Fears that the world might end because of a grand scientific
experiment that begins on Wednesday have given way to something
less urgent: Stephen Hawking may lose $100, or gain a Nobel
Prize. Those stakes are tied to the Large Hadron Collider, which
is scheduled to rev up for the first time on Wednesday at
roughly 3:30 a.m. Eastern time following 13 years of planning,
$8 billion in spending and immeasurable anticipation, chronicled
by Dennis Overbye of The New York Times. Dr. Hawking will be one
of the many physicists watching in hopes of greeting answers to
some of physics’ biggest questions when experimental data starts
to stream from the collider. But he also has a dog in this
fight. His 1974 theory on black holes could be experimentally
proven — if the collider succeeds in creating black holes in the
first place. “If the L.H.C. were to produce little black holes,
I don’t think there’s any doubt I would get a Nobel prize, if
they showed the properties I predict,” Dr. Hawking told BBC
Radio today. “However,