You bet (Image: Frederick M. Brown/Getty)

STEPHEN HAWKING is something of a gambler when it comes to physics, placing bets on everything from the action of black holes to the discovery of gravitational waves. The bad news for Hawking is that a touch of “quantum smearing” could significantly lower his chances of winning his latest wager.

In 2002, Hawking bet his University of Cambridge colleague Neil Turok that cosmologists would soon discover primordial gravitational waves and so verify the theory of inflation. Our universe is thought to have undergone inflation – a period of exponential expansion – a fraction …