Stephen Hawking and Billionaire Team Up on $100 Million Quest to Find Alien Life
By ERICA SCOTT
Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner are teaming up in a $100 million hunt for alien life that will rely on a fleet of postage stamp-sized spacecraft to explore the universe.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will also join Milner and Hawking on the board of Breakthrough Starshot, a philanthropic initiative to focus on space exploration and the search for life in the universe.
Astronomers believe an Earth-like planet could exist within the "habitable zones" of Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth, located 25 trillion miles (or 4.37 light-years) away.
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Breakthrough Starshot hopes to launch thousands of the tiny, light-propelled spacecraft -- called nanocrafts -- with the goal of reaching the star system in twenty years.
Each nanocraft is designed to fly at twenty percent the speed of light, on a sail pushed by a light beam, making it over a thousand times faster than today’s fastest spacecraft. With conventional spacecraft technology, it would take 30,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.
"Earth is a wonderful place, but it might not last forever," Hawking said in a statement. “Sooner or later, we must look to the stars. Breakthrough Starshot is a very exciting first step on that journey.”
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