This year's Ig Nobel ceremony was held at MIT on Thursday evening, with the awards presented by actual Nobel Prize laureates.
L: James C. Liao accepting the Ig Nobel for Physics for demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout; R:"The Stinker", the official mascot of the Ig Nobel Prizes.Each year, in the run-up to the Nobel season, scientists put aside their thinking caps for this particular event and don sillier ones. And this year was no different.
The winning research spanned a truly bizarre gamut—from copycat plants and swimming dead fish to drunk worms and cows scared into producing more milk. to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek move, the Peace Prize was posthumously given to famed psychologist B.F. Skinner for his bizarre experiments exploring whether live pigeons could be housed inside missiles to guide their flight paths.
The Botany Prize went to a team that discovered “some real plants mimic the shapes of neighboring artificial plastic plants,” while the Demography Prize was given for research uncovering that many famous long-lived individuals hailed from regions with poor birth-and-death recordkeeping.University of Florida biologist James C. Liao received the Ig Nobel Physics Prize for his intriguing work on “demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Ig Nobel prizes 2024: The unexpected science that won this yearFrom drunk worms to mammals that breath through their anuses, founder Marc Abrahams on the winners of this year's Ig Nobel prizes, for research that 'makes people laugh, then think'
Read more »
Fishing Report: Heavy fish and heavy cash prizes at Valdez Fish Derbies concluding SundayAlthough the main staples of the popular Valdez Fish Derbies wrap up on Sunday, a $10,000 coho salmon may still be swimming in Prince William Sound.
Read more »
Percival Everett, Louise Erdrich and Jason Reynolds among finalists for $50,000 Kirkus PrizesPercival Everett’s “James,” a reworking of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the enslaved Jim’s perspective, is among the fiction finalists for the 11th annual Kirkus Prize.
Read more »
Percival Everett, Louise Erdrich and Jason Reynolds among finalists for $50,000 Kirkus PrizesPercival Everett’s “James,” a reworking of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the enslaved Jim’s perspective, is among the fiction finalists for the 11th annual Kirkus Prize.
Read more »
Percival Everett, Louise Erdrich and Jason Reynolds among finalists for $50,000 Kirkus PrizesPercival Everett’s “James,” a reworking of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the enslaved Jim’s perspective, is among the fiction finalists for the 11th annual Kirkus Prize.
Read more »
24-mile range, 115 mph: US Army buys $1B worth of Switchblade kamikaze dronesThe US Army has awarded AeroVironment a $990M contract to supply Switchblade loitering munition systems to enhance infantry capabilities.
Read more »