Stephen Hawking Hosted A Party For Time Travellers.
But no one showed.
Stephen Hawking ‘science’s brightest star’, died 14th March 2018, but his legacy will always be remembered, as well as a bit of a daredevil in school, and part of the rowing team, Hawking was an aspirational scientist, he was also a revolutionary in experimental ideas that prove or disprove the existence of time travel.
This being his party for time travelers only.
Back in June 2009, Stephen Hawking once held a party specifically for time travelers to either prove or disprove the theory that time travel exists. He even sent out the invitations at a later date in order for time travelers to travel back to when the party was being held, in order to attend it. To make this party even better, it was a champagne party complete with Krug and Hors d’ourves.
No eulogy of Stephen hawking is complete without the story of when he threw a party for time travelers pic.twitter.com/2B5pVr8x7u
— Mike Cavalier (@mikecavalier) March 14, 2018
Whilst a slightly eccentric idea, the concept was very clever, and it did give Hawking the experimental evidence that time travel doesn’t actually exist as no one actually turned up.
The invitation read: “You are cordially invited to a reception for Time Travelers.” It had also provided precise GPS coordinates, should there be any confusion over the address.
When Stephen Hawking invited time travelers to the party … pic.twitter.com/FI53Wwf2rz
— James Gleick (@JamesGleick) March 14, 2018
At the Seattle Science Festival in 2012, Hawking stated that:
“I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible, I gave a party for time-travelers, but I didn’t send out the invitations until after the party. I sat there a long time, but no one came.”
You can check out a video of the time travellers party, from the documentary ‘Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking’, here:
Whilst critics can state that the reason this idea did not actually prove anything due to time travellers possibly not knowing that the party existed, Hawking, as a reasonable scientist did not contend that his experiment was foolproof and that time travel can not one day be possible. At the festival in Seattle, he noted that fellow scientist Alert Einstein “seems to offer the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that we could travel back in time.”
However, Hawking stated one of his disagreements with the idea:
“However, it is likely that warping would trigger a bolt of radiation that would destroy the spaceship and maybe the space-time itself.”
In order to continue celebrating Stephen Hawking’s legacy, don’t forget to check out his beliefs on robots ending humanity here!
