April Fools by Community Friend on Flickr
It’s April Fools Day and as always science offers rich-pickings. After all, real discoveries can be so incredulously strange. Here are a few I was totally not taken in by this morning.
First, shock, horror, Science and Nature are teaming up to bring us a new journal. Natural Science will feature a revolutionary new peer review system where readers can “vote for acceptance by pressing a “Like” thumbs-up button or reject the paper by pressing a “Dislike” button. Each vote will cost $1/£1 and multiple votes are allowed.” I particularly like the cover.
Given the headlines earlier this week, the Large Hadron Collider was an obvious choice for tomfoolery. The Independent revealed that CERN was in talks with London Underground to use a Circle Line tunnel for a second LHC. CERN themselves had some fun, announcing that their much-lauded experiments have found a “paleoparticle”.
“The particle consists of two strange quarks and one top quark but no beauty or charm quark. The physicists have nicknamed it the “neutrinosaurus” because of its repulsive appearance and prehistoric origins.”
Google also chose today to launch its new application: Google Translate for Animals.
On a slightly more serious note, The Times’ Eureka magazine, published today, carries an interesting feature on the top 11 scientific hoaxes (link wasn’t live at the time of writing – I’ll add when it’s up). However, they couldn’t resist making one of them up.
Meanwhile, over on Not Exactly Rocket Science, Ed Yong has a piece on the incredible discovery of the gene and part of the brain that make people gullible.
“You could say that gullibility is in your genes,” said Professor Christoph Morris. “You’d be shatteringly wrong, but that wouldn’t matter to gullible people.”
Image credit: Flickr/Community Friend
Filed under: External News Tagged: April Fools Day, CERN, Ed Yong, Eureka, Google, Large Hadron Collider, Nature, Science
