Stephen Hawking Defies Gravity

Just look at that photograph!

Doesn’t it just spread a big smile across your face seeing wheelchair-confined Stephen Hawking floating wildly in zero gravity and grinning like a kid?

The 65-year-old scientist recently freed himself from the confines of gravity with the help of a Boeing 727 that performed eight parabolic maneuvers, each of which created a condition of zero-gravity for 25 seconds. The genius physicist, who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease, was apparently scheduled for just one parabolic stunt but enjoyed it so much that another seven were added on. Check out the video here.

The flight, which was operated by Zero Gravity Corp and normally costs $3,500, was in preparation for Hawking’s 2009 journey into outer space on Virgin Galactic. Everything must have gone well because upon returning to earth, he gleefully proclaimed in his electronic voice, “Space, here I come!”

Now that just warms my heart.