Attention sci-fi nerds, in case you missed today’s big announcement, we’re officially going to find the aliens…sort of.
Today, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, with the support of Stephen Hawking, announced a new deep space project—“Breakthrough Starshot.”
It’s purpose, to search for intelligent life beyond our solar system. How? Well, that’s the fun part.
The plan is to cram a whole bunch of data-collecting tech into a vessel roughly The size of a postage stamp. Then it gets really cool. They’re going to accelerate its speed using lasers.
It sounds like something straight out of Star Trek, but in theory it would only take 20 years for the data-collector to reach the nearest sun—Alpha Centauri.
Sadly, we’re not quite there yet, but thanks to nerds with cash to burn, we’re a little bit closer.
More on the Story: Scientific American
…just for fun:
