Stephen Hawking

Another year is winding up, so it's time to look back at the scientific breakthroughs that excited us this year. From innovative new materials that open the door to more advanced tools and products, to discoveries that continue to push the borders of human knowledge, 2018 didn't fail to deliver.

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away earlier this year, but his legacy to science will live on. His final theory on the origin of the universe has now been published, and it offers an interesting departure from earlier ideas about the nature of the “multiverse.”

With our current technology, the journey to Alpha Centauri would take millennia, but there are plans for tiny probes that could do it in as little as 20 years. Now, a physicist has detailed a method to use magnetic sails as a braking system to slow craft down to a cruising speed once they get there.

The University of Cambridge has made Stephen Hawking’s 1966 PhD thesis freely available online to anyone wishing to download it. The work, "Properties of expanding universes," was released with the permission of Dr Hawking through the University's Apollo digital Open Access repository.

Gizmag speaks to iBrain inventor Dr Philip Low about the potential applications of the device.

Along with daughter Lucy, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking is planning to send his digitized DNA into space as part of NCsoft’s Operation Immortality.