Newsy: Stephen Hawking Predicts Time Travel

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking claims time travel is possible.

"Can we open a portal to the past? Or find a shortcut to the future?" (Discovery)

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking is making headlines: First, last week for his claim that aliens will come exploit planet earth for its resources. And now — another huge claim: that time travel is possible.

In The Discovery Channel documentary “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking,” Hawking says that people could be able to travel through time — if they can build a big enough ship or create enough energy to form a wormhole: "...they could deploy millions of mirrors in space, circling the whole sun, feeding the power to one single collection point… Such power might make it possible to walk the very fabric of space, and create a portal called a wormhole. This portal would act like a shortcut allowing them to travel huge distances in a blink of an eye.”

Hawking says we would only be able to travel forward in time, not backward. He says traveling backward could change the future, which would defy the principles of the universe. CNET is excited about the idea: “…technology will follow an inevitable path toward the unimaginable…”

Hawking made the time travel announcement in an article he wrote for The Daily Mail. The Discovery Channel documentary premieres May 9. Geekosystem.comsays the timing is certainly suspicious: “…if Hawking has to give some writers…misconstruable headlines and pop-up jokes in exchange for a lively debate about science and publicity for his new TV show… so be it."

Hawking says he has thought about time travel and the possibility of an alien takeover for a long time, but never discussed it, for fear he’d be labeled a “crank.”Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert sarcastically refutes Hawking: "...which brings me to my next installment of my long running series, Stephen Hawking is such an A-Hole... Here is what he had to say about the prospect of Mankind encountering aliens.

'The outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in the America, which didn't turn out very well for the native Americans.' ... More importantly why do the aliens get to be Columbus in this scenario, I think we humans have a proven track record of raping and pillaging." 

So what do you think? Is time travel possible? Or does Hawking need to come back down to Earth?

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