Sparling is hoping that tests from the Large Hadron Collider will help prove his theory.
When will people stop writing nonsense like this? An experiment can never prove a theory! When two or more alternative theories make incompatible predictions of observable phenomena, then experimental results may be found to agree more with one than with the other theory's predictions. But the experiment by itself never conclusively proves anything, it is merely a piece of a larger puzzle in the quest for a theory that works better than its competitors.
To be sure, George Sparling himself apparently didn't claim anything of the sort, Slashdot was just putting words in his mouth, as usual.
if and only if Hawking was talking about things that couldn't ever be proven one way or another. At that point, he wouldn't be doing any sort of physics anymore, he'd be somewhere off in that grey area where it borders philosophy and religion.
In natural science no theory can ever be proven right, only wrong. If scientists like Hawking talk about proving their hypothesis they are doing science a disfavour!
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To be sure, George Sparling himself apparently didn't claim anything of the sort, Slashdot was just putting words in his mouth, as usual.