2023-09-15 16:15:51
Updated Friday, September 15, 2023 – 16:15
The Ig Nobel Prizes have been awarded for 33 years, seeking to make people “laugh and then think.” The award in the Physics category went to a Spanish team that demonstrated that marine life can influence ocean turbulence
One of the researchers taking samples for the study on the coast of BueuUNIVERSIDAD DE VIGO
An investigation led by Spanish scientists into the sexual life of anchovies has won one of the Nobel Ig awards this year, the parody of the prestigious Swedish competition. These alternative awards are organized by the American academic journal Annals of Improbable Research and are sponsored by students at Harvard University. The Spanish work, published in the magazine Nature Geoscience in 2022 and carried out with data collected on the coast of Bueu (Pontevedra), demonstrated that marine life can influence ocean turbulence.
The Ig Nobels, who They have been dedicated for 33 years, they seek to make “laugh and then think” and they have the support of numerous scientists from different countries, some real Nobel winners
The study on the sexual activity of anchovies has won in the physics category and has researchers from the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo, the Marine Research Institute (IIM-CSIC), the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO, CSIC), the University of Southampton and the Swiss Federal Institute of Science and Technology Aquatics.
In a statement released by the University of Vigo, the main researcher of the Remedios project, Beatriz Mourio, from CIM-UVigo, highlighted that “the entire team is very happy, because the award is due to the fact that the study generates interest beyond the specialized scientific community” and considers that It is “a wonderful opportunity to spread it further and reach more people.”
Although he recognizes that at first these awards were controversial, they have evolved and today they are widely recognized as a tool for scientific communication and, in fact, last year they received an award from an Austrian institution for their work in favor of scientific communication. Furthermore, remember, these awards are supported by institutions such as Harvard, MIT or Imperial College and are awarded by Nobel Prize winners, in the case of researchers who, after having been awarded the IG Nobel, years later ended up winning the Nobel Prize in their discipline. For Mourio, “the fact of Appealing to laughter and humor is a very successful strategy to bring science closer to citizens, To the society in general”.
To carry out their research, they used an acoustic echo sounder installed on the Ramón Margalef oceanographic vessel of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), which recorded echoes concurrent with increases in turbulence attributable to aggregations of small pelagic fish and plankton sampling.
The team that participated in the award-winning studyUNIVERSITY OF VIGO
As the researchers explain, sHis discovery occurred “completely by chance” within the framework of the Remedios project, which aimed to study how turbulence affects marine life. But serendipity meant they ended up “demonstrating that marine life can influence ocean turbulence, which in turn influences marine life.”
Other winners
These alternative Nobel Prizes have more categories than the authentic Nobel Prizes, as there are prizes in chemistry and geology, literature, mechanical engineering, public health, communication, medicine, nutrition, physics and psychology.
Among those awarded this year is also a Japanese team that created some palillos capable of modifying the salty taste of food through electrical stimuli, which has won the award in the nutrition category.
Other research on the use of spider corpses as robotic tools, the mental capacity of people who can speak backwards, the effect of alopecia on nose hairs, why many scientists like to lick rocks or a study to determine how many people stop to look up when they see strangers which they also do.
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