- Scientific wager
A scientific wager is a wager whose outcome is settled by
scientific method . They typically consist of an offer to pay a certain sum of money on the scientific proof or disproof of some currently uncertain statement. Some wagers have specific date restrictions for collection, but many are open. Wagers occasionally exert a powerful galvanizing effect on society and the scientific community.Notable scientists who have made scientific wagers include
Stephen Hawking andRichard Feynman .Stanford Linear Accelerator has an open book containing about 35 bets inparticle physics dating back to 1980; many are still unresolved.Famous scientific wagers
* In 1684,
Christopher Wren announced that he would give a book worth 40shilling s to anyone who could deduceKepler's laws from theinverse-square law . [cite book|last=Newton|first=Isaac|title=The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton: Volume 6|editor=Whiteside, D. T. |publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, England|pages=p 16|isbn=0521045851]Isaac Newton 's musings on this problem eventually grew into his Principia. However, Newton was too late to qualify for the book. HistorianAlan Shapiro (University of Minnesota) has stated that this episode was "undoubtedly one of the most crucial wagers in scientific history".Fact|date=February 2007
* In 1870,Alfred Russel Wallace bet John Hampden, a believer in the flat-Earth theory, that he (Wallace) could prove the flat Earth hypothesis incorrect. The sum staked was £500 (about £34,000 today adjusted for inflation) [cite web|url=http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/|title=Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a UK Pound Amount, 1830 to Present|work=Measuring Worth|publisher=Institute for the Measurement of Worth|accessdate=2008-06-26] . A test (now known as theBedford Level experiment ) involving a stretch of theOld Bedford River , inNorfolk , was agreed on: Wallace measured the curvature of the canal's surface using two markers separated by about five kilometres and suspended at equal heights above the water's surface. Using atelescope mounted 5km from one of the markers, Wallace established that the nearer one appeared to be the higher of the two. An independent referee agreed that this showed the Earth's surface to curve away from the telescope, and so Wallace won his money. However, Hampden never accepted the result and made increasingly unpleasant threats to Wallace.
* In 1959,Richard Feynman bet $1000 that no-one could construct a motor no bigger than 1/64 of an inch on a side. He lost the bet whenBill McLellan , usingamateur radio skills, constructed such a motor. Feynman had never formalized the bet because he couldn't define his terms sufficiently precisely, but paid up anyway; Feynman is also on record as saying that he was disappointed with the outcome because he had hoped his reward would stimulate some new fabrication technology, but McLellan's motor used only existing techniques. PhysicistPhilip Ball , writing inNature Materials , discusses this episode and concludes "Do we, like Feynman, always underestimate what our current technologies can achieve?"
* In 1975, cosmologist Stephen Hawking bet fellow cosmologistKip Thorne a subscription to "Penthouse" magazine for Thorne against four years of "Private Eye " for him thatCygnus X-1 would turn out not to be ablack hole . It was, so Hawking lost. It has been said that Hawking hoped to lose the bet, since so much of his own work depended upon the existence of black holes. For Hawking, then, the bet was a type of hedge.
* In 1980, biologistPaul R. Ehrlich bet economistJulian Lincoln Simon that the price of a portfolio of $200 of each of five mineral commodities (copper ,chromium ,nickel ,tin , andtungsten ) would rise over the next 10 years. He lost: by 1990, the prices had fallen to $576. "See also:Wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich ."
* In 1997 Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne made a bet withJohn Preskill on the ultimate resolution of the apparent contradiction betweenHawking radiation resulting in loss ofinformation , and a requirement ofquantum mechanics that information cannot be destroyed. Hawking and Thorne bet that information must be lost in a black hole; Preskill bet that it must not. The formal wager is: "When an initialpure quantum state undergoesgravitational collapse to form a black hole, the final state at the end of black hole evaporation will always be a pure quantum state". The stake is anencyclopedia of the winner's choice, from which "information can be recovered at will". Hawking conceded the bet in 2004. "See also:Thorne Hawking Preskill bet "Footnotes
ee also
* The efforts of photographer
Eadweard Muybridge to capture the motion of a galloping horse were not part of a wager, contrary to popular opinion.
*Pascal's wager is not a wager in the sense used in this article, nor is it scientific.
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