Stephen Hawking Foundation trustee dismisses Union minister Harsh Vardhan's claims, reports The Telegraph

A trustee of The Stephen Hawking Foundation dismissed Union minister Harsh Vardhan's claim that cosmologist Stephen Hawking said the Vedas have a theory superior to Albert Einstein's  E=mc^2 equation, according to a report in  The Telegraph.

File image of Union minister Harsh Vardhan. PTI

Malcolm Perry, who is also a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge, told the newspaper: "I am not aware of Stephen Hawking making any comment on the Vedas."

Perry added, "It is quite possible that he made a reference to the Vedas playfully when discussing creation myths — such as found in the Bible or the Vedas — when comparing them to the now conventional scientific picture of the big bang accompanied by a period of inflation, or perhaps when discussing the no boundary proposal for the creation of the universe."

The report further quoted him as saying,"I am certain that he did not support the claims made by your minister that 'our Vedas might have a theory which is superior to Einstein's theory of E=mc^2.'"

Vardhan made the claim while addressing the inaugural session of the 105th Indian Science Congress in Imphal. When asked to disclose his source to support the claim, he told reporters, "You find the source. He had on record said that there is a possibility that Vedas have a better formula than the one given by Einstein. You also work a bit on this (to find this source)."

Vardhan also defended his statement on Twitter:

With inputs from PTI