“I don’t want to fuck with anybody’s head here,” Hawking told the assembled scientists via his voice-simulation device, “but if time goes sideways as well as forward, there might be, like, other versions of this reality, where, say, the Roman Empire is still in charge and stuff.”

“By the way,” Hawking added, “ever think about what’d happen if you, say, went back in time and accidentally killed your own younger self? Man, that shit would be so fucked up.”

Hawking’s ideas provoked strong reaction. “I remember I was pretty wigged out when Feynman came up with that shit about antiparticles just being normal particles traveling backwards in time,” said Dr. Wei Lo-Huang of Princeton. “That was heavy enough to have to deal with. But now Hawking comes up with this? What is with that?”

Read More

A consortium of the world’s top physicists descended upon Stanford University Monday to discuss some of the difficult questions. Among the revolutionary ideas expected to be raised at the historic week-long summit is the possibility that, like, our whole universe might be just one big atom in, say, some super-duper huge thing out there.

read more | digg story