Hawking’s Bets

The awesome, spectacular announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson yesterday was a crowning achievement in physics, and will hopefully lead to awesome new science.

It’ll also lead to less money in Stephen Hawking’s wallet. Hawking bet Michigan University’s Gordon Kane $100 that the Higgs boson wouldn’t be found.

That reminded me a bit of a previous bet Hawking made, regarding black holes and information. Hawking lost that bet too.

I know that correlation doesn’t equal causation, but given this track record, if I were Stephen Hawking, I’d be finding someone to take a bet that they won’t discover a unified field theory in my lifetime.

I mean, it can’t hurt, right?