Billionaire Internet investor Yuri Milner announced another $100 million initiative on Tuesday to better understand the cosmos, this time by deploying thousands of tiny spacecraft to travel to our nearest neighbouring star system.
While man has gone to great heights and distances to find life beyond Earth, Yuri Milner's next project titled Breakthrough Starshot literally shoots for the stars. He has teamed up with Stephen Hawking to give wings to his new venture that will explore Earth's closest neighbouring star system - Alpha Centauri. Milner has invested USD 100 million to fund this larger than life space exploration project.
Here is a quick look at where it is headed and, why and how Milner and Hawking hope to get there before anyone else.
What is Alpha Centauri?
The Proxima Centauri, Aplha Centauri and Beta Centauri form a system of stars which are the closest to the Earth. While Proxima as its name suggests is the closest which is about 4.22 light years away but is also the least bright among the three. Aplha and Beta together are a binary system and Proxima is bound to them gravitationally which means the Alpha and Beta actually orbit around a point between them and are 4.35 light years away from Earth.
Proxima Centauri (circled) and, Alpha Centauri And Beta Centauri - Skatebiker, Wikimedia Commons
The Alpha Centauri can not be seen from most of the Northern hemisphere however it is always visible during night from places below the Earth's 29th parallel.
Here is Artist impression of a journey from the Earth to our nearest star - by European Southern Observatory
Why Alpha Centauri?
The search for life beyond Earth has taken man to The Moon, the rocks of Mars and even among the clouds of Venus. NASA, ISRO and other space research programs have sent probes and robots to explore every possibility of signs of life in the space. According to a report in Popular Science, Aplha Centauri might just be one of the places in the Universe that might have plants like Earth that may support life.
And because Alpha is the closest to Earth after the Sun it could be the first step to discovering a fascinating new system of plants and thus bringing man closer to finding extraterrestrial life. So while the search for life in our solar system continues, looking beyond it, Aplha Centurai might just be Yuri Milner's best option. And his next project Breakthrough Starshot plans to do just that by teaming up with Hawking to develop a light propulsion system to send nanocrafts into space that travel at 20% the speed of light.
An artist's impression shows the planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B, a member of the triple star system that is the closest to Earth. Our own Sun is visible to the upper right. REUTERS/European Southern Observatory
But going to the Alpha Centauri sounds easier than doing.
Alpha Centauri being the closest to Earth is still really far from us, about 4.35 light years. To put this in perspective that is about 6 trillion miles and the sun is about 16 millionth of one light year away, that is just a tiny fraction of how far Alpha Centauri is. The furthest we have gone so far is Space probe Voyager 1 that took 27 Earth years to travel 13 light years.
So can a conventional rocket go that far? No. Our current technology is not fit to cover this gigantic distance to the Alpha Centauri. Well, hypothetically speaking it would take about 165,000 years should we use conventional rockets which is definitely beyond our lifetime!
The issue is that rockets need fuel to travel in space. This propellant that makes them fly also weighs them down. So the longer one wants the rocket to travel the more fuel one would need to fill in it and so it gets heavier and heavier.
Going beyond conventional fuels
Research on using alternatives to propellants is underway and has a number of possible solutions but each which has its own shortcoming.
Antimatter engines use the energy produced when matter and antimatter annihilate each-other. However producing just a gram of antimatter needs billions and the question of how to store it looms large.
Another possibility is to use nuclear fusion reactors to shoot the rocket however scientists are yet to build a rocket that uses such technology to make the reactor small enough to be used in a space rocket. Scientists are also looking into the use of electromagnetic fields which hypothetically imbibe fuels from their surroundings. However there might be one problem with this idea. Isotopes of hydrogen needed to produce energy may not be available in interstellar space.
Some other possible propulsion possibilities also look at Nuclear pulse propulsion where tiny nuclear bomb explosions against huge plate would be used. According to Freeman Dyson this could make a ship reach Alpha Centauri within a century.
Even humongous ships that could host generations of astronauts have been thought of, however, if humans can withstand physical and psychological consequences of space travel seem impossible to determine now. Generation ships too will take over 1000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.
Wrap Drives that propose travel faster than light too have been thrown into the idea pool, are far also from being realised. However Laser Sails is something even Stephen Hawking is hopeful about.
What are Laser sails?
Breakthrough Starshot, Yuri Milner's new project with Stephen Hawking proposes the use of Laser Sails. According to Popular Science the idea is to fit spacecrafts with reflectors like mirrors and use powerful lasers to push the probes outwards.
But can it work?
Spaceships propelled by sunlight, solar sails, have been successfully tried before and might be an indicator that Laser sails have potential to work as well. According to research by cosmologist Philip Lupin of University of California using an orbital laser array could propel a 1 gram spacecraft to mars and it would take just 30 minutes to do so. Scaling it Alpha Centauri would take about 20 years.
So how do Milner and Hawking plan to get to Alpha Centauri?
Milner and Hawking's Breakthrough Starshot plans to use a laser array but instead of it orbiting the Earth it would be based on ground. This high-altitude laser array would be made up of simple lasers that would synchronize and produce a strong single laser that would bounce off mirrors. This would compensate for the losses due to atmospheric matter.
The next phase for the Breakthrough Sarshot is to launch a thousands of space-chips aboard one big ship into space. The laser array will then power these tiny nanocrafts to explore the untrodden parts of the universe and hopefully reveal the mysteries tightly held by the Alpha Centauri.
While USD 100 million have been earmarked for it, only time will tell if it will lead us to a new planet any time soon.
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Proxima Centauri (circled) and, Alpha Centauri And Beta Centauri - Skatebiker, Wikimedia Commons)
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