Stephen Hawking receives enthusiastic welcome to Weibo

Some Chinese internet users said it was like "touching the cosmos" when Stephen Hawking joined the Chinese microblog network Weibo, with the British astrophysicist notching up nearly 2.5 million followers within 24 hours.

“In my physical travels, I have only been able to touch the surface of your fascinating history and culture,” the 74-year-old wrote in his introductory post on the Twitter-like service.

Some 230 million people use Sina Weibo, China’s biggest social media platform, every month.

“But now I can communicate with you through social media – and I hope to tell you more about my life and work through this page and also to learn from you in reply,” he said.

Mr Hawking is bigger than a rock star in a country like China which values education and scientific achievement as true goals. He is known as a ‘xue ba’ or ‘academic emperor’, which is contemporary slang for a student who scores high in exams and has a brilliant brain.

His first post on Wednesday morning came from New York, where he told Chinese readers about his Breakthrough Starshot project, in which he will team up with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to send a fleet of tiny robot spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, 4.37 light-years away – about 25 trillion miles.

He told them that Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg, who recently visited China, was joining the board of the new initiative,.

Mr Hawking told followers how he had first been to China in 1985 when he crossed the country by train, and his last visit was for a physics conference in Beijing in 2006.

“It has been too long!” he said. Before too long, his followers had logged 370,000 comments.

These remarks varied from those seeking a selfie with Mr Hawking and some help with their physics homework, to those clearly blown away by Mr Hawking’s presence on Weibo.

“ I feel like I almost touched the cosmos,” wrote one user, while another, who gave their name as “Geek”, wrote: “Hello, Mr. Hawking. I want to know whether aliens exist.”

Others were concerned he wouldn’t be able to follow the comments in Chinese.