Stephen Hawking is a survivor. He's been valiantly holding his own against ALS disease for 50 years now, but it's still taking its toll. The cheek-twitching mechanism he's been using to talk for the past 10 years isn't quite as efficient as it used to be. He's down to one word per minute at times, but Intel's CTO is…

The discovery of the Higgs boson is kind of a big deal. Stephen Hawking certainly thinks so: he says it should net Peter Higgs, the scientist after which the particle is named, a Nobel prize. But it's not all good news, because the result has lost him $100.

A team of Stanford scientists has revealed that it plans to sit Stephen Hawking down in a room, place a device on his head, and literally hack his brain to work out what's going on in there.

Stephen Hawking is perhaps the finest mind alive on the planet. Still, it's nice to hear he occasionally shares the worries of the rest of us. In a recent interview with New Scientist, he was asked what he thought about most during the day. His answer? "Women. They are a complete mystery." [New Scientist; Image:

Sometimes who you work with can be just as important as the job itself. And if physics is your passion the opportunity of a lifetime has just popped up, as Stephen Hawking is now looking for a new assistant.

Stephen Hawking says heaven is just a fairy tale for those scared of death. If that means there's no hell, I'd be sad. There's always BBQs and cold beer in hell—and everyone knows all the words to the songs.

It's been a big year for the space sciences. The first privately-held spacecraft orbited our world, the blackest material in history was created, researchers expanded the list of possible sources of life threefold; and that was just in December.

If you're not watching the new series The Trip on BBC2—say, because you're anywhere else on the planet—then you're missing out. Here's star Steve Coogan, talking to co-star Rob Brydon in the voice of our favorite astrophysicist. [BBC]

Hawking's covered the end of the world, now he's examining the beginning—writing "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going". The Big Bang was a certainty. [Reuters]

According to Stephen Hawking, building a time machine isn't hard: "All you need is a wormhole, the Large Hadron Collider or a rocket that goes really, really fast." Just grab one of those and hop right through the fourth dimension.