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.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13 2016, @08:52AM
Finally, you don't want to place the laser on Earth, the Earth is moving around the Sun!
Anything residing in our Solar system must either move around Sun, get away of it very fast, or drop into it. Even all of Lagrange points are moving.