FOR those who enjoy the occasional wager, but know more about quark-gluon plasmas and minimal supersymmetry than they do about thoroughbreds or penalty shootouts, the Large Hadron Collider (see article) provides an ideal opportunity to pit their wits against those of the bookmakers. Backing the favourite—the detection by the LHC of a Higgs boson, an elusive object hypothesised to give mass to other particles—gets odds of 11/10 from William Hill, a British bookmaker, as long as it happens before the end of 2012 (which is odd, as the LHC is scheduled to be closed for the whole of that year). Those who think that deadline will not be met can place their own bets at 6/4 on.

For many physicists, the LHC is the most important experiment on Earth. For Paddy Power, a bookmaker based in Dublin, its activities fall into the “novelty betting” category. Alongside taking bets on conjectures such as when Facebook will attract its billionth user and the chances of Nick Clegg being made David Cameron's new baby's godfather, the firm also has a book on what the LHC will discover this year. As is its standard practice, Paddy Power recruited experts in the field and fed their thoughts into a computer model to generate the initial odds. Weight of money wagered then provides the fine-tuning.

The Higgs was originally the runaway favourite, with odds of 100/1 on—even shorter than those offered by William Hill—so Paddy Power dropped it altogether, leaving dark matter as 11/10 favourite, black holes at 8/1, dark energy at 12/1 and proof of God's existence at 100/1.

Betting on other scientific questions is also popular. The firm has taken more than 500 bets in recent months on which volcano will erupt next. In April a hitherto obscure Icelandic mountain called Katla leapt from nowhere to favourite, with odds of 7/4, following the eruption of its previously less-active neighbour, Eyjafjallajokull. If Katla erupted now it would cost the company around €10,000 ($13,000). Mt Unzen, in Japan, is the second-favourite, at 4/1, and Nyiragongo, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, comes in third at 8/1.

Climate-change sceptics and believers alike might be interested in Paddy Power's book on the world polar-bear population, as estimated by the WWF, a global conservation group, at the end of next year. Bets around the current estimated population of 20,000-25,000 attract the shortest odds, 6/4, while pessimists opting for under 10,000 bears can get 20/1.

The bookies, of course, usually win. That is how they stay in business. But sometimes they must get rather nervous. In 2004, for example, Ladbrokes, another British firm, opened a book on a series of science-based bets that expired at the end of last year. The finding of intelligent life on Titan, Saturn's largest moon (10,000/1), the building of a nuclear-fusion power station (100/1), the detection of a Higgs boson (6/1) and proof of the origins of cosmic rays (4/1) attracted only around 100 bets in total, exposing the bookmaker to maximum losses of some £130,000 ($200,000).

The story was different, though, for the fifth wager—that gravitational waves would be detected. News that the bookmaker was offering 500/1 against this happening spread rapidly among the small group of physicists and astronomers searching for such waves. After a flurry of bets, including one for £50, Ladbrokes cut the odds to 100/1, but that was still not enough to stem the flow. Jim Hough of Glasgow University, the principle British investigator on GEO600, an Anglo-German gravitational-wave detector, placed a £25 bet at those odds after being alerted to them by a journalist on the Daily Telegraph. He was one of nine punters who got in at 100/1 before the odds were cut again, to 10/1. They then fell steadily to 2/1 by the time the book was closed a fortnight later. Sadly for both science and scientific gamblers, Ladbrokes's initial instinct proved correct. No gravitational waves were detected by the deadline (nor subsequently), and the firm cleaned up.

Some science bets take “novelty” to a new level. When the LHC was switched on two years ago, William Hill announced it had won £119 from 12 people who had wagered that the start of the giant experiment would trigger the end of the world. In this case, in a departure from normal practice, the bookmaker had allowed the customers in question to set their own odds.