Life this week for Ahmed Mohamed exploded like the bomb he never built.

Arrested at school on Monday amid paranoia over a homemade clock he brought to class, the 14-year-old Texas boy has rocketed to international fame, fuelled by a mob of social media supporters earnestly defending him as a gifted, science-inclined teen who likes to tinker with gadgets.

By Thursday he was doing the media rounds at the Four Seasons hotel in Dallas and fielding an invitations, including one from Canada’s most famous astronaut, Chris Hadfield, who invited Ahmed to attend his science show at Massey Hall next month.

“There’s a ticket waiting for you,” Hadfield tweeted.

“There have been so many invitations,” Mohamed Elhassan, Ahmed’s father, told the Star, practically shouting through his cellphone from Irving, Tex., a suburban city outside Dallas. He wasn’t aware of Hadfield’s invitation — Elhassan only recognized the name when told about “the guy who sang David Bowie in space”—but said Ahmed would surely be interested in coming to Toronto.

“That is great. That is nice. That gives my son hope, teach him not to be down,” said Elhassan, 54.

The fourth of seven children, Ahmed has always been inclined to take apart computers and machines and build things himself, Elhassan said. He had been working on his own electronic clock and decided to bring it to MacArthur High School on Monday. At a news conference Wednesday in Irving, Ahmed told reporters that he showed the clock to an engineering teacher, and then later it beeped in English class and school officials called police.

“She thought it was a threat to her,” Ahmed told reporters, referring to his English teacher. “It was really sad that she took a wrong impression of it.”

The incident has provoked accusations of racial and religious prejudice — Ahmed is Muslim and his family emigrated from Sudan. The chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party accused the city’s mayor of inciting Islamophobia in the area and said the arrest was the “logical conclusion.”

Elhassan said the family wants to place Ahmed in another school; he will not go back to MacArthur High.

“That is really terrible. It’s disgusting. It’s not right,” he said. “He needs to discover, he needs to invent — that is his hobby.”

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Chris Hadfield’s son, Evan, is organizing the Generator event at Massey Hall on Oct. 28, to which Ahmed has an open invitation. Hadfield described it as a loose lecture-meets-performance that will feature his father discussing his space travel and a host of other scientists who will talk about their work. The younger Hadfield said what happened to Ahmed goes beyond discrimination.

“It’s a pretty clear example of ignorance reigning over common logic or intelligence,” said Hadfield, 30. “We want people to know that we do support him being curious, him investigating, him doing science and him showing that off to people and letting them know that he’s proud of it. I think he should be proud of it. Regardless of if he can come up for the event — and I hope he can — we would like him to know that we think that way.”

Elhassan said he’s grateful for the invitation, but there’s too much going on to make a solid RSVP just yet. On Thursday Ahmed needed to rest, he said. The teenager napped most of the afternoon.

“It’s exciting,” Elhassan said. “He didn’t sleep all this time ... I hope this media doesn’t make him crazy!”

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