Abstract
On the 1st of April every year, otherwise reputable media all round the world carry fabricated reports on every topic under the sun. Physics is no exception, and April Fools have appeared everywhere from the CERN website to Scientific American—and even in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Nature. In recent years, however, physics-related April Fools have found their real home in the web-based arXiv preprint repository. The dozens of spoofs there can be read on any day of the year—which creates a problem for certain killjoys, who want to outlaw scientific April Fools because they’re too easily mistaken for serious research.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
S. Lee, S. Ditko, I come from the Black Void. reprinted in Creatures on the Loose #27 (January 1974)
BBC On This Day, 1957: BBC fools the nation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/1/newsid_2819000/2819261.stm
Editorial criteria and processes. Nature. https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/editorial-criteria-and-processes
A.J. Hamilton, R.M. May, E.K. Waters, Here be dragons. Nature 520, 42–43 (April 2015)
J. Rennie, Okay, we give up. Scientific American (April 2005). https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/okay-we-give-up/
P. Yam, Unscientific Unamerican. Scientific American (April 2014). https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/unscientific-unamerican-and-other-april-fools-jokes-in-sa-history/
T. Folger, The Bigon. Discover (April 1996). http://discovermagazine.com/1996/apr/thebigon756
A. Boese, The black-hole diode. Museum of Hoaxes. http://hoaxes.org/af_database/permalink/the_black-hole_diode
Apollo Bacteria Spur Lunar Erosion. Nature Website (1 April 2005). http://www.bioedonline.org/news/nature-news/apollo-bacteria-spur-lunar-erosion/
C. O’Luanaigh, CERN researchers confirm existence of the force. CERN Website (1 April 2015). https://home.cern/news/news/cern/cern-researchers-confirm-existence-force
Wikipedia article on “April Fools” day request for comments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day_Request_for_Comments
D. Waitzman, A standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on Avian Carriers. Network Working Group RFC 1149 (April 1990). http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html
R. Hinden, Design considerations for faster-than-light communication. Check Point Software RFC 6921 (1 April 2013). https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6921
D. Zaslavsky, Joke papers. arXiv. https://www.ellipsix.net/arxiv-joke-papers.html
S.R. Kane, F. Selsis, A Necro-biological explanation for the Fermi Paradox. arXiv (31 March 2014). https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.8146
D. Scott, A farewell to falsifiability. arXiv (1 April 2015). https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.00108
J. Zuntz, et al., Non-standard morphological relic patterns in the cosmic microwave background. arXiv (31 March 2011). https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.6262
R. Fisher, R. Courtland, Found: Hawking’s initials written into the universe. New Scientist, (7 February 2010). https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18489-found-hawkings-initials-written-into-the-universe/
D. Scott, Pi in the sky. arXiv (31 March 2016). https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.09703
R.J. Scherrer, Time variation of a fundamental dimensionless constant. arXiv (30 March 2009). https://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5321
Snopes Fact Check, Alabama’s slice of Pi. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alabamas-slice-of-pi/
R.A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (New English Library, London, 1978), p. 292
S.E. Kuhn, Observation of a new type of super-symmetry. arXiv (31 March 2015). https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.09109
Tom Banks, Schrodinger’s cat and world history. arXiv (30 March 2017). https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.10470
G. Svetlichny, The April first phenomenon. arXiv (28 March 2014). https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.8010
A. Boese, Atmospheric energy harnessed. Museum of Hoaxes. http://hoaxes.org/af_database/permalink/atmospheric_energy_harnessed
M. Ronagh, L. Souder, The ethics of ironic science in its search for spoof. Sci. Eng. Ethics 21, 1537–1549 (2015)
R. Eveleth, The ethics of sarcastic science. The Atlantic (December 2014). https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/12/the-ethics-of-sarcastic-science/383988/
L. Billings, Against April fools in science journalism. Scientific American Website (1 April 2015). https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/against-april-fools-in-science-journalism/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
May, A. (2019). April Fool. In: Fake Physics: Spoofs, Hoaxes and Fictitious Science. Science and Fiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13314-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13314-6_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-13313-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-13314-6
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)