00:04Proxima Centauri is the closest interstellar star to our own solar system located just 4.2
00:10light-years away. That may sound close, but experts estimate it would take conventional
00:14spacecrafts between 19,000 and 81,000 years to reach it, meaning it's basically impossible.
00:21However, a new proposition seeks to circumvent traditional fuel propulsion, meaning we might
00:25be able to get tiny spacecrafts there much, much faster. Well, they want to build what they are
00:30calling gram-scale spacecraft or tiny ships that weigh nearly nothing, and they want to shoot them
00:35at Proxima Centauri, accelerating them indefinitely using lasers. They need to be small because
00:40photons are the stuff that a laser accelerates into a laser sail are weak. However, if a 100 gigawatt
00:46laser was aimed at one that weighs just a couple of grams in the vacuum of space, now we're moving.
00:51The laser could accelerate the spacecrafts indefinitely, meaning they could potentially
00:55reach speeds upwards of 10% to 20% the speed of light. Experts say we could build a swarm
01:01of
01:01these tiny cosmic travelers and have them in space and accelerating by 2050, eventually reaching
01:06Proxima Centauri in just 25 years. And the project was just selected by NASA's innovative
01:12advanced concepts for funding.
Comments