"Breakthrough Starshot" Aims To Launch Nano Starships To Search For Aliens

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Project Starshot, an initiative sponsored by the Breakthrough Foundation, is intended to be humanity's first interstellar voyage. (Photo Credit: breakthroughinitiatives.org)

Are we the only intelligent beings in the Universe or are there several other perhaps even smarter civilizations just waiting to be discovered? That is the million dollar question scientists have been trying to answer for over 50 years. Now Russian billionaire Yuri Milner wants to solve the mystery once and for all, by reaching for the stars . . . Literally!

On April 12, the 55th anniversary of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's historic launch to space, the entrepreneur, along with Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Hawking and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, announced “Breakthrough Starshot.” The $100 million USD project aims to build a prototype for a wafer-sized propelled robotic spacecraft that can get to the nearby Alpha Centauri in a mere 20 years.

Though that may appear slow, it is a vast improvement over the current technology that would take a spacecraft between 30,000-40,000 years to cover the 25.67 trillion mile distance between Earth and Alpha Centauri. The triple star system was chosen because of its proximity to our planet and the fact that researchers believe that an Earth-like planet may be orbiting one of its stars — Alpha Centauri B.

The tiny nano-spacecraft would take 20 years to reach Alpha Centauri traveling at one-fifth the speed of light (Photo Credit: Breakthrough Starshot)

The Breakthrough Starshot team envisions a spacecraft the size of a postage stamp with a thin sail attached to it. Aboard the tiny “starchip,” will be a camera, photon thruster, and power supply. It will be launched to space aboard a mothership and then propelled to the distant star system with the help of laser lights beamed from a high-altitude area on Earth. Milner says that the nanocraft, “could capture images of possible planets and other scientific data and send them back home in a beam of light.” According to the entrepreneur "If this mission succeeds, it will tell us as much about ourselves as it will about Alpha Centauri.”

Though that sounds easy enough, the project is fraught with technological challenges. One of the biggest, of course, is building a spacecraft that is small, light, and has room for all the necessary equipment. While that could be possible given the advances in smartphone components, the tiny starchip will also have to be incredibly strong. That’s because it will have to withstand 60,000 times the normal force of gravity to make it to the desired speed in space.

Another enormous challenge is the laser array that will blast starchip into high speed. It will take the lasers 100 gigawatts, or about 100 times the output of a nuclear power plant, to propel just one of the probes. Even if scientists do manage to create an array that powerful, the sheer amount of energy could destroy everything in its path. There is also the issue of creating a thin and light sail that is not just robust enough to survive the blast to space, but also the rocks, dust, and ice, it will encounter on its way to Alpha Centauri. But despite all the hurdles, Milner is confident that Breakthrough Starshot will be successful in building a prototype that will help us acquire intelligence about the existence of aliens.

Artist's Rendering of Phased arrays of lasers that could be used on Breakthrough Starshot (Photo Credit: Breakthrough Starshot)

This is not the only project the billionaire has funded to find answers to this tricky question. In 2015, Milner launched “Breakthrough Listen.” The ten-year, $100 million USD program survey aims to study 1,000,000 of our closest stars, the plane and center of our galaxy, and the 100 nearest galaxies for radio and optical signals that are possibly being transmitted by alien civilizations.

Of course, finding aliens is of no use if we are unable to communicate with them. To solve that, the billionaire and his wife have created “Breakthrough Message.” The $1 million USD competition challenges entrants to come up with a message representing “Earth, life, and humanity,” that could potentially be understood by another civilization. Watch out aliens! One way or another, Yuri Milner and his team of experts are going to find you!

Resources: Space.com, Smithsonianmag.org, wired.co.uk

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494 Comments
  • HARVEY SPECTER over 8 years
    I WAS A GOOD PIECE OF INFO
    • lachstar31over 8 years
      IT WAS A GOOD PIECE OF INFORMATION
      • miss heyo maddiover 8 years
        so interesting but that's so much money to find if aliens are living! what would you do if you found out they are real, there's not much. you would probably be disappointed after wasting so much money to see if they are real. you cant really do anything once you find out. Good text.
        • Piyushover 8 years
          I think that this guy Yuri Milner is pretty determined to find out if aliens exist or not and overall I think that this text was pretty cool and fun to read.
          • alana banana 12over 8 years
            this is so cool and it would be great to have it <:
            • pieover 8 years
              soooo intresting
              • bluequad
                bluequadover 8 years
                it is cheap and it would be cool but like Genius1326 said we can invest in better causes like helping people get fresh water in Africa. and plus that wont work what is a micrometer hits the sail then it will be stranded pules it would take like a billon years to get it to a alien planet and what if there is no aliens then that's a billon dollars down the hole.
                • ???over 8 years
                  Aliens? if anything they could still be in the dinosaur days, I mean like te enviroment should still be the same the shap ethe size, but have you guys thought abou the fact that just because its the same as earth i doesnt mean it cant be in the Dinosaur days or if its in the future but i still think its rude to call them aliens cuz they could live in the same day as us and look exactly like us...
                  • joeover 8 years
                    awesomeeeeeeeeeeeee
                    • bloopover 8 years
                      ya know, i was reading the comments, and i think that instead of complaining about what people do with their money (going to space to find aliens) you could grow up to have a nice job that pays just as well, or better, and use YOUR money to do what you want with it so STOP COMPLAINING AND GO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT