{"id":616,"date":"2017-11-21T02:05:41","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T02:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/?p=616"},"modified":"2017-11-21T02:05:41","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T02:05:41","slug":"the-ig-nobels-are-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/archives\/616","title":{"rendered":"The Ig Nobels are back!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wouldn\u2019t it be great if you could win a Nobel Prize for proving that people are more likely to take risks at slot machines after touching live crocodiles? Well, you can\u2019t\u2014the Nobel Prize committee has no interest in reptile-induced gambling sprees. Thankfully, you can<\/em> win an Ig Nobel Prize. That\u2019s what happened to Matthew Rockloff and Nancy Greer, two Australian professors who won the 2017 Ig Nobel Prize for Economics<\/strong> for this fascinating discovery.<\/p>\n

The Ig Nobel ceremonies have been held at Harvard University every September since 1991. From the 9,000 (or more) nominations the organizers receive each year, only 10 winners are chosen\u2014and the prizes are awarded by actual Nobel laureates. It\u2019s a pretty big deal.<\/p>\n

The goal of the Ig Nobel Awards (according to their creator, Improbable Research) is to \u201ccelebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative\u2014and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.\u201d If you missed the 27th Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony (it was held on September 24 of this year), here\u2019s just a sampling of the stunning scientific breakthroughs you missed:<\/p>\n

Marc-Antoine Fardin won the Ig Nobel Physics Prize<\/strong> for proving that, although we think of cats as solid objects, they move like liquids when they want to squeeze into small spaces.<\/p>\n

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James Heathcote, a British researcher, won the Ig Nobel Anatomy Prize<\/strong> for proving that, yes, old men really do<\/em> have big ears.<\/p>\n

On a somewhat troubling note, a group of Spanish doctors won the Ig Nobel Obstetrics Prize<\/strong> for their discovery that fetuses make faces if music is played inside their mothers\u2019 vaginas.<\/p>\n

Proving that age is never a barrier to greatness, Jiwon Han\u2014a high school student in South Korea\u2014won the Ig Nobel Fluid Dynamics Prize<\/strong> by studying why we spill coffee, but not wine, when walking backwards.<\/p>\n

Have trouble telling identical twins apart? No need to feel badly about it, anymore. According to an Italian researcher (Matteo Martini), 50% of identical twins have trouble telling themselves<\/em> apart when they\u2019re flipping through photo albums. Naturally, Dr. Martini was awarded the Ig Nobel Cognition Prize<\/strong> for this discovery.<\/p>\n

The 28th Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony is scheduled for September, 2018. The tickets\u2014all 1,200 of them\u2014will go on sale in July, and they\u2019re expected to sell out fast. If you have a scientific mind\u2014and love learning about things like liquid cats and old men\u2019s ears\u2014this is a can\u2019t-miss event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wouldn\u2019t it be great if you could win a Nobel Prize for proving that people are more likely to take risks at slot machines after touching live crocodiles? Well, you can\u2019t\u2014the Nobel Prize committee has no interest in reptile-induced gambling sprees. Thankfully, you can win an Ig Nobel Prize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-bits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":620,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions\/620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}