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Did Stephen Hawking Owe a Nobel Physicist a Subscription To a Softcore Porn Magazine? (vice.com)
dmoberhaus writes: In 1974, Stephen Hawking made a bet with Nobel Prize-winning cosmologist Kip Thorne about a black hole. The wager was a subscription to the softcore porn magazine Penthouse for Thorne or a subscription to "Private Eye" (basically the British equivalent of The Onion) for Hawking. Hawking ultimately lost the bet, but did he ever pay up? Motherboard dug around to find out if Hawking settled this infamous bet.
Motherboard's Daniel Oberhaus wasn't able to get ahold of Thorne, but did manage to track down a copy of the obscure 1997 straight-to-VHS documentary called Black Holes, which is the only evidence that the wager even happened. "In 1990, Stephen Hawking happened to be visiting Los Angeles and he broke into my office and thumb printed off on this bet," Thorne recalls in the video. Oberhaus writes: "Although the status of Cygnus X-1 was an open question in the 70s, by the 90s mounting evidence had forced Hawking to concede the wager. The bet was recorded in a handwritten note scrawled on a piece of card which is shown in the film. It read: 'Whereas Stephen Hawking has a large investment in general relativity and black holes and desires an insurance policy, and whereas Kip Thorne likes to live dangerously without an insurance policy, therefore be it resolved that Stephen Hawking bets 1 year's subscription to 'Penthouse' as against Kip Thorne's wager of a 4-year subscription to 'Private Eye,' that Cygnus X-1 does not contain a black hole of mass above the Chandrasekhar limit.' 'I had given Thorne a subscription to Penthouse, much to his wife's disgust,' a smiling Hawking says in the film."
Motherboard's Daniel Oberhaus wasn't able to get ahold of Thorne, but did manage to track down a copy of the obscure 1997 straight-to-VHS documentary called Black Holes, which is the only evidence that the wager even happened. "In 1990, Stephen Hawking happened to be visiting Los Angeles and he broke into my office and thumb printed off on this bet," Thorne recalls in the video. Oberhaus writes: "Although the status of Cygnus X-1 was an open question in the 70s, by the 90s mounting evidence had forced Hawking to concede the wager. The bet was recorded in a handwritten note scrawled on a piece of card which is shown in the film. It read: 'Whereas Stephen Hawking has a large investment in general relativity and black holes and desires an insurance policy, and whereas Kip Thorne likes to live dangerously without an insurance policy, therefore be it resolved that Stephen Hawking bets 1 year's subscription to 'Penthouse' as against Kip Thorne's wager of a 4-year subscription to 'Private Eye,' that Cygnus X-1 does not contain a black hole of mass above the Chandrasekhar limit.' 'I had given Thorne a subscription to Penthouse, much to his wife's disgust,' a smiling Hawking says in the film."
That showed that piece of paper, and it appeared in several books. The original article is therefore false on the ability to verify the bet took place.
Did Hawking pay up? I know Hawking said he did and I'm fairly sure Thorne has confirmed that.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Whilst it does have a humorous slant on the news, buried in Private Eye are often serious reports of corruption, nepotism, government mismanagement. etc.
Private Eye is a serious journal which dresses up its allegations in humor. The Onion, so far as I'm aware, just goes for the laughs.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Given that Hawking mentioned it, and his reasoning for the bet in the book he wrote (A Brief History of Time), then i'd say yes.
He explained that he even bet against himself somewhat so that the consolation of him being wrong would be that at least he'd get a magazine subscription out of it, if i recall.
In the pre-internet days, Penthouse was considered hardcore porn, not softcore porn.
Maybe in Puritanville, USA, but not anywhere else. Hardcore porn has a reasonably formal definition - it basically shows people in the act of actually doing it (not just pretending to be doing it). Penthouse, on the other hand, essentially only ever showed pictures of nude and semi-nude women.
Stephan
Private Eye is not "similar to The Onion". It is a satirical magazine which puts a satirical and humorous slant on actual news. It's a serious magazine.
You are totally wrong. Penthouse switched to full on hardcore porn showing penetration years ago. Tho I have not seen one in many years so they may have changed back. Regardless, for a long time Penthouse has been fully hardcore.
Well, I'm wrong en detail - didn't know about the switch (they switched in 1998, and apparently back in 2005, according to Wikipedia - man, I'm OLD!), but pre-internet would be pre-1982, or, if you assume the web, pre-1989. About 10 years of porn on the web before Penthouse went hardcore...
Stephan
Stephen Hawking was at Caltech in the 1990s giving a public talk when he conceded this bet. He visited Caltech for a semester twice while I was in grad school there between 1990 and 1996. I remember one physics colloquium; I understood about the first five minutes of the talk. This was in the middle of an ongoing theoretical project where both of them were trying to answer the question: could an arbitrarily advanced civilization, constrained only by physics but not by financial or engineering considerations, construct a traversible wormhole? The question came about when Carl Sagan called up Kip to ask that question. (This was reported by Kip when he was giving a talk about black holes to the intro Physics course at Caltech; I was a TA at the time.) In the physics colloquium that Stephen was giving, he and Kip got into a bit of an argument at the end during questions, and I remember Stephen saying something along the lines of "even somebody as tough and powerful as you, Kip, wouldn't survive that".
Each time he visited, Stephen also gave a public talk, which was *extremely* well attended. Indeed, at at least one of them, I didn't make it into the auditorium where the talk itself happened, but into another auditorium on campus where they were (what we would today call) live streaming the talk. At the end, when Stephen was taking questions, it would take him a couple of minutes to compose the reply on his keypad thingy. To keep everybody from getting restless, Kip would talk to the audience. During one of these questions, Kip was telling everybody about the bet. When Stephen's answer came out, he'd decided not to answer the question, but instead conceded the bet to Kip. It was quite fun to watch.
Many people were there to see this; I'd be surprised if there weren't others reading this thread who had seen it.....