Scientists Prove the ‘Spherical Cow’ Was Just the Beginning
Turns out even physics jokes can get a little too real — and surprisingly smart
An April Fools’ physics paper “that got a little out of hand” takes the classic spherical cow idea and runs with it. The article notes that the spherical cow approximation is widely used but rarely justified, so it proposes a full multipole expansion with the spherical cow as just the first term. This makes it possible to compute bovine potentials and interactions beyond spherical symmetry—useful for processes like the gravitational-wave-driven spindown of a rotating cow. The paper demonstrates the multipole coefficients for a benchmark cow, has been published in a physics journal, and assures readers that no cows were harmed.
- A fake physics paper joking about ‘spherical cows’ accidentally got published as real research
- It suggests cows (and other objects) need more complex math than simple spheres for accurate models
- The paper was an April Fools’ joke but got picked up by a science journal by mistake
Why It Matters
Proves even a silly joke can reveal how oversimplification distorts real science — and that academic publishing can have a sense of humor