The 34th Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony took place last Thursday at MIT. Every year since 1991, around the time the recipients of the genuine Novel Prizes are announced, the Ig Nobel Prize awards the ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think. They're meant to celebrate the imaginative and encourage more interest in the sciences.
The first award for Biology was awarded to Robert Klark Graham, for pioneering development of the Repository for Germinal Choice, a sperm bank that accepted donations only from Nobellians and Olympians. While I jokingly tell my kids they have "superior genetic potential," this type of research and belief can have serious consequences.
In 1996, Physicist Robert Matthews earned a prize for his paper "Tumbling Toast, Murphy's Law and the Fundamental Constants," which sought to explain why toast tends to fall buttered-side down.

In 2002, another physicist, Arnd Leike, earned the honor after using the law of exponential decay to explain the behavior of beer foam.
And in 2017, Marc-Antoine Fardin earned the honor for using fluid dynamics to finally answer the eternal question: "Can a cat be both a solid and a liquid?" In case you are squeamish, no blender was involved in that experiment.
While these are funny examples, they're rooted in real science. As is the focus of this article, this year's Ig Nobel Prize for Demography.
In my circles, it is becoming more common to discuss how to live past 100 — and not just how to live beyond that number ... but to do so with a high quality of life.
A popular concept around that subject is Blue Zones - areas where people seem to live longer and healthier. There's even a Netflix documentary on the subject. Notable places include Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; and Ikaria, Greece.
Saul Justin Newman challenged that belief with his research, which found that extreme age records tend to come from areas with no birth certificates, rampant clerical errors, pension fraud ... and even short life spans.
While longevity in the zones has primarily been attributed to diet, community, and genetics, Newman found that many of these claims were based on errors - or outright fraud. Instead, these regions are actually characterized by the opposite of what you would expect ... low incomes, low literacy, high crime, and short lifespans.
To a certain extent, it makes sense. In areas where you're struggling to make ends meet ... why wouldn't you commit pension fraud? In fact, in 2010, the Japanese government realized that over 80% of the people aged over 100 were actually dead. Part of what made this possible was that America bombed the halls of records in that area during the war.
Here's an interview with Saul Justin Newman on the subject. He's tracked over 80% of the people aged over 110 worldwide. Almost none of them have a birth certificate. Only about 10% have a death certificate.
What does this mean for human longevity?
While the stories of these 110-year-olds may mostly be fake - as mentioned in my recent article - longevity is on the rise, and there are many modalities to increase your lifespan.

The goal isn't just to stay alive longer; it's to live life to its fullest for as long as possible.
There are people living to 100, and there are plenty of people living healthily into their 70s, 80s, and 90s.
We're taking steps in the right direction. Technology and medicine are both evolving quickly.
But, like with longevity data, improvements in any space need to be met with a grain of salt.
If it sounds too good to be true ... it generally is. Not always. But, generally.
Why Don't We See Aliens?
So, if the math says it's likely that there are aliens ... why don't we see them?
In 2020, I mentioned Israeli officials who claimed they had been contacted by Aliens from a Galactic Federation - and that not only is our government aware of this, but they are working together.
There are many stories (or theories) about how we have encountered aliens before and just kept them secret. Here are some links to things you might find interesting if you want to learn more about this.
So, while some may still believe aliens don't exist - I think it's a more helpful thought experiment to wonder why we haven't seen them.
For example, the Fermi Paradox considers the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and the various high-probability estimates for their existence.
To simplify the issue, billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy (which is only one of many galaxies) are similar to our Sun. Consequently, there must be some probability that some of them will have Earth-like planets. It isn't hard to conceive that some of those planets should be older than ours, and thus some fraction should be more technologically advanced than us. Even if you assume they're only looking at evolutions of our current technologies, interstellar travel isn't absurd.
Thus, based on the law of really large numbers (both in terms of the number of planets and length of time we are talking about) ... it makes the silence all the more deafening and curious.
If you are interested in the topic "Where are all the aliens?" Stephen Webb, a particle physicist, tackles that in his book and this TED Talk.
via TED
In the TED talk, Stephen Webb covers a couple of key factors necessary for communicative space-faring life.
But he also acknowledges the numerous confounding variables, including things like imperialism, war, bioterrorism, fear, the moon's effect on climate, etc.
Essentially, his thesis is that there are numerous roadblocks to intelligent life, and it's entirely possible we are the only planet that has gotten past those roadblocks. Even if there were others, it's entirely possible that they're extinct by now.
What do you think?
Here are some other links I liked on this topic. There is some interesting stuff you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand or enjoy.
To Infinity and Beyond!
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