Scientific wager
Encyclopedia
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
and Richard Feynman
. Stanford Linear Accelerator has an open book containing about 35 bets in particle physics
dating back to 1980; many are still unresolved.
Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
whose outcome is settled by scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
. 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
Stephen Hawking
Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity...
and Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
. Stanford Linear Accelerator has an open book containing about 35 bets in particle physics
Particle physics
Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the existence and interactions of particles that are the constituents of what is usually referred to as matter or radiation. In current understanding, particles are excitations of quantum fields and interact following their dynamics...
dating back to 1980; many are still unresolved.
Notable scientific wagers
- In 1684, Christopher WrenChristopher WrenSir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...
announced that he would give a book worth 40 shillingShillingThe shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
s (equivalent to about £ in present-day terms) to anyone who could deduce Kepler's laws from the inverse-square lawInverse-square lawIn physics, an inverse-square law is any physical law stating that a specified physical quantity or strength is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity....
. Isaac NewtonIsaac NewtonSir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
's musings on this problem eventually grew into his PrincipiaPhilosophiae Naturalis Principia MathematicaPhilosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Latin for "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", often referred to as simply the Principia, is a work in three books by Sir Isaac Newton, first published 5 July 1687. Newton also published two further editions, in 1713 and 1726...
. However, Newton was too late to qualify for the book. Historian Alan Shapiro (University of Minnesota) has stated that this episode was "undoubtedly one of the most crucial wagers in scientific history". - In 1870, Alfred Russel WallaceAlfred Russel WallaceAlfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
bet a flat-Earth theoristFlat EarthThe Flat Earth model is a belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period ...
named John Hampden that he could prove the flat Earth hypothesis incorrect. The sum staked was £500 (equivalent to about £ in present day terms). A test (now known as the Bedford Level experimentBedford Level experimentThe Bedford Level Experiment is a series of observations carried out along a six-mile length of the Old Bedford River on the Bedford Level, Norfolk, England, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was an attempt to determine the shape of the Earth...
) involving a stretch of the Old Bedford RiverOld Bedford RiverThe Old Bedford River is an artificial, partial diversion of the waters of the River Great Ouse in the Fens of Cambridgeshire, England. It was named after the fourth Earl of Bedford who contracted with the local Commission of Sewers to drain the Great Level of the Fens beginning in 1630.The idea of...
, in NorfolkNorfolkNorfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
, 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 a telescopeTelescopeA telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...
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 FeynmanRichard FeynmanRichard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
bet $1,000 (equivalent to about $ in present day terms) that no-one could construct a motor no bigger than 1/64 of an inch on a side. He lost the bet when Bill McLellanWilliam McLellan (nanotechnology)William Howard McLellan was an American electrical engineer.In December 1959, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman offered two challenges relating to nanotechnology at the annual meeting of the Americal Physical Society, held that year at Caltech, offering a $1000 prize to the first...
, using amateur radioAmateur radioAmateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...
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. Physicist Philip BallPhilip BallPhilip Ball is an English science writer. He holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and a doctorate in physics from Bristol University. He was an editor for the journal Nature for over 10 years. He now writes a regular column in Chemistry World...
, writing in Nature MaterialsNature MaterialsNature Materials, is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature Publishing Group. It was launched in September 2002. Vincent Dusastre is the launching and current chief editor...
, discusses this episode and concludes "Do we, like Feynman, always underestimate what our current technologies can achieve?" - In 1975, cosmologistPhysical cosmologyPhysical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. For most of human history, it was a branch of metaphysics and religion...
Stephen Hawking bet fellow cosmologist Kip ThorneKip ThorneKip Stephen Thorne is an American theoretical physicist, known for his prolific contributions in gravitation physics and astrophysics and for having trained a generation of scientists...
a subscription to Penthouse magazine for Thorne against four years of Private EyePrivate EyePrivate Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
for him that Cygnus X-1Cygnus X-1Cygnus X-1 is a well-known galactic X-ray source in the constellation Cygnus. It was discovered in 1964 during a rocket flight and is one of the strongest X-ray sources seen from Earth, producing a peak X-ray flux density of 2.3 Wm−2Hz−1...
would turn out not to be a black holeBlack holeA black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...
. 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 hedgeHedge (finance)A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses that may be incurred by a companion investment.A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insurance, forward contracts, swaps, options, many types of...
. - The Simon–Ehrlich wager. In 1980, biologistBiologyBiology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
Paul R. EhrlichPaul R. EhrlichPaul Ralph Ehrlich is an American biologist and educator who is the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology. By training he is an entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera , but...
bet economistEconomicsEconomics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
Julian Lincoln SimonJulian Lincoln SimonJulian Lincoln Simon was a professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute at the time of his death, after previously serving as a longtime business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Simon wrote many books and...
that the price of a portfolio of $200 of each of five mineral commodities (copperCopperCopper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
, chromiumChromiumChromium is a chemical element which has the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6. It is a steely-gray, lustrous, hard metal that takes a high polish and has a high melting point. It is also odorless, tasteless, and malleable...
, nickelNickelNickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...
, tinTinTin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...
, and tungstenTungstenTungsten , also known as wolfram , is a chemical element with the chemical symbol W and atomic number 74.A hard, rare metal under standard conditions when uncombined, tungsten is found naturally on Earth only in chemical compounds. It was identified as a new element in 1781, and first isolated as...
) would rise over the next 10 years. He lost: by 1990, the prices had fallen to $576. - The Thorne-Hawking-Preskill betThorne-Hawking-Preskill betThe Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet refers to a public bet on the outcome of the black hole information paradox made in 1997 by physics theorists Kip Thorne, Stephen Hawking and John Preskill....
. In 1997 Stephen HawkingStephen HawkingStephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity...
and Kip ThorneKip ThorneKip Stephen Thorne is an American theoretical physicist, known for his prolific contributions in gravitation physics and astrophysics and for having trained a generation of scientists...
made a bet with John PreskillJohn PreskillJohn Phillip Preskill is an American theoretical physicist and the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology ....
on the ultimate resolution of the apparent contradiction between Hawking radiationHawking radiationHawking radiation is a thermal radiation with a black body spectrum predicted to be emitted by black holes due to quantum effects. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking, who provided a theoretical argument for its existence in 1974, and sometimes also after the physicist Jacob Bekenstein...
resulting in loss of informationInformationInformation in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
, and a requirement of quantum mechanicsQuantum mechanicsQuantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
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 was: "When an initial pure quantum state undergoes gravitational collapseGravitational collapseGravitational collapse is the inward fall of a body due to the influence of its own gravity. In any stable body, this gravitational force is counterbalanced by the internal pressure of the body, in the opposite direction to the force of gravity...
to form a black hole, the final state at the end of black hole evaporation will always be a pure quantum state". The stake was an encyclopaedia of the winner's choice, from which "information can be recovered at will". Hawking conceded the bet in 2004, giving a Baseball encyclopaedia to John Preskill. Thorne hasn't officially conceded.
See also
- The efforts of photographer Eadweard MuybridgeEadweard MuybridgeEadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible...
to capture the motion of a galloping horse were not part of a wager, contrary to popular opinion. - Pascal's wagerPascal's WagerPascal's Wager, also known as Pascal's Gambit, is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Blaise Pascal that even if the existence of God could not be determined through reason, a rational person should wager as though God exists, because one living life...
is not a wager in the sense used in this article, nor is it scientific.