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CERN file
Famed physicist Stephen Hawking visits the Large Hadron Collider's underground tunnel in 2006. He bet against the discovery of the Higgs boson but is now willing to pay up.
When it comes to betting on cosmic outcomes like the discovery of the Higgs boson, British physicist Stephen Hawking is a three-time loser. But there's a good reason for that.
Hawking's latest loss was to Gordon Kane, a theoretical physicist at the University of Michigan who worked out some of the ways that the Higgs boson could be detected in a particle-smasher like the Large Hadron Collider. About 10 years ago, Kane was discussing some of the issues while he and Hawking were together at a physics conference.
"Stephen interrupted, and said he would like to bet me that there was no Higgs boson," Kane recalled today. It took a while to work out the conditions of the $100 bet, and at one point things looked so dim for the search that Kane sent Hawking a check, according to The Detroit News.
But this week, when researchers at the LHC announced that a subatomic particle matching the Higgs boson's general description had been discovered, it was Hawking's turn to concede the bet. "It seems I have just lost $100," he told the BBC's Pallab Ghosh.
Waiting for the check
Kane told me he's heard from several third parties that Hawking is acknowledging his loss, but said Hawking himself "hasn't sent me anything yet." He figures that Hawking will eventually make good on the gambling debt.
"The important thing is the discovery of the Higgs," Kane said. "But it's fun to win a bet from Stephen, and I'm guessing he doesn't mind losing a little money."
This isn't the first time Hawking has lost a small-stakes, high-profile bet on a scientific proposition.
Back in 1975, he bet Caltech physicist Kip Thorne that there was no black hole at the center of the X-ray source known as Cygnus X-1. By 1998, he conceded that the black hole was there, and got Thorne a year's subscription to Penthouse magazine as a payoff.
In 1997, Thorne and Hawking bet Caltech's John Preskill that information is completely lost when something falls into a black hole. But in 2004, Hawking changed his mind and said that information could conceivably leak out of a black hole. Hawking paid up by sending Preskill the repository of information he requested: a baseball encyclopedia. At last report, Thorne had not yet conceded.
There's another wager still pending: Hawking is betting that primordial gravitational waves will be detected, resulting in the confirmation of inflationary big-bang theory. The Perimeter Institute's Neil Turok, a proponent of the cyclic model of cosmic origins, is betting against him.
"If these gravitational waves are seen, they will instantly disprove our model," Turok told Cambridge professor Alan Macfarlane. The terms of the bet, however, are still under negotiation.
0-for-3 record
So, as far as we know, Hawking is 0-for-3, with one bet still up in the air. That led the BBC's Ghosh to joke today in a Twitter update that "research effort could be saved if we knew what other bets Prof. Hawking has placed and assume he'll lose." The only bet that I'm sure Hawking has won is the poker hand he played on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." And that was written into the script.
The opening scene from an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in which Data plays poker with Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.
Is Hawking really that bad at anticipating future developments in physics? Not really. The guy just bets with his heart, not with his head.
In the case of Cygnus X-1, for instance, he was actually glad to lose the wager. "This was a form of insurance policy for me," he explained in "A Brief History of Time," his bestselling book. "I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes do not exist. But in that case, I would have the consolation of winning my bet."
The bet about the fate of information in black holes was a true cosmic conundrum, and Hawking decided to go along with the more conservative of the two alternatives, even if it meant buying an encyclopedia for Preskill. If Hawking stuck to his guns, he would have to maintain that the information in black holes disappeared into other universes.
"I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes," he said in 2004. "If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state."
Hoping for the unexpected
As for the Higgs boson, Hawking was hoping that there'd be a less orthodox and more elegant mechanism to explain how it is that some particles have mass while others don't. Finding the Standard Model Higgs boson, and nothing else, would be a disappointing outcome — as fellow physicist Stephen Wolfram pointed out in a blog posting today. So once again, Hawking was betting with his heart.
"If the decay and other interactions of this particle are as we expect, that will be strong evidence for the so-called Standard Model of particle physics, the theory that explains all our experiments so far," Hawking said. "This is an important result, and should earn Peter Higgs the Nobel Prize. But it is a pity, in a way, because the great advances in physics have come from experiments that gave results we didn't expect."
If it turns out that the particle revealed this week is a non-Standard Model Higgs boson, Hawking might still be able to hang onto his $100, and the cosmos will get that much more mysterious. But in any case, Kane is moving on to the next big thing: supersymmetry, the idea that every one of the subatomic particles we've detected to date has a weird twin we haven't yet been able to see. Such a concept could explain the nature of dark matter, which accounts for far more of the universe than the ordinary matter we see around us.
As strange as it sounds, Kane thinks it's possible to find evidence of supersymmetry — and he's willing to put his money where his mouth is.
"I'd love to have bets on supersymmetry," he told me, "but no one will take them."
Update for 2:30 p.m. ET July 6: Kane told me that it was premature to say what he'd spend the $100 on, but in a Reuters report, he said that "all funds go toward research." He also said that winning the bet was a very nice frosting on the cake" for this week's boson discovery.
Reuters also quotes Scottish theorist Peter Higgs, one of the physicists who came up with the idea behind the field and the particle that now bears his name, as saying that he was tipped off about the discovery the night before Wednesday's announcement, during a champagne dinner with CERN researchers. On the flight home from the event, fellow physicist Alan Walker offered Higgs a glass of Prosecco sparkling wine — but Walker told Reuters that Higgs said, "I'd rather have a beer."
More on the Higgs hoopla:
- The lighter side of the Higgs boson
- Higgs boson explained in (more than) a minute
- Milestone in Higgs quest: Scientists find new particle
- The Higgs boson made simple
- Cartoons visualize the Higgs boson
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
What the public seldom realizes is that the point of doing science is to be surprised, to find out things you never dreamed were true. In doing so, society and technology both advance. If science exists only to confirm what you think you already know, there is no point in doing it. Scientists, like Hawking, would be seriously disappointed if the Higgs turned out to be just as the Standard Model predicts and nothing else.
The reason for finding it is not to say, "see, I told you so," but to find new potential avenues for research and paths to new discoveries.
To expand on still kickings note, could someone please raionally explain to me why 'science' and 'religion' are always so violently considered mutually exclusive? I was born Aetheist (everyone is BTW, no matter what their parents were, because you have no concept of religion or a higher being at birth), raised Roman Catholic in private schools, but no longer practice. I moved away from the religion not because science said so, but because, if I truly have free will, I had the capability to do so... and in doing so I can acknowledge the advances of science wihout the biased eyes of a Catholic.
Please note that bias in itself is not negative - everyone that has a vested interested in any outcome will have some sort of bias. It is only the combination of bias and ego that becomes negative.
For example, a person does not generally want to be wrong so assumes he/she is right (this is caused by ego, which everyone has to a degree). This same person buys a new car every 4 years because he/she believes (important word here) that the additional cost of a new car is outweighed by the physical costs of maintenance and emotional costs of worry associated with owning a used car. Based on these conditions this person would believe (important word again) that anyone owning or purchasing a used car (over 4 years old) is making a poor decision. This person is biased towards new cars. This ego is not negative, nor is the bias, but when the ego is challenged and bias is present conflict results. This person will defend his/her bias for new cars only because ego is present. Remove ego (i.e. accept that anyone, including yourself, could be wrong) and negativity is diminished. This is where religion fell short for me - the ego cannot be removed because it cannot be challenged impartially.
That being said, I can still look at every new discovery and ask the following question - "How was that created?" Not that long ago (in a historical sense) the most basic building blocks were atoms and nothing could be smaller - if science were truly a religion it would have stopped there (probably sooner, but bear with me). Instead, people strove to know more and electrons/neutrons/protons were discovered. They were now the building blocks and nothing could be smaller. But people stove to know more and quarks were discovered, then positrons, leptons, muons,bosons, anti-protons etc. Every day there are new 'building blocks' and nothing could be smaller.
Most religious people (notice I said most, not all) view these continuing discoveries as evidence that science cannot answer the question "Where did we come from?" since each 'final answer' is superceded by the next. Therefore science is false, a sham, and cannot be relied upon. This goes back to my analogy above - the ego (I want to be right) combined with bias (I believe God created everything) finds fault in the scientific theory since it is not final and therefore not correct.
Most scientific people (note again, most) view these coninuing discoveries as evidence that science can possibly answer that question, just no yet. Each new discovery is another step closer to 'the answer'. Again, the ego (I want to be right) combined with bias (science can and will answer all questions) finds fault with religion in that textual and mythical information does not seem to allow for the physical observations that have occurred and therefore religion is a sham.
Neither party is wrong, in the truest sense of the word, because neither party can be proven right. The combination of ego and bias drives so many people to vociferously defend their views. Remove ego, approach the situations as rationally as possible, and both religion and science can co-exist for now - they are not mutally exclusive (but that's just my ego and bias talking).
Now that I am done commenting on the comments I can comment on the article. Hawking is an ardent science supporter (obviously) so any advancement, discovery, or potential solution is positive regardless of whether it matched his beliefs or theories. He is playing on scientists egos by saying 'I believe X, prove me wrong'. If they can't science advances and if they can science advances - win/win. The statements that he is betting with his heart may be correct but i don't think that is the case. I believe that he realizes how highly the theoretical physics community views him so he comes forward with a counter-theory and says 'prove me wrong' because it plays on the ego and bias and motivates scientists to do exactly that.
I know it's a long read, but that is my 2 cents (or 2 dollars, I guess)
PS - I like the joke still kicking - that's an old one, realitvely speaking
"To expand on still kickings note, could someone please raionally explain to me why 'science' and 'religion' are always so violently considered mutually exclusive?"
Because to the average person it seems the two cannot be compatiable in any way. The ingrained belief systems for so long cannot be shaken or resolved so easily. Plus the attentive body count factor comes into play. Some on each side who are running the show or have a stake in the outcome don't want numbers drifting away from their house of influence. Where the crowds go is where the money goes. And this is a major part of what Jesus was in fact dealing with that got him crucified.
Actually, everyone is born a theist. Higher beings rule your life as an infant. There's evidence that you believe in them wholeheartedly because you cry for them when something goes wrong that you can't control. You dirty your diapers and its irritating to you, but you can't conceive of how to make it go away on your own, so you scream until it goes away.
And then you grow up and figure life out for yourself instead of relying on other people to think logically for you. You wipe your own ass, and suffer when you don't do it well enough. Theists are just people with dirty diapers wallowing in the infancy of their stunted intelligence. They can grow up, but they won't - it's not that they can't. I think just about everyone would find comfort in a perpetual infancy.
Science and religion aren't opposites, they are very nearly the same - as similar as ice and water. Logically, a human mind that can conceive of anything higher than itself lowers himself to infancy perpetually. Religion represents the static state, whereas science is the fluid state. Beyond both are transcendence - and transcendence is realizing you are the higher power.
And if we are all the higher power, then what point is there to ego?
Prof,
You make an interesting argument and I do not disagree. However, it depends on your opinion of 'higher being'. To me, another human, no matter what level of control he or she may have over me, is not a 'higher being' but merely and equaly being with greater authority.
Please note that I correct myself below in stating that I should have used the term agnostic - not knowing or believing in anything beyond the physical - instead of atheist.
To answer your question, in my opinion there is no point to ego. Ego clouds true judgement by exacerbating bias.
This stuff does get bizzaro when you try to put it in simple terms. e.i. The Higg's particle has much more mass and encircles particles (neutrons,protons) that we have already discovered. How could we have missed this massive Higg's particle when we have been looking right through it and into it for decades?
DCypher - I was always under the impression that being an Atheist was an active belief that there is no God, not a situation where there is no belief at all, or not yet.
Until someone has a belief one way or another, I don't think you can assign him one.
Tom, I stand corrected - Aethist is the incorrect term. A more accurate term would be agnostic, where nothing is known of or about God or anything beyond the physical.
Tom123, You are correct. An Atheist is a person who has concluded there is no God. An agnostic is a person who is has concluded that it is unknowable as to whether there is a God.
I used to consider myself an agnostic because in the truest sense it is impossible to prove the negative. However, there are many things (tooth fairy, talking serpents, unicorns, etc.) for which a similar negative proof cannot be obtained. Since I do not believe in unicorns, I similarly cannot believe in gods. That makes me an Atheist.
The difference between atheism and agnosticism is pretty fuzzy in practise. MOST people admit that we can't really know if there is a God or not, but most of those same people have pretty strong opinions about it.
I liked the bit about sending a year's subscription to Penthouse. Funny guy, that Steve!
It was 1975, they were all young- and horny.
These theoretical physicists are joking around because they know the whole concept of "physics" is based on a man-made cognitive concept as our brains are still evolving and it is kinda funny and fun to play with.
I'll bet everyone here $100 dollars that I am super intelligent, but I would not win. (my x-wife knows I'm a complete loser)
Hey, at least you have an ex-wife to tell you what a loser you are, some of us have to go begging on the internet
At a certain point fans of Hawking need to realize that ALS takes both a physical and secondary mental toll. I no longer trust the theorums or pronouncements coming from the Hawking camp for the simple reason he is not well or of fully sound mind any longer. No offense intended to the Hawking "fan" base.
I find the science of cosmology absolutely fascinating. But though I am not stupid, nor uneducated...I just can't wrap my brain around the complexity. I LIKE it...but I don't REALLY "get it".
By Fermi's test of general officers:
We would have to conclude that Hawking is certainly not a bad physicist! After all, if he places these bets when the odds are roughly even, then losing four straight could be pure chance.
I noticed that Reuters quotation above refer's to Peter Higgs as Being Scottish; in fact he is English. (Geordie).
His concept of betting anything was, as usual, BRILLIANT.
Many more People NOW know who he is and the scientific knowledge he represents, so they can LEARN more from him, et al.
That IS what he has spent his life doing; learning and teaching.
Bravo for the idea, Professor Hawking; it worked, of course!
"We cannot solve problems with the same thinking that created them."
Einstein