Made wealthy by science (almost)
Normally i read my New Scientist as soon as it arrives. Last week I didn’t, as I was reading a rather good book at the time, in fact it was several days before I got round to reading my magazine.
The cover story was about some of the big experiments happening in the world of physics, but what really caught my eye was that New Scientist had teamed up with Ladbrokes to offer odds on these experiments achieving their aims by 2010. Most of the odds seemed pretty reasonable, eg understanding cosmic rays at 4/1 and finding intelligent life on Titan at 10,000/1. What caught my eye was LIGO detecting gravity waves at 500/1. I’m not a gambling man but with odds like that…
Of course everyone else who reads New Scientst thought the same thing, and they all read their copies sooner than me. By the time i got to the ladbrokes site the odds were down to 3/1. Someone out there has made a lot of money…
BBC coverage
Ladbrokes