''Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places'' is an original documentary series that was released exclusively on Curiosity Stream, 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 image ...

(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 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 t ...

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; ...

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 Coa ...

. 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 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 machine A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, moveme ...

in a visit to Proxima Centauri b. 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

News & Documentary Emmy Award * ''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 startup company, 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 inv ...

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