[Bymnbypeten]

Oct 20, 2009
Hawking bets 50 pounds ($113) collider won't work

LONDON - RENOWNED British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has bet 50 pounds ($113) that a mega-experiment this week will not find an elusive particle seen as a holy grail of cosmic science.

In the most complex scientific experiment ever undertaken, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be switched on Tuesday night, accelerating sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light before smashing them together.

Despite the expected scientific benefits, some fear the experiment could create black holes that will eventually swallow the Earth.

One German professor even led a last-ditch legal attempt to stop the experiment, while scientists working on the LHC said they had been sent death threats.

'The LHC will increase the energy at which we can study particle interactions by a factor of four. According to present thinking, this should be enough to discover the Higgs particle,' Professor Hawking said on BBC radio.

'I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of 100 dollars that we won't find the Higgs,' said Prof Hawking, whose books including A Brief History of Time have sought to popularise study of stellar physics. -- AFP