Possiblity of real warp drive11/14/2023 Not that science is throwing in the towel. Star Trek made it all look so easy, but everything we currently know about the laws of physics tells us that faster-than-light travel – or even travel at the speed of light – is not possible. Hopefully the news will be good, because that will lay the foundation for the next and more difficult stage of interstellar travel: people-moving. The Milners are counting on miniaturisation technologies to enable this tiny craft to carry a camera, thrusters, a power supply, communication and navigation equipment so it can report on what it sees as it flashes past Proxima b. The idea is that if the spacecraft is small enough – and we’re talking barely a gram – and the sail light enough, the impact of the laser will be enough to gradually accelerate the craft to around one-fifth of the speed of light, taking it to Alpha Centauri in around 20 years. Where wouldn’t we go? There are more stars in the Universe than there are grains of sand on Earth – around 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – and billions of these are estimated to have one to three planets in the so-called ‘Goldilocks’ zone: not too hot, not too cold.īreakthrough Starshot – a $100 million initiative privately funded by Russian billionaires Yuri and Julia Milner – is focusing on propelling a tiny unmanned probe by hitting its extremely lightweight sail with a powerful Earth-based laser. Is travelling to other galaxies possible? And if so, what kinds of spacecraft might we need to achieve it? Read on to get up to (warp) speed: Interstellar spacecraft will be one of the topics discussed at BBC Future’s World-Changing Ideas Summit in Sydney in November. The discovery in August of an Earth-sized planet orbiting our nearest star has also raised fresh hopes about visiting an alien world. That said, several privately funded or volunteer initiatives such as the Tau Zero Foundation, Project Icarus and Breakthrough Starshot have emerged in recent years, each hoping to bring us a little bit closer to reaching across the cosmos. Unfortunately, we still have more than a few technical limitations to overcome – like the laws of physics as we understand them – before we can start colonising new worlds beyond our Solar System and galaxy. Science fiction writers and moviemakers have shown us countless visions of humanity spread out across the Universe, so you might be forgiven for thinking that we’ve already got this in the bag.
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