In this week’s edition of News You Can’t Make Up, 27-year old Australian astrophysicist Daniel Reardon ended up in hospital with four neodymium magnets embedded in his nostrils, citing “no experience or expertise in building circuits or things”.
According to this Guardian article which gets more and more absurd with each paragraph, Reardon had decided to invent a device that would help people stop touching their faces.
“I have some electronic equipment but really no experience or expertise in building circuits or things,” he told them.
“I had a part that detects magnetic fields. I thought that if I built a circuit that could detect the magnetic field, and we wore magnets on our wrists, then it could set off an alarm if you brought it too close to your face. A bit of boredom in isolation made me think of that.”
Instead, “I accidentally invented a necklace that buzzes continuously unless you move your hand close to your face.”
His Nobel prize ambitions thus cancelled, Reardon put one of the magnets in his nostril because it probably seemed like fun at the time. Then he put another magnet in his other nostril. And the magnets – because they’re, know know, magnets – did what magnets are compelled to do, and hooked up in his septum. You’d think he would’ve stopped then, but you’d be wrong. In a desperate attempt to remove the magnets that was tragically uninformed by the failures of his previous experiment, he used more magnets. Things would be different. Or not. Science!
“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.”
Out of magnets, maybe, but not pliers. Metal pliers. Which became magnetised by the magnets, because that’s how it works.
“Every time I brought the pliers close to my nose, my entire nose would shift towards the pliers and then the pliers would stick to the magnet. It was a little bit painful at this point.”
Realising, we must assume, that he was also out of tweezers and forceps and grappling hooks, Reardon was then convinced to visit a doctor.
“Denies further magnets”, lol.