Hawking lauds Chinese pop star for space question

British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, on his Chinese social media account, praised the lead singer of China's most popular boy band for asking about life beyond Earth.

Wang Junkai, lead singer of the wildly popular TFBOYS, posted a video of himself on his Weibo account on Friday asking Hawking, the author of A Brief History of Time, how humanity should prepare for interstellar migration in years to come.

Hawking recently warned that the human race must evacuate Earth in 600 years before soaring energy consumption turns the planet into a "ball of fire". Earlier this month, Hawking made a video appearance at a science summit organized by Tencent Holdings and pleaded for investors to support his idea of traveling to the nearest star outside our solar system in hope of finding an inhabitable planet.

The 75-year old physicist said in a video that Wang asked "an excellent question", which gave him insight into Chinese millennials and their curiosity about the future.

Wang and the band's two other members each have more than 30 million followers on their social media accounts. Sina Weibo is China's biggest social media platform, with more than 200 million active users.

Hawking, who opened his account last year, has 4.3 million followers. By comparison, British Prime Minister Theresa May has more than 900,000, and United States President Donald Trump claims 43.2 million.

Reuters