''Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places'' is an original documentary series that was released exclusively on

Curiosity Stream Curiosity Stream also know as (Curiosity Channel) is an American media company and subscription video streaming service that offers documentary programming including films, series, and TV shows. It was launched in 2015 by the founder of the Disc ...

, in partnership with production company Bigger Bang. Stephen Hawking stars in and narrates the series, in which he pilots a

Computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The images may ...

(CGI) space ship (the SS Hawking) across the Universe, making stops at some of his favorite places and discussing the scientific significance of each location. On October 5, 2017, the series won the

News & Documentary Emmy Award The News & Documentary Emmy Awards, or News & Documentary Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sci ...

for Outstanding Graphic Design & Art Direction, in a category with its peers from Smithsonian Channel, Discovery Channel, PBS and Vox.

Synopsis

Episode 1 takes Hawking from black holes to the

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara ( es, Santa Bárbara, meaning "Saint Barbara") is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coas ...

. Episode 2 finds Hawking in search of the

theory of everything A theory of everything (TOE or TOE/ToE), final theory, ultimate theory, unified field theory or master theory is a hypothetical, singular, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all asp ...

. He also discusses the

Great Filter The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox. It posits that in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there exists some particular ...

solution to the

Fermi paradox The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high a priori likelihood of its existence, and by extension of obtaining such evidence. As a 2015 article put it, ...

and the dangers of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

in a visit to

Proxima Centauri b Proxima Centauri b (or Proxima b), sometimes referred to as Alpha Centauri Cb, is an exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to the Sun and part of the triple star system ...

. Episode 3 continues Hawking's fears regarding AI, as well as his search for a theory of everything. He also introduces the

multiverse The multiverse is a hypothetical group of multiple universes. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The di ...

concept and the

anthropic principle The anthropic principle, also known as the "observation selection effect", is the hypothesis, first proposed in 1957 by Robert Dicke, that there is a restrictive lower bound on how statistically probable our observations of the universe are, beca ...

Release

The series had a planned release date of April 19, 2018. However, with Hawking's death on March 14, 2018, CuriosityStream released the third episode early, temporarily making all three episodes free to stream on their website as a tribute to Hawking.

Awards & Nominations

* ''Outstanding Graphic Design & Art Direction (Winner, 2017)''

Media Coverage

* ''

International Business Times The ''International Business Times'' is an American online news publication that publishes five national editions in four languages. The publication, sometimes called ''IBTimes'' or ''IBT'', offers news, opinion and editorial commentary on busi ...

'' * ''

GeekWire GeekWire is an American technology news website that covers startups and established technology companies. The site launched in March 2011 and is based in Seattle. It was founded by journalists Todd Bishop and John Cook with investment from Jona ...

References

{{Reflist 2016 American television series debuts 2010s American documentary television series American educational television series American non-fiction web series Documentary films about outer space Documentary web series Cultural depictions of Stephen Hawking CuriosityStream original programming