(Shared by Syed Naqvi Sahib)
Can you fly an iPhone to the stars?
In an attempt to leapfrog the planets and vault into the interstellar age, a bevy of scientists and other luminaries from Silicon Valley and beyond, led by Yuri Milner, a Russian philanthropist and Internet entrepreneur, announced a plan on Tuesday to send a fleet of robot spacecraft no bigger than iPhones to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, 4.37 light-years away.
If it all worked out — a cosmically big “if” that would occur decades and perhaps $10 billion from now — a rocket would deliver a “mother ship” carrying a thousand or so small probes to space. Once in orbit, the probes would unfold thin sails and then, propelled by powerful laser beams from Earth, set off one by one like a flock of migrating butterflies across the universe.
Within two minutes, the probes would be more than 600,000 miles from home — as far as the lasers could maintain a tight beam — and moving at a fifth of the speed of light. But it would still take 20 years for them to get to Alpha Centauri. Those that survived would zip past the star system, making measurements and beaming pictures back to Earth.
Much of this plan is probably half a lifetime away. Mr. Milner and his colleagues estimate that it could take 20 years to get the mission off the ground and into the heavens, 20 years to get to Alpha Centauri and another four years for the word from outer space to come home. And there is still the matter of attracting billions of dollars to pay for it.
“I think you and I will be happy to see the launch,” Mr. Milner, 54, said in an interview, adding that progress in medicine and longevity would determine whether he would live to see the results.
“We came to the conclusion it can be done: interstellar travel,” Mr. Milner said. He announced the project, called Breakthrough Starshot, in a news conference in New York on Tuesday, 55 years after Yuri Gagarin — for whom Mr. Milner is named — became the first human in space.
The English cosmologist and author Stephen Hawking is one of three members of the board of directors for the mission, along with Mr. Milner and Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder.
Science is, without any doubt, the best thing that humans learned. I can only imagine what discoveries will be made in future when these robot probes, powered by laser beams (so awesome) will go to other stars….to just the nearest one first, and send data back.
The Space Station, we already have, now onward to “mother-ship” of probes and at the same time here on Earth the drones delivering supplies replacing UPS, insect like drones spying on good and bad…the world is about to change drastically and I am sure ways will be found for space travelers to hibernate or put on pause for long periods of time. Any thing that we can dream of may one day come true. I am getting carried away, so that’s all for now.
One more thing, the women are going to be a big part of all this – I watched the NASA’s event recently where President Obama met with young inventors and 80% (may be more) who presented their ideas, demonstrating the prototypes, were girls and among them as young as 10 ~12 year old too!
Babar
Indeed a fantastic comment.
Babar Mustafa Saheb is the in-house H.G. Wells of the TF USA
The window into the universe offered by technology is indeed awe inspiring. What is even more awesome is the sheer magnitutde of this universe. We can now capture images conveyed by light that has travelled over billions of years–not human but light years– to give us a glimpse into the origins of the big bang. Such information gives us a perspective of our planet that looks so insiginificant in the overall scheme of things. And yet we can reach the outer bounds when we focus our minds.