The weird wide world of science

If you ever find yourself at a worm race (the actual thing, not a euphemism for a tequila-chugging contest), make sure to bet on the sober ones, as they tend to be faster than the drunker ones, according to this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes, which were held at MIT last week.

Umm, what? The Ig Nobel prizes are an annual spectacle, created as an ode to strange scientific discoveries “that first make people laugh, then make them think," with real Nobel laureates in attendance to announce spoof prizes.

Some of this year’s honorees:

• Peace: US researcher B.F. Skinner posthumously took home the prize for performing experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide their flight paths.
• Botany: German and Brazilian researchers uncovered evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighboring artificial plants.
• Anatomy: French and Chilean researchers studied whether the hair on the heads of most people in the northern hemisphere swirls in the same direction as hair on the heads of most people in the southern hemisphere (the result: counterclockwise swirls were more common in the southern hemisphere).

See the full list of winners – each received a transparent box containing historic items related to Murphy’s Law (the theme of the night) as well as a nearly worthless Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill.

👀 Looking ahead… The actual Nobel Prizes, which are unaffiliated with the Ig Nobel Prizes, will be awarded next month.