A headline in the Paris newspaper Le Monde declares that I am the Pope. The Pope of Improbable Science. You can see this pope on display on September 12, 2019, in the 29th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. If you are in Paris (or anywhere else), you can watch the webcast. If you are […]
Plants can take-up microplastics – should we be happy about it? [new study]
“Waiter, there’s plastic in my lettuce” isn’t a phrase you’d expect to hear very often. Nevertheless, several studies have now shown that plants can, and do, take-up microplastics [MPs] from the soil and incorporate them into stems, roots and leaves. Should we be worried – or happy? The latter is a possibility that should be […]
The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony happens two weeks from today
The 29th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will happen two weeks from today—on Thursday, September 12, 2019, at 6:00 pm (US east coast time)—at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University. A few (not a lot of) TICKETS are still available from the Harvard Box Office. Ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners will be revealed. Their prizes […]
A newish twist, by a man named Olds, on a screwy old idea
The Olds elevator is a fairly simple machine that apparently no one thought up until recently. It’s a fairly new twist, by a man named Olds, on a screwy old idea: Archimedes lifting screw: Peter Olds has US patent #US7314131B2, which describes the invention. (Thanks to Mark Dionne for bringing this to our attention.)