Fans of Harry Styles have been utterly baffled after a forgotten picture of the star posing with Stephen Hawking – yes the Stephen Hawking – reappeared.

Sometimes celebrity pairings are so bizarre you have to question if photoshop is involved but it seems this meeting of minds really did happen because why not.

Back in the day, before his infamous shaved haircut, a young curly-haired Harry not only met the famed physicist but apparently got him extremely drunk, on more than one occasion.

The low quality and utterly context-less picture shows Harry and Hawking plus three other guests, including Richard Bacon and Jemima Khan, smiling for a camera in a hotel room or some backstage area.

Harry’s hair is still very One Direction-coded, placing that particular event between 2010 and 2014 based solely on his side swept locks.

‘One of the times I met him. Was quite good fun,’ tweeted Richard, a presenter and original poster of the snap which was shared in honour of Hawking’s death in 2018.

The picture seems to be from Harry’s early days of fame (Picture: Zak Hussein/INFphoto.com)

Apparently, he got Hawking drunk on a few occasions (Picture: Sion Touhig/Getty Images)

At the time the picture got little interaction, with one follower named Richard Crowder innocently referred to then relatively unknown Harry and said: ‘Your son is a good looking lad Richard.’

Another follower, James Adams added: ‘That is certainly an eclectic group!’

Since then the iconic picture has been lost to the depths of the internet – until now.

Fans of the As It Was singer rediscovered the snap and are losing their minds over it on social media platform X.

‘Harry has photos with the most random people,’ wrote Rue before adding ‘Like why was he linking up with Stephen Hawking.’

The tweet has almost 290k views as fans couldn’t believe the picture was real, with Babi joking: ‘Stephen Hawking was a directioner.’

The Watermelon Sugar singer’s fans went wild over the snap (Picture: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

‘Hello?? Why I have never seen this photo before,’ questioned Mahi while Mel agreed and added: ‘I’m feeling sick I didn’t know this photo existed.’

Multiple quote tweets of ‘I’m crying’ and ‘What?’ proved we as a society forgot about this interaction far too easily.

Under Rue’s tweet, Sam gave an even better tidbit as they shared: ‘He did shots with him.’

That One Direction stan was correct as Jimmy Carr revealed in 2021 that he, along with Harry, Jamie Redknapp, and Freddie Flintoff, had plied the maths whiz with alcohol.

Jimmy Carr spilled the beans on their antics with the physicist (Picture: Jimmy Carr/Twitter)

Speaking to the Spit or Swallow podcast, Jimmy revealed: ‘Stephen Hawking used to come to a lot of parties at mine, and we got him drunk a good few times. He couldn’t do tequila but we’d get him drunk on Cointreau; he’d have shots of Cointreau.

‘When we first gave him shots it was me, Jamie Redknapp, Freddie Flintoff, Harry Styles, a really weird mix of people going, “Yeah, let’s crack on.”‘

We’re not sure if this picture was from one of those raucous parties but clearly Harry and Hawking got on very well.

The legendary physicist sadly died aged 76 after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease at just 21 years old in 1963.