A Nose For Trouble

Take one bored astrophysicist, four magnets and a pair of pliers then watch the drama unfold

- Sandy Cook

He's a really smart guy. Above-average intelligence, you could say. The kind of person whose career bio includes things such as, “I work with pulsar-timing array data to search for nanohertz frequency gravitational waves” and “my work involves improving pulsar models through the techniques of pulsar timing and interstellar scintillometry”.

But his most recent experiment doesn’t quite classify as genius level. Although his heart was in the right place – he wanted to do his bit in the fight against coronavirus – Daniel Reardon’s brain clearly wasn’t because he got several magnets stuck in his nose, resulting in a trip to hospital to have them removed.

Daniel (27), an astrophysicist at a university in Melbourne, Australia, was bored as he self-isolated, so he decided to come up with an idea to make the world safer. His plan: invent a device to stop people touching their faces and spreading the disease.

The result: a battle with a pair of pliers, a red-faced visit to the emergency room and a fervent vow to let someone else solve the problems of the world.