Time travelers are invited to Stephen Hawking's memorial service

A thousand people have been invited to attend a June memorial service for theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, whose ashes will forever be interred next to Sir Isaac Newton's in the halls of the 11th century Westminster Abbey church.

And travelers from the future, it seems, are permitted to attend.

Anyone over 12 can sign up for the event on a public ballot put out by The Stephen Hawking Foundation, though only 1,000 will be selected.

To complete the registration, one must include their birthday, and London travel blogger IanVisits noticed that you can be born over two decades into the future, through December 31, 2038, and still apply.

This is quite fitting, the blogger noted, as in 2009 Hawking threw a party for time travelers to see if they'd come. He'd spent his life studying conceptions of time and space, and he used this experiment to lightheartedly disprove the possibility of traveling backwards through time.

"I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible," Hawking told reporters at the Seattle Science Festival in 2012. "I gave a party for time-travelers, but I didn't send out the invitations until after the party. I sat there a long time, but no one came."

This could be another time travel experiment, or simply a programming error. It could also be a digital technical issue called "The Year 2038 Problem" that's common enough to have a wikipedia page.

For those in the future that might attempt time travel, Hawking has given ample warning about the dangers of the feat, previously noting that it could "trigger a bolt of radiation that would destroy the spaceship" -- so it might be better to stay home.

But for those living in the present, the ceremony takes place at noon (GMT) on June 15, 2018.