Bench Press

A lot of the “hot” research occurs at the edges of disciplines. In my humble opinion, this is a natural effect stemming from the fact that the research that occurs at those edges typically involves the use of new equipment/techniques (e.g. applying physical techniques to biology) or because of the need for experts in different fields to come together and exchange thoughts and perspectives (e.g. astrophysics requires an appreciation of the very large [traditional astronomy], the very small [quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics], and the very weird [relativity, ok so it’s not that weird, but from the perspective of someone who’s never moved at relativistic velocities, I think it’s weird]).

But, of course, interdisciplinary research, has its limits (HT: Abstruse Goose):

Anyone else have any equally bad ideas for “interdisciplinary research”?

(Image Credit – Abstruse Goose)

Thanks to the internet the enterprise of playing practical jokes on the world has become incredibly easy and every year now I look forward to seeing what hilarious items pop up throughout the internet. So here’s a quick list of some of my favorite tech/science April Fools jokes for 2009:

Google masters artificial intelligence. The brilliant people over at Google continue to amaze by creating the world’s first “artificial intelligence tasked-array system” which they’ve dubbed the Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE). Apparently it’s already cranking out changes at Google: “Earlier today, for instance, CADIE deduced from a quick scan of the visual segment of the social web a set of online design principles from which she derived this intriguing homepage.”

Gmail Autopilot. Thanks to CADIE e-mail’s even easier than before. By using the Gmail Autopilot one can set simple sliders to manage all your e-mail without going through the hassle of reading and writing. E-mail will never be the same again. Nigeria may become more wealthy though…

Let Gmail Autopilot handle all your e-mail conversations.

Tiny black hole on Earth created by Large Hadron Collider. CERN admits that the real reason they shut down the LHC was due to the creation of a “tiny black hole” that they have “kept under quarantine” and are monitoring as we speak.

Qualcomm, on the cutting edge of Bioengineering. Qualcomm best known for it’s CDMA technology for wireless networks has delved into cutting edge research to improve wireless network coverage around the world. The video below takes an exclusive look behind the scenes of Qualcomm’s latest work.

Happy April Fools!