Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner made the stunning announcement that they plan to build a fleet of starships (called Breakthrough Starshot ) that can travel at relativistic speed, or what is the same, the equivalent of 20% The speed of light. But this is not only reach our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, but a revolutionary project. Milner technology and Hawking proposed that could change the way we look for alien life in the Solar System
http:. //es.gizmodo.com/stephen-hawkin …
Avi Loen, director of the department of astronomy at Harvard and collaborator in the project told us in an interview: “This basically opens the door to missions that will be much cheaper and less uncomfortable, which will allow us to reach information that today are away from our hands. ” And with “information currently we can not reach” refers to the first solid evidence of extraterrestrial life.
So far the human exploration of the solar system has been based on the use of extremely expensive spacecraft also , traveling at a very slow speed, at least when compared to the speed of light. Missions like Cassini, Rosetta, New Horinzos and Voyager have revealed countless wonders in our system, but have had to spend years or decades to plan and investment to achieve these results.
And for every mission scientist pays off, dozens of others are unsuccessful. Only we must remember the missions that NASA last year proposed: a trip to a metallic asteroid, a study about possible mining projects near Earth, visit the Trojans bodies around Jupiter and two missions to Venus. These proposals were selected from among many more and only one or two will be approved throughout the year for development, with the possibility of being released by 2020. Not only that, any of these missions will cost the space agency about 500 million
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we also compare the speed in which these projects are developed interplanetary in relation to the speed that scientists discover planets or moons with possibility of harboring or supporting life. For example we have in Europe, an icy moon that has been featured in countless stories in science fiction about alien life. We also have the Saturn moon Enceladus, which not only has a global ocean beneath its icy layer, but water is flowing from its south pole through geysers. Another of Saturn’s moons, Titan is very cold compared to Earth to support life like our planet, but it could be home to a lifestyle completely different, like microbes whose cells would be filled with methane and not water .
Our Solar System is also home to countless comets and asteroids containing water and simple organic molecules. Many astrobiologists speculate that the blocks needed to create life on Earth came from space in these rocks. By studying these time capsules frozen not only hope to find answer to the question about whether we are alone in the universe or not, but also to study the history of the origin of the cosmos.
And this is the project Breakthrough Starshot Milner and Hawking. With an initial investment of $ 100 million aims to develop a ship that has a weight of only a few grams but carry a lot of scientists, teams capable of doing almost anything from taking pictures and send them to Earth to analyze biological samples. It will be powered by solar sails extremely thin and, in general, it is expected that these ships are extremely economical. Being accelerated by laser pulses 100 gigawatts in theory may reach a speed corresponding to 20% of the speed of light.
http://es.gizmodo.com/la-busqueda-de .. .
Pete Worden, executive director of Breakthrough Starshot and former director of the Ames Research Center of NASA told us:
“the ability to build spaceships very small and toss to explore at high speed gives us the ability to send many ships to many places at the same time and for a really low price. Asteroids, for example, could be evidence of extraterrestrial life waiting to be discovered. These ships will allow us to explore thousands or even hundreds of thousands of asteroids in the future to find these tests. “
In addition to explore an enormous amount of objects using these ships the fact travel at relativistic speed would give us the ability to reach every corner of the solar system within days, and that could be the answer to one of the biggest problems that NASA will face in the field of interplanetary exploration : fast response
http:. //es.gizmodo.com/stephen-hawkin …
Imagine that astronomers discover an eruption on the surface of Europe (which it has happened before) and that we could send several of these spacecraft to investigate immediately. The fact that the ships are “disposable” means that even could make several crashed on the surface of Europe if we want to know more about the conditions that led to the eruption.
And now we’re talking about geysers space must not forget those found at the south pole of Enceladus. Astronomers have dreamed about for years to send a new mission to the moon, one that could analyze water and salt sprouting these geysers for signs of life. With the draft Milner and Hawking could send hundreds of ships.
And these fast and small ships could be the only viable way would come to explore that elusive “Planet X”.
http: //es.gizmodo.com/hay-alguien-ah …
All of this sounds too good to be true, and perhaps it is. As our colleague Darren Orf suggests, the idea is based on a significant assumption about the development and progress of technology is something “inevitable”. In addition, the project also has to achieve raise an investment of billions of dollars (the laser system to speed the ships will not be cheap). Even Milner admits that the launch of the first “nanonave” could happen “within a generation” a cordial enough term to say that actually have no idea how long it take to see the first interstellar spaceship travel.
However, all the ingredients necessary for vision Milner and Hawking (extremely small satellites, solar sails, laser propulsion) is met are currently in some stage of development. And the fact that within the next few years can be achieved considerable progress in terms of miniaturization and automation opens up the possibility of performing sophisticated biological and molecular analysis in outer space.
And the best of all it is that once succeed in building everything necessary to launch these miniature spacecraft to explore space, both financial cost and the investment of time to make any scientific experiment in space will fall drastically. Just imagine throwing a swarm of these “nanoships” Mars during the morning and receive all data from their studies for dinnertime.
With technologies like these aliens will not be able to hide from us long
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