Murray Gell-Mann: Beauty and truth in physics

Wielding laypeople’s terms and a sense of humor, Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann drops some knowledge about particle physics, asking questions like, Are elegant equations more likely to be right than inelegant ones? Can the fundamental law, the so-called “theory of everything,” really explain everything? His answers will surprise you.

Make love, not war (Ig Nobel Prize)

One of this years Ig Nobel Prizes was for pioneering research into a “gay bomb” that makes enemy troops “sexually irresistible” to each other.
Other winners included work on treating hamster jetlag with impotency drugs, extracting vanilla from cow dung, measuring the limit of human appetite with a “bottomless” cup-o-sup, and the side-effects of sword swallowing.
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