awards<\/a> show held every spring at Santa Monica\u2019s Barker Hangar? Why but for the love of science would the likes of James Corden (who hosted the 12th annual event April 18), Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Ben Affleck, Robert Downey Jr., Sean Penn, Gigi Hadid and Jessica Chastain, among others, show up in black tie to present trophies for special advances in fundamental physics and hand out $100,000 grants to early career mathematicians?<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s better than the Oscars,\u201d one regular attendee gushes over the event\u2019s shocking star power. \u201cEverybody always wonders how they get such big\u00a0names.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOne theory making the rounds? It has something to do with free rides on a Russian-born billionaire\u2019s superyacht. That\u2019s what Rambling Reporter is hearing from several sources involved in the ceremony who claim that stars who present, perform or even just attend are treated to getaways aboard the Multiverse, a 380-foot luxury vessel owned by Yuri Milner, the 64-year-old physicist turned Silicon Valley venture capitalist who launched the Breakthrough Prize in 2012 and has been bankrolling it ever since.<\/p>\n
\n\tA spokesperson for the Breakthrough Prize denies that ocean voyages have anything to do with the show\u2019s stellar attendance. \u201c[The stars\u2019] participation is driven by a genuine interest in supporting science, and any suggestion to the contrary is incorrect,\u201d the representative insists, while acknowledging that several stars who\u2019ve attended the awards have also ended up on Milner\u2019s yacht. Milner and his wife, Julia, the spokesperson says, \u201chave developed relationships with many guests and performers. Some of those friends have joined them on private family boat trips, entirely independent of the Breakthrough Prize.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, Lionel Richie, Christina Aguilera and Robert Downey Jr. all attended this year\u2019s Breakthrough Awards.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJesse Grant\/Getty Images (3); Emma McIntyre\/Getty Images (2)<\/p>\n
\n\t***<\/p>\n
\n\tAlso in Rambling Reporter:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tLouise Linton on her next movie<\/a> and why Nicole Kidman, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao and other stars\u00a0are becoming death doulas.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\tThis story appeared in the May 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If there\u2019s one thing movie stars can\u2019t resist, it\u2019s a scientist who can measure the wobble effect of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[271],"tags":[4648,18,19,17,452,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-471699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-awards","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-physics","13":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116529146304955759","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}