The misery of the professor carrying the Nobel gold medal through the US airport

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist was repeatedly questioned by US airport security officers while carrying gold medals through customs.

When Professor Brian Schmidt returned to Australia after visiting relatives in Fargo, North Dakota, USA, he was intercepted and interrogated by security agents at the US airport because of the Nobel medal he carried in his luggage. . The story was told by Professor Schimidt at a conference in New York in 2014 and recently re-published by Scientific America.

Professor Brian Schmidt (left) receives the Nobel Prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.(Photo: Telegraph).

Schimidt is a famous astrophysicist, won the Nobel Prize in 2011 and received a gold medal worth $ 10,000. However, the box containing the medal he had left in his luggage left the US Traffic Security Agency (TSA) attention when passing through the scanner at the airport control gate.

"They told me that there was something in the luggage, I replied," Yes, I think it is this box . " They asked what was in the box, I replied: " A big gold medal "" , Schmidt recounted.

"So they opened it and asked," What is this made of? " I said " yellow . " They questioned who gave it to me, I said it was the king of Sweden. " Why did he give it to he? "Because I contribute to discovering that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing" , said the professor.

Schmidt thought that TSA employees would laugh when he said these things, but on the contrary, they showed more seriousness on their faces. He had to explain to them that this was a Nobel prize, but they continued to question why he came to Fargo.

The gold medal is awarded to Nobel laureates.(Photo: Telegraph).

The professor said that he went to Fargo to visit her, who wanted to see his gold medal with his own eyes. Schmidt said the security guards were worried because the medal showed a suspicious black on the X-ray scanner screen.

"The medal weighs more than 0.2kg and is made of gold, so it absorbs all the X-rays, making its image black. They have never seen anything completely black on the screen. scan, " he explained. After understanding everything, they left him through the door and boarded the plane.

Professor Schmidt won the prestigious Nobel Prize because of the research that contributes to the discovery of dark energy, which causes the rate of expansion of the universe to increase.