Hawking’s mission to find aliens outside the solar system
AN ASTONISHING space mission to visit our nearest star system and find out if alien life exists there has been started by Prof Stephen Hawking.
Despite being visible in the night sky without a telescope, Alpha Centauri is 25 trillion miles away (4.3 light years) and would take around 30,000 years to reach with current technology.
However, Prof Hawking has joined forces with Yuri Milner, a Russian billionaire, to try to develop technology which would allow a spacecraft to reach the star system in 20 years.
Once there, a probe would sweep past the planets, hunting for signs of advanced alien civilisations.
Earth-like planets have already been detected around the three stars of Alpha Centauri and scientists are hopeful that some may be located in the “Goldilocks Zone” – an area where it is neither too hot, nor too cold, for life to thrive. Launching the initial $100 million phase of the “Starshot” mission at the One World Observatory in New York, Prof Hawking said: “There are no greater heights to aspire to than the stars. What makes human beings unique? There are many theories.
“I believe what makes us unique is transcending our limits. Gravity pins us to the ground, but I just flew to America. I lost my voice but I can still speak. How do we transcend these limits? With our minds and our machines.
“The limit that confronts us now is the great void between us and the stars, but now we can transcend it. With light beams and light sails and the lightest spacecraft ever built we can launch a mission to Alpha Centauri within a generation.”
The mission relies on building the lightest spacecraft ever flown – a tiny “nanocraft” weighing less than a gram which would be fitted with a small sail.
On Earth, a huge array of laser beams will be fired into space, coming together to form a 100 gigawatt beam of light which will blast the tiny craft into the solar system, accelerating to speeds of 100 million miles per hour.
Although Nasa’s Voyager 1 has ventured outside the Solar System, and is
currently in interstellar space, no spaceship has ever reached another star system.
Speaking at the press conference, Mr Milner said: “The question is, can we reach the stars? And can we do it in our lifetime? The Moon still marks the furthest human beings have come. Since then we have delegated the task to robots. If Voyager had left our planet when humans left Africa it would be arriving at Alpha Centauri about now. So how do we go faster?
“There is a technology just over the horizon which can get us to the speed we need. Actually we already use some of the basic principles: leave the fuel behind. It was not possible before, but it is possible in the near future.”
The laser beamed from Earth will be so bright that it will be visible through- out the universe. The team are hoping it might be seen by advanced civilisations.
“Starshot will answer the question are we alone?” said Pete Worden, the executive director of Breakthrough Starshot, which is behind the initiative. Mr Milner is also funding a prize called Breakthrough Message to come up with the best way to communicate with aliens.