April 13, 2016

Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy in 2008 at NASA's 50th anniversary (Image NASA/Paul Alers)

Yesterday, at a press conference, the Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner officially announced the Starshot project that aims to build interstellar probes. The idea is to create tiny probes with a sail driven by a laser operated from Earth so they can reach 20% of the speed of light to reach the Alpha Centauri system in just over two decades. The physicist Stephen Hawking and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg support the project.