By Stephen Hawking, who died on Wednesday aged 76, was a legendary physicist with a unique ability to translate his dense scientific theories for a mass audience.
And Newsweek notes one of the most famous ways he did that was how he, to his mind, proved that time travel doesn't exist. And it involves booze.
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During his Discovery channel series, Into the Universe, Hawking talked about how he knows that time travel doesn't exist: because no time travellers showed up to a party he threw for them.
"I like simple experiments — and champagne," he said in the special. "So I've combined two of my favourite things to see if time travel from the future to the past is possible."
[The invitation Hawking sent to time travellers]
He threw a welcome reception for future time travellers, but didn't let anyone know about it until after the party happened.
So time travellers from the future would be able to see the invitation, which offered the exact location and time, and they could travel back in time to attend the party.
Hawking was a pretty well-regarded guy, and he probably wasn't used to having nobody show up to his parties. But even still, the party was empty.
"What a shame," he joked in his documentary. "I was hoping a future Miss Universe was going to step through the door." So he concluded that time travel, at least from the future to the past, was impossible.
"I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible," Hawking told Ars Technica in 2012. "I gave a party for time travellers, but I didn't send out the invitations until after the party. I sat there a long time, but no-one came."
Naturally, Hawking had a much more scientific explanation behind his idea that so-called "wormholes" to the past don't exist, but it's simpler to think about it using his time-travel party example.
Why wouldn't a time-traveling tourist show up for some free champagne if they could?
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