At the start of the week, we put out a release at the Science Media Centre summing up some of the biggest science stories of the year.
Lloyd Burr on Radio Live will be devoting some of his show on Sunday morning to examining some of the stories on that list, so tune in between 10 and 11 to hear Lloyd interview experts about them.
But the list below features some of the quirkier science-related stories to go big during the year. From the health effects of wearing tight jeans to training pigeons to spot breast cancer, we had the whole gamut of weirdness this year.
Our friends at the Australian Science Media Centre compiled the list below. What weirdness did we miss out this time?
#Dressgate split the world in two (definitely gold and white, by the way)
In February, the viral phenomenon that was ‘the dress’ took hold, dividing the world into two camps based on whether we perceived it as gold and white, or blue and black, and generating more than 10 million Tweets in a single week. The saga began when a Scottish woman took a picture of the dress she intended to wear to her daughter’s wedding. The family couldn’t agree on the colour of the dress in the photo, and posted it on Facebook. Soon, the image made its way on to Tumblr, and the rest is history. Savvy scientists grasped an opportunity to discuss perception, colour vision and optical illusion at a time when the public was really engaged, culminating in the publication of three scientific papers discussing the dress in May.
The AusSMC asked experts to explain the phenomenon that was ‘the dress’ |