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The BBC and the Guardian both carry stories about an unmanned interstellar spacecraft designed to reach the Alpha Centauri system "within a generation" (30 or so years).
The spacecraft would be miniaturised to the size of an average silicon chip, and be propelled by a solar sail which would receive a boost from a powerful laser on the Earth.
Milner's Breakthrough Foundation is running a project, backed by Hawking, to research the technologies needed for such a mission, which they think will soon be feasible.
takyon: The campaign is called Breakthrough Starshot. Breakthrough Initiatives also announced the release of initial observational datasets from the Breakthrough Listen 10-year SETI effort.
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Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner's $100 Million Interstellar Spacecraft Plan
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 13 2016, @03:05AM
Wasn't some news a while back in which the same Hawking was advising "shush, let's hide, don't tell the aliens we're here"? Yes, there was [soylentnews.org].
Maybe he became too old/ill so he can't resist any more being enrolled into supporting every crackpot idea asking for hundreds of millions?
Suppose the space-chip reaches the destination.
How is it going to decelerate? Or will just pass through the system in a matter of hours and that's that?
How's gonna transmit info back without being drowned by the noise generated by the Alpha Centauri itself?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Disagree) by VanderDecken on Wednesday April 13 2016, @04:07AM
How's [it] gonna send info back?
Quantum entangled transmitters/receivers? I know we're not there yet, but ...
The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 13 2016, @04:49AM
Well, buy some ansibles from LeGuin or Scott Card.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 13 2016, @08:15AM
No. Quantum entanglement doesn't work that way. In particular, you cannot, in any way, use quantum entanglement to transmit information when you have no way to transmit information without quantum entanglement. This is forbidden by the very fundamentals of quantum mechanics, so breaking this would mean breaking quantum mechanics itself. Or in other words, should we ever find a way to use quantum entanglement in a way you envisage, we'd not use quantum mechanics, but some post-quantum physics. At this stage, you could just as well speculate about using custom-built wormholes for communication.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13 2016, @12:58PM
At this stage, you could just as well speculate about using custom-built wormholes for communication.
I'd call it the Early Bird Protocol, and implement it as RFC 2549. [ietf.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13 2016, @09:19PM
Is it possible to use QE for NON-faster-than-light communication? Even if we can't get FTL, it would be nice to not need huge antennas and power to communicate at such distances.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday April 14 2016, @12:44AM
The relativistic speed of this thing would militate against that. If it were to strike a planet, a great deal of energy would be released as heat, enough to cook the organisms aboard.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday April 15 2016, @01:41AM
Oops, I meant to reply to another comment [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 14 2016, @06:45AM
Any communication using quantum entanglement has classical communication as integral part. You can use it to do things you could not do with classical communication alone, but you cannot do communication where classical communication is not possible.
One way to think about it is that entanglement communication is inherently encrypted with a one-time pad only available to the sender, and you need classical communication in order to transmit the key. Moreover if you listen without the other side sending, you'll just get random noise, and thus you cannot even determine if the other side actually has sent anything unless you receive the key through classical communication.
Quantum entanglement is great if you want to have uncrackable encryption, but it cannot replace classical communication, only add to it.
So even with quantum entanglement you'll need the big antennas.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Wednesday April 13 2016, @05:24AM
I believe this is a preemptive strike on the evil beings in the Alpha Centauri system, as the chip will be loaded with as many different bacteria and viruses as possible [that are also likely to be viable upon delivery].
(Score: 2, Funny) by zoefff on Wednesday April 13 2016, @08:58AM
No, revenge, my dear, revenge.
Somewhere in 1914 emporer Franz Jozef thought that tsar Nicolas said something like: your mother is a ...., which, as we all know, started WW1.
Only recently, Stephen Hawkins found out that this was said through a tiny wormhole from the planet Esterion and therefore he proposes this giant interstellar fleet of warships to revenge ourself for WW1, WW11 and the fact he doesn't like peanutbutter.
That it means something quite innocent in the local language of the planet Esterion and that our fleet will be eaten by a little dog, is something we know, but he doesn't...