Stephen Hawking to retire

Stephen Hawking is facing a mandatory retirement clause at Cambridge University at the end of the year. But we all know that good physicists don't ever quit, they just go emeritus, stop teaching, and do research full time.

Hawking survives Vomit Comet

That is such a relief. He did 8 of the free-fall parabolas, grinning the whole time. His motivation? Not just release from his everyday hum-drum life of a preeminent mathematician / theoretical physicist at Cambridge University, probably not even release from his wheelchair and MS, but to "encourage public interest in space". Life on Earth he says, is at risk from global warming and other threats, and "the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space."