Stephen Hawking might be excited about the Large Hadron Collider coming online this week, but he doesn't agree with all the scientists expectations of what it will produce, and he put $100 on it.

The LHC was built to try and simulate the conditions that led to "the big bang" or the creation of the universe.  The Higg bosun, named after another professor, Peter Higgs at the University of Edinburgh, who theorized that it gives mass to all other particles. 

Hawking has put his name to another claim the LHC hopes to accomplish.  The creation of a black hole.  Though Hawking says now that he thinks the possibility a black hole will be created by the LHC is less than 1%, a Nobel Prize is his if it does.

Though the creation of a black hole sounds ominous and has even more scientists proclaiming doom for the entire planet, Hawking says that any such black hole created would disapate almost immediately and would not pose a threat of any kind.  Thank "God" for that.