3D Hologram Of Stephen Hawking Interacts With Comic Convention Guests

Much of the technology of the Star Wars universe is far, far away, but holograms are one thing we can grab onto, so to speak. Stephen Hawking touched down in Washington, D.C., for the comic convention Awesome Con, but it was really just a digital copy of the physicist. According to a statement from company ARHT Media, it joined the convention by beaming down Hawking.

Awesome Con was held earlier this month, and included visits from actors like David Tennant and Eliza Dushku as well as comic book creator Stan Lee. During the three-day event, the Canada-based company transported Hawking to interact with the audience through what it calls its HumaGram, a figure in “life-like stereoscopic 3D.” He answered questions from the crowd during a panel discussion that also featured astronaut Chris Hadfield.

Read: This Mars Rover Looks Like the Batmobile

“We strive to break the barriers of time and space and we are always looking for new industries that we can participate in,” ARHT CEO Paul Duffy said. “For us, Awesome Con allowed us to showcase our technology and deliver a true legend from the United Kingdom to the centerstage of this spectacular event in D.C. This is what we get out of bed for.”

The company refers to its process as the “creation, transmission, and delivery of life-like digital human holograms.”

“Awesome Con is where technology meets science fiction and that is exactly why ARHT’s technology was a perfect fit to integrate legendary Stephen Hawking this year,” Michael Caruso, editor in chief of Smithsonian Magazine, said in the statement. Smithsonian worked with ARHT on the presentation.

ARHT has also beamed in holograms at the 2017 Audi Cup soccer tournament, which was held in Munich, and sent Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into a hospital benefit. According to the company, its next steps are to use holograms in other fields.

Awesome Con was not the only place where Hawking made waves even in that single week. He recently gave a talk at the science and art festival Starmus in Norway, where he told his audience that humans would go extinct on Earth if we don’t take steps to start up a colony on another planet within the next 100 years, a familiar claim for him to make.

The hologram wasn’t the only futuristic piece of technology Hawking called up either. During that Starmus talk, the physicist reference a method of space travel that he says will help humans explore the far reaches of space by drastically increasing the speed of our transport. That method is riding a beam of light.

Read: Sending a Robot Into an Erupting Volcano Full of Sharks

Hawking is part of a project called Breakthrough Starshot that is trying to create the first of these systems, which involve training an array of laser lights onto the “lightsail” of a ship — one that has already been launched into space — to propel it forward. He projects the technology could bring spaceships to within a tenth or even a fifth of the speed of light, a speed far beyond the capabilities of modern rocket propulsion.