Nobel woes: Airport security grills laureate for carrying 24-carat gold medal!

He won one of the highest awards - the Nobel Prize for physics. But Brian Schmidt received no special treatment from the Transport Security Administration when he tried to take the 24-carat pure gold medal through airport security in Fargo, Nebraska. And, the incident was hilarious. Schmidt was awarded the prize, made from gold worth $10,000, for co-discovering that the expansion of the universe was accelerating - a finding that has transformed our understanding of the solar system. [caption id=“attachment_1754509” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Brian Schmidt (left)  receives the Nobel Prize for Physics from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf. Reuters[/caption] At an event in New York City last month, celebrating the construction of Chile’s Giant Magellan Telescope observatory, opening in 2020, Schmidt narrated a funny story about travel woes that his medal has caused him. When the scientist was carrying his Nobel Prize–a 24-carat pure gold medal – to Fargo to show it to his grandmother, he was stopped by the airport security. The security officials at the airport were baffled to see so much gold in his baggage. The conversation that followed has gone viral: ‘I could see they were puzzled. It was in my laptop bag. It’s made of gold, so it absorbs all the X-rays-it’s completely black. And they had never seen anything completely black.’ “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?’” Nobel Prizes are awarded by Swedish and Norwegian committees, which honour excellence in the fields of physics, chemistry, literature, medicine, economic sciences and peace work. With the exception of the Peace Prize, which is awarded in Oslo, new laureates are presented with their prizes by a member of the Swedish royal family at a ceremony in Stockholm.