Preposterous Universe

 
Probability of discovery

I'm always on the lookout for ways to make money off of my esoteric physics knowledge. Here's one: you can bet on the chance that a big physics experiment will discover something by a certain date. Inspired by an article in New Scientist on large physics experiments, Ladbrokes betting agency is placing odds on various possibilities, and taking cash bets up until Sept. 6th. The four bets up there now are: LIGO discovering gravitational waves by 2010 at 2-1; understanding the origin of cosmic rays (presumably they mean ultra-high-energy cosmic rays) by 2010 also at 2-1; discovery of the Higgs boson by the ATLAS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider by 2010 at 3-1; and completion of a working fusion power station by 2010 at 40-1. Personally I would happily wager 100 pounds to win 300 on the Higgs being discovered, although I'm not sure what happens if the CMS experiment finds it rather than ATLAS. A fusion power plant is very unlikely. I don't know what counts as "understanding" cosmic rays, so I'd be a little leery of that one. LIGO finding gravitational waves by 2010 is a trickier one -- everybody things gravitational waves are out there, so the bet depends more on the technological progress (and funding) of the observatory, which is hard to predict.

~ posted by Sean Carroll at 1:46 PM ~ link ~ ~ ~