Cosmic Log: Market places its bets on Oscar

By Alan Boyle

Markets online, at least as well as surveys, when it comes to predicting the outcome of the election, but they are as good at predicting the Oscar?

If the Hollywood Stock Exchange trading is any indication, you should bet big on "the King's Speech," a film about the struggle of King George VI to overcome his stuttering problem on the eve of World War II. AwardOptions of the exchange market works like an online futures market using play money, but rather than win real money. Actions in Oscar-nominated movies and actors can be bought and sold. When it's time to settle on a Sunday, the "investors" who chose the winners get a payout of $25-per share in money games. The losers get nothing.

With this in mind, here are the best prospects as of 5: 35 pm ET Friday:

Best picture: "King speech" for $ 17.83 per diluted share.Best Director: David Fincher for "The Social Network" ($ 12.90), in a tight contest with Tom Hooper for "Speech of the King" ($ 11.29).best actor: Colin Firth for ' Speech to the King "($ 22.01).Best Actress: Natalie Portman for "Black Swan" ($ 20.31).actor: Christian Bale for "The hunt" ($ 18.92).actress:Melissa Leo for "The hunt" ($ 15.47).Adapted Screenplay: "Social network" ($ 17.90).original screenplay: "Speech of the King" ($ 17.45).

The idea behind prediction markets is that they distill the wisdom of crowds — particularly knowledgeable crowds — about a complex phenomenon. Investors who are more confident about their informed opinion must be willing to invest more, and you can back out of its opinion to cut losses if the market is not going your way.

This is the way that works with the Iowa electronic markets, that is the only u.s. market estimation allowed to work with real money. Operation of the market from College of Business at the University of Iowa Tippie as a project of research and studies have shown that the IEM is at least as accurate as traditional surveys to project presidential election results.

Researchers of the IEM were using prediction markets to not only predict the elections, but also to predict the course of influenza epidemics ... and showing at the box office as well. So how about Academy Awards?

"Is the kind of thing that best adapts to your office pool online markets anymore," Tom Snee, a spokesman for the University of Iowa, said to me today.

Unlike the elections or performance at the box office, the outcomes of Oscar are decided by a relatively small group of members of the Academy and are not currently 5,991 — talking about how they voted. "There's really only a small number of people who know what's going on," said Snee. "There is no information to aggregate, it's just people speculating. Then there's a lot we can do. "

Although the IEM remains out of Oscar prognostication, business is increasingly heavily in business at the box office. M.b.a. students and Faculty of the University are already engaged in their most ambitious experiment yet, designed to predict the gross box office of four weeks for "The adjustment Bureau," a thriller with Matt Damon that opens next Friday. The prognosticators are developing algorithms that represent the past performance of Damon, movie co-stars of Damon (Emily Blunt and Jon Stewart), openings of other films of the weekend, the time of the year (March, isn't the biggest season for new movies), the buzz of advance and other factors.

"This is the same type of analysis performed marketing professional in their work, so that gives them an idea of what to expect in the workplace and helps you apply what you learned in a class where there are real dollars at stake," Thomas Gruca, Professor of marketing that is overseeing the competition, said in a press release.

As for the Oscars, a way to measure the wisdom of crowds is to compare the result with predictions from a living, breathing experts. Someone like, say, our columnist of "Scoop" very own, Courtney Hazlett. Here are his best guesses in seven categories similar to Oscar as of Friday afternoon:

Best picture: "Speech by the King."Best Director: Tom Hooper for "speech by the King."best actor: Colin Firth for ' Speech to the King. "Best Actress: Annette Bening in "The Kids Are all right."actor: Geoffrey Rush to "speech by the King."actress: Jacki Weaver for "Animal Kingdom" (with a nod Melissa Leo).Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin to "social network".

And just to pile things, here are the market leaders from the Intrade prediction market for six comparable categories of Oscar, expressed as a percentage of 5: 35 p.m. ET. Intrade, which is headquartered in Ireland, working with real money virtual rather than cash:

Best picture: "Speech of the King" (81.9%). Best Director: David Fincher for "The Social Network" (60%).: best actor Colin Firth for ' Speech to the King "(94.9%). best actress: Natalie Portman "Black Swan" (88.4%).: supporting actor Christian Bale for "The Fighter" (89.9%).: actress Melissa Leo for "The Fighter" (68.7%).

So it sounds like a classic competition human-vs-market to me. Check back here Sunday evening to see how the actual results compared to the forecast — and feel free to register their predictions as comments below. If you make a perfect prediction for the first six categories (best film, Director, actor, actress and supporting roles), I'll send you a pair of glasses 3D autograph as a reward. But the timestamp on the estimate must be within 12: 01 a.m. ET on Sunday, and will not accept only your first estimate (which means that multiple guesses are not allowed).

I realize that the cardboard 3D glasses aren't quite as glitzy as an Academy Award. On the other hand, the good thing is a statuette of gold when you're watching a film like this?

Read more on prediction markets (and the Oscars):

Join the community of Cosmic Log by clicking the "like" on our Facebook page or by msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. For more information on the book by Alan Boyle on Pluto and the search for planets, refer to "the case for Pluto."

Cosmic Log: how serious is space solar power?

Femica Studios

Conception of this artist shows a satellite based on space equipped with photoelectric cells, in addition to an antenna that transmits energy thrown down to Earth like a beam of microwaves. Click the image for a graphical presentation, showing how the space-based solar works.

By Alan Boyle

The idea of power beaming down from outer space is revealed in science fiction stories and studies of Government for decades. Commercial offers were affected, prototype satellites have been proposed, international initiatives have been announced. But any real progress towards solar energy systems based on developing space? This is what we are talking about this Sunday on "virtually speaking science."

Few companies have been working on the technology of power beaming challenge from point to point (B), in the form of laser or microwaves. In 2009, a company called LaserMotive won $ 900,000 a best secured by NASA for robot powered bundle. The company showed last year that they could maintain a quadrocopter air throughout the night, only a laser beam focusing on its generating arrays. And in 2008, managed energy technology has shown a RF wireless transmission system that could send a beam of energy on a small scale over a distance of up to 90 miles.

But all these experiments are firmly grounded on planet Earth. Anyone who has gotten to the point of building hardware for experiments radiant in outer space?

"None of them that I know of is at the turning point of steel," said Air Force Col. M.V. "Coyote" Smith, who will be our guest in show on Sunday. Smith led a study of 2007 for the Department of Defense set out a scenario for the military use of solar energy based on space, which has submitted a proposal for a follow-up to a project of satellite power-beaming called "a light bulb."

The idea was to bundle enough power from space to make only a small LED light shine. Smith figured that $ 10 million would be enough to go ahead with the satellite project and learn how to overcome the technological and regulatory barriers that may face large international satellites. But the Pentagon didn't go for the idea.

"Is a new area of mission", explained to Smith, "and in this era of austere budget, it is difficult to attract an organization sponsor".

For now, Smith is pinning its hopes on small business to get the ball rolling. "I think what you're going to make is that the business community is going to step up to the plate and minor studies that would lure the attention," he said.

What do you think? PG & E customers will be getting some of their electricity from space by 2016, as the California-based company, Solaren promised a couple of years ago? Or solar space will stay in the realm of science fiction for decades to come? Tune into our show on your computer at 8 p.m. ET Sunday, or join the studio audience to the virtual world of Second Life. (To get there, here is the SLurl).

Indeed, it is also possible to see the Oscar TV while you're listening to "virtually speaking science" on your computer. My Second Life avatar is probably adapting compared to some of the actors ' ll be seeing. Wish I could say the same thing for my face before life.

To learn more about solar space:

My co-host on "virtually speaking science" is Robin Snelson's Institute for space studies. Listen to the podcast from our show February 13, which included Tim Pickens, team leader of the pioneers of space rocket city. And stay tuned for our program on Pluto and suborbital spaceflight on March 13th, the 81st anniversary of the announcement of the discovery of Pluto.

Join the community of Cosmic Log by clicking the "like" on our Facebook page or by msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. For more information on the book by Alan Boyle on Pluto and the search for planets, refer to "the case for Pluto."

Cosmic Log: Alarm as an astronaut

By Alan Boyle

Ever since it was Apollo, NASA has been beaming up melodies to begin the working day for the astronauts to travel. For the last mission of the space shuttle Discovery, the space agency has asked the public to choose a couple of fitting wakeup songs from Top 40 list. More than 2.4 million votes have been registered in the online contest and the winners are "blue sky" by Big Head Todd and the Monsters (with 722,662 votes) and the initials of "star trek" by Alexander Courage (671,134 votes). Songsters have also presented more than 1,300 original compositions for consideration as future wakeup songs.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you too can wake up as an astronaut. Just have the mission control team, click on the button "play" and crank up the volume.

There will be another vote online for the melodies to be played during the wakeup Swan STS-127 Endeavour in April. Stay tuned ...