Given this time of year scientists have been known to engage in April Fool jokes.
Here are a selection.
(1) Zoologists discover a colony of flying penguins.
(2) Pi = Atheist propganda.
A newspaper article circulated on the Internet in April 1998, claiming that Alabama's state legislature had decided to round down the value of pi from 3.1415... to 3 in order to bring it more in line with the Bible.
Snopes shows otherwise.
Alabama's Slice of Pi
(3) Discovering the Bigon.
In 1996, Discover Magazine reported on the discovery of a new fundamental particle of matter. On any other day, this would be a momentous discovery, but this was April 1. The fundamental particle was called “the Bigon” and it’s the size of a bowling ball, although it only exists for just millionths of a second.
(4) CERN finds evidence for the force.
In 2015, CERN took a brief break from unraveling the fabric of the universe to lay out a grand April Fools’ prank. They issued a press release announcing the “first unequivocal evidence for the Force.”
Details of the Force were hazy, but it could reportedly be used for “long-distance communication, influencing minds, and lifting heavy things out of swamps.” The breakthrough came from a seminal paper by Ben Kenobi of the prestigious University of Mos Eisley in Tatooine. A small green spokesperson for the laboratory also noted: “Very impressive, this result is.”
(5) Google heads for Mars.
There are too many April fools’ pranks by Google to mention. Some of its best have included announcing a new Internet search app for your pets to use "at the press of a paw" and a new form of Chromecast for squirrels.
One of its sneakiest pranks though was the plan to expand their Google Cloud service to Mars in anticipation of “the exploration and ultimate colonization of the Red Planet.” You could even walk around the new Martian data center on Google Street View.
Here are a selection.
(1) Zoologists discover a colony of flying penguins.
A newspaper article circulated on the Internet in April 1998, claiming that Alabama's state legislature had decided to round down the value of pi from 3.1415... to 3 in order to bring it more in line with the Bible.
Snopes shows otherwise.
Alabama's Slice of Pi
(3) Discovering the Bigon.
In 1996, Discover Magazine reported on the discovery of a new fundamental particle of matter. On any other day, this would be a momentous discovery, but this was April 1. The fundamental particle was called “the Bigon” and it’s the size of a bowling ball, although it only exists for just millionths of a second.
(4) CERN finds evidence for the force.
In 2015, CERN took a brief break from unraveling the fabric of the universe to lay out a grand April Fools’ prank. They issued a press release announcing the “first unequivocal evidence for the Force.”
Details of the Force were hazy, but it could reportedly be used for “long-distance communication, influencing minds, and lifting heavy things out of swamps.” The breakthrough came from a seminal paper by Ben Kenobi of the prestigious University of Mos Eisley in Tatooine. A small green spokesperson for the laboratory also noted: “Very impressive, this result is.”
(5) Google heads for Mars.
There are too many April fools’ pranks by Google to mention. Some of its best have included announcing a new Internet search app for your pets to use "at the press of a paw" and a new form of Chromecast for squirrels.
One of its sneakiest pranks though was the plan to expand their Google Cloud service to Mars in anticipation of “the exploration and ultimate colonization of the Red Planet.” You could even walk around the new Martian data center on Google Street View.
