Neutrino Cappuccino

Photo by Roger Price via Flickr
(per Creative Commons)

Decaffeinated coffee is just fantastic for those of us who like to start off the morning with a hot beverage but dislike the idea of using drugs (recent studies prove that caffeine is nearly as addictive as crack cocaine). But how do they separate the delicious parts of coffee beans from the dangerous narcotics they contain? Amazingly, the answer involves nuclear power!

When a nuclear reactor goes supercritical, it charges up any carbon dioxide in the area, giving it astounding properties. One of the amazing qualities of this supercritical CO₂ is that it turns caffeine into harmless decaffeine.

This process was discovered by none other than Albert Einstein. The math virtuoso was working one morning in his garage, putting the finishing touches on the first nuclear reactor. He set his cup of coffee down next to the reactor, near where he happened to have left a small amount of dry ice from an unrelated experiment. When he flipped the switch, the reactor worked exactly as he had calculated, but to Einstein's surprise, he found that his coffee no longer gave him the "jolt" he expected. He ended up patenting both the nuclear reactor and his process for decaffeinating coffee on the same day.