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Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner's $100 Million Interstellar Spacecraft Plan

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday April 13 2016, @02:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-a-tiny-spaceship dept.

turgid writes:

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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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13 2016, @05:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13 2016, @05:03AM (#330995)

    Women's fertile years are increasing:

    https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/10/20/1356234 [soylentnews.org]
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/worlds-oldest-mother-of-quadruplets-introduces-her-babies-to-the-world-10460350.html [independent.co.uk]

    A 65-year-old who became the world’s oldest mother of quadruplets in May has proudly shown off her babies to the world for the first time.

    The title of the oldest woman ever to give birth is thought to belong to either Maria del Carmen Bousada Lara, who had twins at the age of 66 in Spain in 2006, and Omkari Panwar, who was reportedly 70 when she gave birth to twins in India in 2008.

    IVF is only the tip of the iceberg. Technological solutions will allow more reliable fertility into older age. The same women who are delaying childbirth are the women able to afford fertility treatment.