Breakthrough Starshot Animation (Full)

[Quixote1818]

Link with background: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-universe-camera.html

Observing the universe with a camera traveling near the speed of light

Astronomers strive to observe the universe via ever more advanced techniques. Whenever researchers invent a new method, unprecedented information is collected and people's understanding of the cosmos deepens.

An ambitious program to blast cameras far beyond the solar system was announced in April 2016 by internet investor and science philanthropist Yuri Milner, late physicist Stephen Hawking and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Called "Breakthrough Starshot," the idea is to send a bunch of tiny nano-spacecraft to the sun's closest stellar neighbor, the three-star Alpha Centauri system. Traveling at around 20 percent the speed of light – so as fast as 100 million miles per hour – the craft and their tiny cameras would aim for the smallest but closest star in the system, Proxima Centari, and its planet Proxima b, 4.26 light-years from Earth.

The Breakthrough Starshot team's goal will rely on a number of as-yet unproven technologies. The plan is to use light sails to get these spacecraft further and faster than anything that's come before – lasers on Earth will push the tiny ships via their super-thin and reflective sails. I have another idea that could piggyback on this technology as the project is gearing up: Researchers could get valuable data from these mobile observatories, even directly test Einstein's theory of special relativity, long before they get anywhere close to Alpha Centauri.



Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-universe-camera.html#jCp