Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner plan to build interstellar spacecraft

Stephen Hawking and a Russian Billionaire Release plans to build an interstellar spacecraft

You must be familiar with Stephen Hawking’s views on aliens waiting to destroy our planet but now things are getting a little bit crazy as he and a Russian businessman plan to build an interstellar spacecraft to better understand the cosmos.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence was advanced when Yuri Milner (Russian billionaire) released a $100 million attempt to scan the skies for signals produced by aliens. New plans have been published unveiling the fact that Milner now plans to build an interstellar spacecraft.

In an announcement at the One World Observatory in New York City, Milner and Stephen Hawking revealed a Breakthrough. A program created to build the foundations for an interstellar voyage. Step one is made up of building a light-propelled “nanocraft” that will travel at up to 20 percent the speed of light (59 958 491.6 m/s).

The idea behind accelerating them at such a velocity is by aiming incredibly powerful lasers at the “nanocrafts” to aid them to up to 100,000,000 miles per hour.

Although this may sound slightly ambitious of a starstruck billionaire, it is very doable. According to Milner, it’s possible with technology not too far ahead of what we currently have, to deploy our first ever nanocraft.

Avi Loeb (theoretical physicist) stated that a group of nanocrafts packed with advanced scientific equipment would have the capabilities to collect unthinkable amounts of information regarding our Solar System. For instance, they could fly through the south pole geyser of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and scan the alien ocean water for signs of life; something astrobiologists have been wanting to do for years.

“Here, at One World Observatory, we are launching a collaborative planetary endeavor,”

Although Steven Hawking had mentioned before that we should remain inside our own solar system as it could cause our extinction if we didn’t, he seems to have had a change of heart. “Only by challenging ourselves can we find out if we, like the pioneers before us, have the ability and ambition to succeed.” – Yuri Milner