Breakthrough Starshot Targets 20% Light Speed With Laser-Driven Probes to Alpha Centauri
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 2
Breakthrough Starshot Targets 20% Light Speed With Laser-Driven Probes to Alpha Centauri
3 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 2
Summary
Breakthrough Starshot’s proposed gram-scale probes would ride ground-based lasers to about 20% of light speed, cutting a trip to Alpha Centauri to roughly 20 years.
That approach matters because relativity bars any object with mass from reaching light speed at all: the energy required rises without limit as velocity approaches c.
Parker Solar Probe, humanity’s fastest spacecraft, still travels at less than 0.1% of light speed, underscoring how far current engineering is from near-light-speed flight.
Starshot remains a research concept rather than a build-ready mission, with major hurdles including an unprecedented laser array and a sail that can survive the acceleration.
Warp drives and wormholes stay more speculative still, since superluminal shortcuts on paper appear to require exotic negative energy that has never been observed.