Although he usually studies volcanic eruptions, Georg Steinhauser of so has his finger on another hot-button topic. A hot belly button topic: why lint migrates to your navel. Although he usually studies volcanic eruptions, Georg Steinhauser of so has his finger on another hot-button topic. A hot belly button topic: why lint migrates to your navel. Dr Steinhauser, a chemist at the Vienna University of technology, recently published his paper on belly button fluff in the journal medical hypotheses. The following is accurate recollection of his observations: I started to find lint in my belly button in my teens or early 20s, and I started collecting some of those pieces. Then I started to investigate them. I thought it would be a fun thing to learn more about my belly button fluff to try to publish this.

When I submitted this paper to a scientific journal, I waited for the rejection every second, and then the editor wrote me back and said that it’s great stuff and would be fun to share. I collected the pieces of lint for several years and then wondered why some types of belly buttons collect so much lint. Suddenly, it became obvious to me; It must be the abdominal hair. That’s when I decided to make this study. I determined the average weight, and the weight distribution, by weighing each of the 503 pieces of lint that I had picked out of my belly button. Under chemical analysis, I found that it’s quite pure cotton with a certain amount of dirt, dead pieces of skin, fat, sweat and dust on the lint. It might fulfill a cleaning function for the belly button, I thought.

When asked how he weighed belly button lint he replied, “piece by piece. On analytical balance in my laboratory. It’s much easier than everybody thinks.” Some people have more lint than others in their belly button, he continues. It’s correlated to their amount of body hair. But I focused on my own belly button. The body hair seems to gather the fibers from the men’s tees, and since the hairs are arranged in concentric circles around the navel, they seem to direct those fibers into the navel, where the fibers are compacted into lint. Small form in the hair pieces first and then end up in the navel at the end of the day. I talked to many friends and some said, “I’ve got a hairy belly, but I don’t collect any lint.” Go figure: the navel what too big, or what outie, and there is no chance for any collection with at outie it. I did not, a single find woman who collected navel lint. If you know any please connect here to me. (You can send your stats to Dr. Steinhauser c/o this Spacelocker blog, and we’ll forward your contact information to him.) If you’re really a fuzz collector type serious belly button, you have to harvest it every night, because it’s too fascinating. There is no chance of ignoring this phenomenon. Dr Steinhauser concludes, “I store my collection of lint at home in order to prove that my results are right if necessary. What if the Nobel Prize Committee comes and elects me? I might need to confirm that what I’ve been studying is true. Of course, I continue collecting, just for fun. “I couldn’t stop.” Got a compelling hobby that just might land you the Nobel Peace Prize? Send help you let along, and we’ll it the world know.