It's sad that Obama have one for peace also. Wrong man & wrong agenda from day one.
Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
41–50 of 59 posts
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
This takes the tech community's propensity for Monday-morning quarterbacking to a breathtaking new level. Yes, I'm sure you came up with a much better solution in your sixty seconds of thinking in your comfortable chair than the people on the spot, faced with literal Nazis, did at the time. Just hide them! I wonder why Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and future Nobel laureate George de Hevesy didn't think of that.
"Just hide them! I wonder why Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and future Nobel laureate George de Hevesy didn't think of that."
Because they are geniuses and probably over-think everything.
It would take 20 minutes to find a spot to hide them, and they wouldn't be recovered for 1000 years if people weren't the wiser. But it would be pointless because you can remove the markings with any hard objects, basically instantly.
The Nazis were not 'hunting' for this stuff, even if they were, it wouldn't be worth any effort.
Step 1) take a hammer to them and remove the markings. Gold is soft and malleable. Evidence = gone. 5 minutes.
If you're worried about having arbitrary bits of unmarked gold:
+ Throw it in the garbage next door + Throw it in a bag in the harbour + Bury them in the lane or garden around the corner + Throw it in the sewer
It's just a couple of small bits of unmarked gold at that point. Wherever it's found - or not - it's meaningless.
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#43It's sad that Obama have one for peace also. Wrong man & wrong agenda from day one.
Yes, that really tarnished the entire thing for a lot of people.
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe a there is a plot line in Pulp Fiction that touches on a solution satisfying both constraints.
The Nobel Prize medal appears to be about 2.5 inches wide, which would make it immensely unsatisfying in at least one constraint.
You'd need to start with smaller medal first.
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#45And this is how incredibly smart people can over-engineer a solution to a simple problem...
The nice thing about this hidden in plain sight solution is that the location of the medals could be communicated among a small community of colleagues if necessary without the need for a messy paper trail. A set of coordinates or a treasure map is a lot less reliable in that it can be lost or intercepted.
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the simple, appropriately engineered solution?
"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.
The article so specifically stated that he was concerned the Germans would dig up the place. Also consider that there might be others interested in a large gold disk
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#47There are many places they could have been hidden and never found.
Agree. While it's a cool story to tell your grandchildren, burying medals (of course, not on your own property) would be much faster solution.
Is 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)
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
The article so specifically stated that he was concerned the Germans would dig up the place. Also consider that there might be others interested in a large gold disk
"The article so specifically stated that he was concerned the Germans would dig up the place"
The Nazis would surely dig up his offices, but not Copenhagen.
Moreover, the Nazis didn't even know that those things were there - and they don't really have much value at all to the Nazis. They're a couple of pieces of gold.
The Nazis could do whatever they pleased with whomever they wanted - it's ridiculous to think that a couple of tiny pieces of gold would have changed their view on what to do with an acclaimed scientist. It's laughable.
They'll capture a Scientist and put him to work on whatever they want, or not.
A couple of pieces of gold are totally irrelevant.
If this were a bottle of 'heavy water' or some nuclear material, or piece of gear that they knew existed, knew was in his possession and had some strategic value, then they might spend some time looking for it. Otherwise this is not a story.
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#49And this is how incredibly smart people can over-engineer a solution to a simple problem...
I'm going to guess that it looks over-engineered to you because you haven't been a chemist. This is the chemist equivalent of solving a problem with a 10 line Ruby script: perhaps more complicated than the very simplest conceivable solution, definitely a terrible path to solution if you were suggesting it to a lay third party, but not very complicated at all for someone who has spent a lot of time in the lab. It looks a lot more complicated to someone working outside the domain than someone working inside of it.
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#50now 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.