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Comment by jonathrg | Hacker News Reader

The source of the humor is that what Slotin did is extremely funny. So obscenely reckless.

Yeah I’ve always thought the juxtaposition of 1) these high level experts with 2) one of the most dangerous objects we’ve ever created against the ways 2 was treated by 1 is part of the entertainment. Like its own unique and wildly unexpected category of the Darwin awards.

Yeah it’s sad but it is almost difficult to believe, so it ends up being kind of funny

Part of me thinks he'd laugh his ass off at the memes.

Hell, when the accident happened, he said, "Well, that does it."

Yep. It's like someone chain-smoking cigarettes while working with gasoline. There's a "yo, WTF?" humor to how reckless it is.

Off-primary use of a mundane hand tool being the only thing preventing a minor nuclear disaster is simply funny. Like God forming man from mud not with the fine tools of a master clay-worker, but a child's play-doh plastic carving tools and a couple toothpicks.

It's actually pretty hard to ignite gasoline with cigarettes: https://mythresults.com/special7

Modern cigarettes have ammonium phosphate in the paper as a retardant, does that make it harder to ignite gas?

My mom once worked as a gas station attendant and general gopher, back when gas stations had car repair shops attached (late 70s). She used to chain smoke as well. Whenever a customer would complain, she would intentionally spill a tiny bit of gasoline on the ground[1], then put her cigarette out in the puddle. She told me she would never light one while filling, because the spark and flame from the lighter could be enough to start a fire, but that the cigarette itself was not hot enough. I've never repeated this experiment.

1: Yeah I know this is a bad idea itself, but what can you do? She was ~20 and her pre-frontal cortex was still not fully developed.

Nit-pick: the meme about people's prefrontal-cortex not being fully developed until age 25 is not true. What is true is that there was a longitudinal study that found that people's brains continued to change under MRI as far as they tracked the participants, which was below the age of 25.

The nit is that the change observed was not development?

My nit is that we don't actually have evidence supporting the idea that it stops at or around 25. As far as I know, the brain continues to have observable changes throughout your life.

(The person I replied to didn't make this claim directly, but it's an oft-cited myth that it seemed like they were referencing.)

> As far as I know, the brain continues to have observable changes throughout your life.

That would imply that people might retain the ability to form memories past the age of 25, though.

They just don't burn hot enough to ignite. Remember - things burn at different temps.

The vapor burns at a different temperature from the liquid. That's fun.

Yes, but it still requires higher temperature than cigarette can deliver.

Also should be clarified that only vapors of gasoline can be ignited - it can't mix with oxygen in non-gas form.

Sure, but most people light their cigarettes with a match or lighter and those have no problem igniting gasoline.

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