Stephen Hawking should be pleased. The first signs of an effect the British physicist predicted more than 30 years ago – known as Hawking radiation – have finally materialised from the simulated edge of a black hole.

Free of his wheelchair and tethered only to heart rate and blood pressure monitors, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has fulfilled a dream of floating weightless on a zero-gravity jet also becoming the first disable person to experience such flight.