If you are a subscriber to our magazine (Annals of Improbable Research), you may be chuckling or grimacing (or both) at the email messages of the past few days. Do not be dismayed, please! Those emails are a side effect of something good, of a weird problem being solved. The PROBLEM: The company we have […]
Bursting Bubble Wrap to Detect Foreign Crap in Pipelines
The bursting of bubble wrap, if judiciously done, can help detect whether there is crap (or to put it more nicely: unexpected stuff) inside a pipeline. This new study tells about the problem and the possible, bubble-wrap-bursting way to deal with the problem: “Electric-power free impulse point sound source generation system with bubble wrap bursting […]
Improbable Research Show, in Phoenix, at the AAAS Meeting
Improbable stuff awaits you, if you will be in Phoenix, Arizona this Friday night: AAAS Annual Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Hyatt Regency Phoenix Hotel, in the Regency Ballroom — Improbable Research Show, with Marc Abrahams (founder of the Ig Nobel Prizes) and: Julie Mennella (2025 Ig Nobel Pediatrics Prize winner, for studying what a nursing […]
Tom Lam’s Adventure with Cacio e Pepe and Prize-winning Physicists
At the 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony Tom Lam of Scientific American interviewed the 2025 Ig Nobel Physics Prize winners, and later tried to use his new knowledge in making the Italian pasta dish called cacio e pepe. This video documents that:




