This is a log of my attempts, with the help of several others, to unearth the old secrets of NBI lost to time.
I first heard the rumours. There are a several claims that multiple key buildings are connected through underground tunnels, including
Mikkel says that Panum to Rigshospital is certain, because he was told by a doctor at Riget that they’d be sending his tissue samples underground to there for storage.
Off hand, we sometimes talked about exploring and trying to find them, but that never really materialized. I personally only believed that a Panum-Rigshospital tunnel existed.
At one point, I decided to explore the basement of NBI with Benjamin. That was when we stumbled upon the ‘dungeon room’, a room with no floor but a ladder, which just decended a few metres into the ground. The room is right next to the first lab: take the door to the left of the lab entrance (the one labelled This is not a bunker), walk in, and take the (presumably blocked for safety) door to your left. I eventually showed it to many people, being the novelty that it is: Mikkel believes that it’s the former cyclotron room.
Culturenight. The Freemasons opened their doors to the public, and being curious physicists, a few of us lined up to enter. It was Thomas, Mikkel, and I.
I asked a Mason if a tunnel existed between NBI and they’re building. He adamantly denied it. “There’s no connection between the two buildings, we’re completely separate and have nothing to do with them”.
I went up to another mason, with a plan. I was expecting a negative answer, and so to keep my hopes alive, I formulated the question in a smug way.
“Can you confirm that there’s a tunnel between NBI and this building? We’re from NBI, and there are rumours about a basement tunnel leading here.”
The freemason smiled, and replied confidently:
The tunnel goes to the hospital.
I was astounded, and did my best to hide my grin. The existence of the tunnel was confirmed, and it connected the freemasons to Riget??? If so, it’s got to pass by NBI.
When we left, Mikkel told us that he was certain there was a tunnel from Riget to NBI: his father allegedly worked at the hospital, and one day while he was roaming the basement, he randomly pointed to a door and asked the person he was with what’s behind it. “Oh, that door leads to the tunnel to NBI”, is the answer he allegedly got. He told us that the rumoured reason for it’s construction was to transport radioisotopes to the hospital.
Thomas left us at around 11:30pm, and Mikkel and I went to burger concept at Norreport so he could grab dinner. We randomly met up with Jonas and some of his high school friends, Simon and Emil, where we shared our discoveries. We discussed plans to search for them, Jonas would learn to lockpick, etc. Mikkel, meanwhile, had found a post on reddit of a guy claiming there was a tunnel from Riget to NBI. He also read that the cyclotron was allegedly moved to Rigshospital. We dismissed the claims due to a lack of evidence.
Regardless, I knew in my heart. A tunnel was all-but-confirmed from the Mason, and now I could invest more time and effort into looking for it.
The first weekday since Culturenight. I actually woke up in the morning and went to NBI at 11, eager to interrogate Kim about what the mason had told me. However, he was busy with students the whole day, from 11am - 5pm. He even skipped lunch. He told me to come back tomorrow, but fabri told me he was busy on tuesdays (presumably because of Complex Physics, but this was the autumn break, so he wouldn’t have been, but anyway) and so I decided to come on wednesday instead.
I went to NBI at lunchtime, and had my thesis meeting with Kim and Kuni. Afterwards, I went to Kim’s office to grill him, and came back with a treasure trove of information.
I spoke to Henri later, who felt the bike rumour was far-fetched. We walked down the pathway, but couldn’t see anything particularly suspicious. All the northward doors led to labs, and we weren’t going to interupt experimentalists to look inside them.
At home, I joined Thomas on discord and proceeded to tell him what I learnt from Kim. He seemed very receptive and curious, and did some digging. Soon, he found a particular reddit post. Someone called u/timetravel_inc had made some bold claims. They’re replicated here, in case the link ever breaks.
Der er en tunnel til Panum, Tagensvej og, efter sigende, helt til det gamle DIKU via HC Ørstedsinstituttet. Der er en nødudgang som kommer op lige på hjørnet af skaterbanen.
Der er også en tunnel til Niels Bohr Instituttet, som før i tiden blev brugt til at transportere radioaktive isotoper til medicinsk brug. Under 2. Verdenskrig blev den tunnel også brugt til at gemme flere Nobelpriser fra tyskerne, samt til skydebane for modstandsbevægelsen.
Tunnelen til Tagensvej er ikke åben for offentligheden, men som nævnt andetsteds, så kører der et lille “tog” hver halve time (det gjorde der i hvert fald for 20 år siden).
Forbindelsen til NBI ligger under NBIs kælder og den er ikke umiddelbart tilgængelig. Jeg ved ikke hvordan det ser ud i dag, men i 90’erne skulle man åbne et dæksel i gulvet (i kælderen) og kravle ned af en lille stige. Det blev ganske rigtig brugt den gang cyklotronen stadig elsisterede til at fragte kortlivede isotoper over til riget, så man ikke skulle rende rundt med det i en kuffert på Blegdamsvej. Cyklotronen blev afviklet i strarten af 90’erne og Riget fik sin egen. Det er som sagt over 20 år siden at jeg selv har set tunnelen (og dengang havde jeg ikke lige et kamera i lommen, så ingen billeder) og den var ikke længere åben i Rigets ende, så jeg har ikke været hele vejen igennem.
Nu er det jo notorisk svært at vise vej under NBI, men altså det er circa der hvor optisk pincet laboratoriet ligger i dag. Før i tiden var her et auditorium, jeg tror det hed U. Det er lige inden man kommer til det som i gamle dage var cyklotronhallen. Det er helt op imod muren ind mod Fælledparken, der er en glasdør med noget kranværk som kunne hejse tunge ting ned i kælderniveau. Det er deromkring, så vidt jeg husker.
Jeg er uddannet på NBI, har arbejdet der i 10 år og haft studenterjob i kælderen på Riget. Min kilde er blandt andre Aage Bohr.
Had I not talked to Kim, I would have dissmissed this as rumours: of course, people on the internet like to pretend they’re “in the know”. In fact, that’s what I initially did. But thomas kept reading, and some stuff really hit home:
Thomas and I discussed our prospects. We now have an exact location: who knows if it was our target, but we needed to check it out. Going through it would have to be a covert task that takes place at night, and so we can’t have too many people hear about this. We decided to keep it between us, and only tell others the information we gathered once we need them (say, Jonas for his crowbar to open the manhole). We would also have Kim know: we planned to show him the message and get his opinion on it.
We went to try to meet with kim, but he was again busy with students. However, we did scope out the basements near the optical tweezer lab.
We found 3 manholes in the vicinity:
Only a finger fit in the hole, and while it could rotate a few centimeters, removing it was impossible. We’d have to come back with a crowbar, at night.
We took another look at the dungeon room, but it seemed too small to fit the cyclotron (at least, the original one). It was modified considerably over it’s 55-year lifespan, maybe it was more condensed? However, I feel that room can’t be it. We took some pictures for Kim. What could this room be?
Right next to the suspicious manhole, there was another room: it’s usually closed, but the door was ajar. It seemed to be some sort of storage, but it had two things that interested us:
However, the pictures show 5 layers of bricks, not 3, and some show stuff like ladders in the background, so it’s not confirmed yet that this is the cyclotron room.
We paid a visit to the archivist at the Niels Bohr Archive, to ask him whether the tunnels exist. If anyone would know, they would, right? We were met by the Head Archivist, Rob Sunderland. He denied allegations, stating very firmly that those rumours are false and the tunnels didn’t exist. He claimed that isotopes were tranported directly overground in a case. He was very confident, but some things made us both not believe him:
We also walked around buildings F, M and B to try to find an old nuclear physicist. I gave thomas a list, and we settled on finding Hans Bøggild. The reception told us the emiratuses were moved to NBB, so we gave up. We emailed him when we got home, asking if we could meet him at NBI to ask him some questions.
Hans had replied to our email an hour after it was sent, yesterday night, but we only saw it today. He said he was moved to NBB and no longer goes to university, and advised us to find another professor. We realized our flaw, we hadn’t told him we were explicitly looking for an old nuclear physicist.
We decided to send another email, giving him our questions. He didn’t respond today, though.
The mason’s words also came back to me: he only said “The tunnel”, and so it’s possible he was saying “the tunnel from NBI goes to the hospital”. If he knew about NBI, it’s not an absurd proposition, and then we can reject the hypothesis of the tunnel going to the Freemasons.
We found Mikael Jensen, and decided to email him. Thomas was busy, so it’ll be done tomorrow.
I decided that what we’re doing was important enough to be chronicled, and began writing these notes.
Still no reply from Hans. Maybe we asked for forbidden knowledge….
Thomas emailed Mikael, and we got a response. It was a ton of information, but not the information we were hoping.
vogn (like a cart), on BlegdamsvejIt’s a bit heartbreaking, but it must be the truth. Lying on the internet? Who would do such a thing??
Anyway, with this, we consider the investigation formally closed. We’re probably not looking down the manhole.
We wrote back to Mikael close to midnight, asking him about the location of the cyclotron and the logbook.
We heard back from Mikael, with a lot of new information.
Irradiated Uranium for Professor Bohr and a little about the neutron yield of this. There was not a word more about fission and uranium in the logbooks until after World War II: the cyclotron strangely stopped working in early 1940, and only started up again after the war.He also gave us two pdfs, which contain plenty of relevant information about the cyclotron:
I wrote to the Max Planck Archives, asking to see the two letters from Heisenberg, relating to the return of the confiscated logbook.
We finally got another response from Hans: it’s just information we already know: he said he’s 99.9% certain there’s no tunnel, and the Cyclotron was in the Technical Museum. It was very curt, unlike Mikael’s emails.
We finally got around to thanking Mikael, and we believe we’ve now got enough information. I consider the investigation closed for now, but curiosity might reopen it in the future. A full record of our emails with Mikael can be found here.
I heard back from Florian Spillert at the Max Planck Archive. He provided me with the letters, along with a summary of the documents they have relating to the German Uranium project. The summary isn’t restricted, and you can download it here.
I obtained all documents in sections I_034_0082 and I_034_0083.
These documents are restricted, and as such, I cannot share them. However, curiosity is a driving force for us physicists, and anyone would be curious as to what exists in the browser console.
I attended the Lars Kann-Rasmussen award ceremony at NBI. There, I met and chatted to Paolo di Vecchia. Hearing he was a particle physicist, although theoretical, I asked him about the cyclotron. He happily gave me two bits of information:
Don't Stop Here! Keep Moving! outside the cyclotron area.I’ve heard the story about the sign somewhere earlier, but the second was a nice, fun anecdote.