Stephen Hawking to host his first Reddit AMA next week

Considering all the negative press Reddit has been getting over the last couple of weeks, the self-styled “front page of the Internet” could certainly use some positive news to restore the balance — how about an Ask Me Anything with the world’s most famous theoretical physicist?

Yes that’s right: Stephen Hawking is taking part in his first ever AMA, though it won’t quite work in the usual way. The world-renowned English scientist is going to spread out his Ask Me Anything session over a week rather than several hours. The AMA starts on Monday, July 27 and runs until Tuesday, August 4, giving you plenty of time to get your questions in.

As you’ll know if you’ve been watching the trials and tribulations of Reddit in recent times, it was the sacking of AMA moderator Victoria Taylor that let to several subreddits going dark in protest. The fallout of the dismissal — coming just weeks after a spat between moderators and users over censorship and site rules — eventually led to the resignation of Ellen Pao as the CEO of Reddit.

Reddit bosses will be hoping the Hawking AMA can turn the site’s fortunes around. The Verge reports the question-and-answer session is being organized in associated with Wired and Nokia and will be hosted on the r/science subreddit — head over there from Monday to submit your questions on black holes, the meaning of life and artificial intelligence, and you might find the great man responds to you online.

Hawking most recently hit the headlines after signing up for Russian venture capitalist Yuri Milner’s initiative to find alien life: The $100 million project aims to uncover much more about the universe than we’ve ever known about before, and possibly expose an extraterrestrial or two along the way. If you don’t want to ask the physicist anything about alien life, you could always pose a question about the end of the universe instead.

from Planet GS via John Jason Fallows on Inoreader http://ift.tt/1OFTUwU
David Nield