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

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: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday April 13 2016, @11:03AM

    by butthurt (6141) on Wednesday April 13 2016, @11:03AM (#331085) Journal

    I was thinking of the one that supposes "What if all of the sun's output of visible light were bundled up into a laser-like beam that had a diameter of around 1m once it reaches Earth?"

    https://what-if.xkcd.com/141/ [xkcd.com]

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