Some might call the Ig Nobels prizes for silly science but the journal Nature and others see a method the the scientific ‘silliness’. From the About the Ig Nobel* Prizes page on the Improbable Research website,

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology. Every year, in a gala ceremony in Harvard’s Sanders Theatre, 1200 splendidly eccentric spectators watch the winners step forward to accept their Prizes. These are physically handed out by genuinely bemused genuine Nobel laureates.

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“Last, but not least, there are the Ig Nobel awards. These come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that ‘first make people laugh, and then make them think'” — Nature

“It’s like the weirdest f-ing thing that you’ll ever go to… it’s a collection of, like, actual Nobel Prize winners giving away prizes to real scientists for doing f’d-up things… it’s awesome.”— Amanda Palmer

This year’s event (23rd annual) took place on Sept. 12, 2013 and Jessica Leber profiled the  event in her Sept. 12, 2013 article for Fast Company,

Medicine:

For assessing the effect of listening to opera on heart transplant patients–who are mice (Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery)

Japanese researchers gave mice a heart transplant, and then made them listen to three kinds of music for three days: opera (La Traviata), classical (Mozart), and New Age (Enya), as well as random single sound frequencies. Verdi fans rejoice: Opera listening mice survived 26 days, whereas Enya fans, only 11 days.

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Joint Prize in Biology and Astronomy:

For finding that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way (Current Biology)

African “ball-rolling” dung beetles use the starry sky to orient themselves and to transport their dung balls on straight paths. The study was the first demonstration of this navigation ability in insects. Even crazier? The beatles specifically use the Milky Way for directions–the first known case of this kind of navigation in the animal kingdom.

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Physics:

For discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond–if those people and that pond were on the moon (PLoS ONE)

Jesus was said to walk on water, and maybe we could too–if we all took a trip to the moon. Normally, we can’t walk on water because of “body size and proportions, lack of appropriate appendages, and limited muscle power,” the researchers wrote in their study. But on the reduced gravity of the moon, less muscle might be needed. The researchers used a reduced gravity simulator to do a test.

Chemistry:

For discovering that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated than scientists had previously realized.(Nature)

The researchers discovered the most important enzyme that triggers the tears–potentially opening the door to the development of a “tearless onion.”

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You can get more information including links to the winning papers about this year’s winners here.

*’IgNobel’ changed to Ig Nobel in three instances on March 14, 2016.