This article was taken from the May 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
The Annals of Improbable Research highlights unlikely scientific papers -- research that makes readers "laugh and then think". The very best get an Ig Nobel prize. Here are the journal's editor Marc Abrahams's all-time favourites.
Transportational Planning Prize 2010
A Japanese team won an Ig Nobel for research suggesting slime mould could determine optimal routes between the stations on railway networks.
Safety Engineering Prize 1998
Troy Hurtubise from Ontario developed a suit of armour capable of withstanding a grizzly-bear attack. Hurtubise tested his exoskeleton on bears in Canada.
Linguistics Prize 2007
Juan Manuel Toro at the University of Barcelona demonstrated that rats can't tell the difference between Japanese spoken backwards and Dutch backwards.
Peace Prize 2007
The Wright Laboratory, an official US Air Force lab in Ohio, worked on a "gay bomb". The chemical weapon would have made enemy soldiers irresistible to one another.
Physics Prize 2000
Andre Geim of the University of Manchester won the Ig for physics for experiments using magnets to levitate frogs. Still, he bounced back to win a real Nobel in 2010.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
