Hawking lauds Chinese pop star for space question

British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, on his Chinese social media account, praised the lead singer of China's most popular boy band for asking about life beyond Earth.

Wang Junkai, lead singer of the wildly popular TFBOYS, posted a video of himself on his Weibo account on Friday asking Hawking, the author of A Brief History of Time, how humanity should prepare for interstellar migration in years to come.

Hawking recently warned that the human race must evacuate Earth in 600 years before soaring energy consumption turns the planet into a "ball of fire". Earlier this month, Hawking made a video appearance at a science summit organized by Tencent Holdings and pleaded for investors to support his idea of traveling to the nearest star outside our solar system in hope of finding an inhabitable planet.