Hawking backs interstellar travel project

cowboyBuilder

Stephen Hawking is backing a project to send tiny spacecraft to another star system within a generation.

They would travel trillions of miles; far further than any previous craft.

A $100m (£70m) research programme to develop the computer chip-sized "starships" was launched by the billionaire Yuri Milner, supported by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Interstellar travel has long been a dream for many, but significant technological hurdles remain.

But Prof Hawking told BBC News that fantasy could be realised sooner than we might think.

"If we are to survive as a species we must ultimately spread out to the stars," he said.

"Astronomers believe that there is a reasonable chance of an Earth-like planet orbiting one of the stars [in] the Alpha Centauri system. But we will know more in the next two decades from ground based and space based telescopes.

"Technological developments in the last two decades and the future make it possible in principle within a generation."

Prof Hawking is backing a project by Mr Milner's Breakthrough Foundation, a private organisation funding scientific research initiatives that government funders think to be too ambitious.
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full article
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36025706

This is so exciting, imagine it !!

Pity I won't be around to see any of the data ... but that this is in the planning stages alone is incredible.

_Tombstone_

I had it posted over in seti thread since it followed on...

http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2057465467/8/#post99371585

maninasia

I think there is not a reasonable but a very very small chance that there is an 'earth like planet' around alpha Centauri.

But there certainly could be planets and interesting planets.