October 6, 2007 | Funny Bits

"Gay bomb" scientists win award

Researchers at the Air Force Wright Laboratory, in Dayton, Ohio, have finally received the recognition they have long deserved. The prestigious Ig Nobel "Peace Prize" was announced on Thursday at an awards ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Put on by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, the awards are designed to honor achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." The Air Force won for their "gay bomb" because their idea could potentially end war by making enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to one another.

Other awards were given out in chemistry, to the woman who discovered how to extract vanilla fragrance and flavoring from cow dung, and economics, to a man who invented the aptly called "net trapping system for capturing a robber immediately" which could stop thieves by, well, dropping a net on them.

Who said science wasn't fun!