Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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RE: virus: Brits bet on gravity wave discovery
« on: 2004-09-01 13:38:28 » |
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[Blunderov] I gravitated to this rather interesting site today - 'The
Register'. If you think of it as a neo-Luddite nightmare you won't be
too far wrong.
Best Regards.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/01/gravity_waves/
Brits bet on gravity wave discovery
By Lucy Sherriff
Published Wednesday 1st September 2004 08:22 GMT
The Great British Public is so sure that scientists will discover
gravity waves within the next six years that Ladbrokes, the bookies, has
had to slash the odds it is prepared to offer anyone wanting to bet on
it.
The betting firm offered odds on five scientific breakthroughs being
made by 2010. It reportedly offered 10,000/1 against life being found on
Saturn's moon Titan, although the site does not show this as an
available bet at the moment, and originally set the odds of discovering
gravitational waves at 500/1.
The odds looked too good to the punters, though, and the company has had
to shorten the odds to 10-1 as a result, according to Warren Lush, a
Ladbrokes spokesman, speaking on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"We had to shorten odds to 10/1, but when I was asking experts,
physicists about this they were very very divided and 80 per cent of
those I spoke to thought it had no chance of being discovered by 2010."
Since that broadcast, the odds have shortened further and are now just
6/1.
Gravitational waves are distortions in space time predicted by
Einstein's theory of general relativity. He predicted that two stars in
orbit around one another would gradually lose energy from their orbits
in the form of gravitational radiation. The orbits would gradually
collapse, resulting in shorter and shorter orbital periods.
There is some observational evidence that supports the theory: two
astronomers (Taylor and Weisberg) have recorded a shortening of the
orbital period of a binary pulsar, but that comes under the heading of
'circumstantial evidence'. For the bookies to pay out, the waves must be
conclusively identified.
Lush says that since the odds have been made available, he has been
inundated with calls from scientists explaining to him how wrong (and
right) his odds are, a reaction we at El Reg are most used to.
Bets will be settled on the basis of reports published in New Scientist
magazine, the bookies say. R
Those odds in full:
Understanding the origin of cosmic rays by 2010: 4/1
The ATLAS experiment at CERN finding the Higgs Boson by 2010: 6/1
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) detecting
gravitational waves by 2010: 6/1
Building a fusion power station by 2010: 50/1
Read more about gravity waves here (pdf).
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