Stephen Hawking’s farewell

The universe that Stephen Hawking spent a lifetime studying now knows his voice.

Following Hawking's death in March, the renowned British physicist, who had battled a debilitating degenerative motor neuron disease for decades, was remembered at a memorial service Friday at Westminster Abbey. His ashes were buried between Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton and later covered with a gravestone — etched with an equation he used to teach the world about black holes.

But at the same time his ashes were lowered into the ground, his voice was beamed from Earth thousands of light-years away toward the nearest known black hole in the universe.

It was a “symbolic gesture,” his loved ones said, that finally let him travel into space.

[Stephen Hawking, physicist who came to symbolize the power of the human mind, dies at 76]

Family members, friends, fellow scientists and celebrities gathered Friday afternoon at Hawking's memorial service in London to celebrate his life and legacy.

“We come to celebrate the life and achievements of Stephen Hawking in this holy place where God has been worshiped for over a thousand years and where kings and queens and the great men and women of our national history and international influence are memorialized. We shall bury his mortal remains with those of his fellow scientists,” the Rev. John Hall, dean of Westminster, said during the ceremony, according to Westminster.

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