, Nebraska. The details were reported on Friday on the blog Scientific America.Schmidt's grandmother wanted to see the 24-carat gold medal that he'd been awarded and so, he decided to take it with him to Fargo. But first, he had to get it past airport security.
"You would think that carrying around a Nobel Prize would be uneventful, and it was uneventful, until I tried to leave Fargo with it, and went through the X-ray machine," he says on the blog.
He was carrying the medal in his laptop bag, and when it went through the X-ray machine, it left the airport officials bewildered. Schmidt knew the cause of their concern. He was prepared to answer a few questions but wasn't anticipating this conversation (in Schmidt's words):
"They're like, 'Sir, there's something in your bag.'
I said, 'Yes, I think it's this box.'
They said, 'What's in the box?'
I said, 'a large gold medal,' as one does.
So they opened it up and they said, 'What's it made out of?'
I said, 'gold.'
And they're like, 'Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?'
'The King of Sweden.'
'Why did he give this to you?'
'Because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating.'
At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main question was, 'Why were you in Fargo?'"
Last week, the Nobel Prize winners for 2014 were announced, including India's Kailash Satyarthi who was awarded the Peace Prize.
