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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, @08:53AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13 2016, @08:53AM (#331061)

    I agree with parent, the GP post is a weak/nonexistent argument - if you father a child he has half your genetic material, and hence you have some responsibility for the child.

    I think a stronger argument is that of sexism in family law courts. Friends working in family law have indicated that there is quite a bit of sexism in there (feminism), owing to anachronistic views of the predominantly male judges. Family courts in UK are civil courts, so there is no jury. I don't know of a good statistical study, so my only evidence is anecdotal. It would be very interesting to know if a statistical study of family court outcomes supports my view of massive institutionalised sexism.

    Nb: I believe that I am an egalitarian - so I shout down feminists and masculinists (is that a word).