The Associated Press Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University cosmologist, bet Kip Thorne of Caltech that the star Cygnus X-1 was not a black hole. In 1990, Dr. Hawking conceded defeat. But others are far from seeing anything so significant in scientific bets. In a scientific disagreement, professional reputations are the stakes that count, he said. Maybe so, but the scientific tote board lights up with remarkable frequency.
Talk is cheap.
The handwritten, laboratory-style notebook recorded bets on highly technical subjects like competing explanations for superconductivity, in which certain chilled materials transmit electricity without resistance. It also contained more general wagers on political and economic issues. The book disappeared from the tearoom around 1990, perhaps stolen by a sore loser. Long before then, however, a chance remark by a regular bettor at Bell Labs inspired a similar book on the opposite coast. It contains 28 pages of mostly scientific bets dating to 1984.