When Stephen Hawking has even the slightest thing to say about space, people listen. So it
naturally caused quite the hubbub this week when he and Russian billionaire philanthropist Yuri Milner held a press conference atop Manhattan's Freedom Tower to announce an ambitious $100 million mission. The plan? To send tiny probes to our closest star system -- Alpha Centauri -- a whopping 25 trillion miles away, in just 20 years.
OK, a 20-year journey may sound like a long-ass time. But considering even our fastest-flying spaceship (New Horizons) would take tens of thousands of years to get there, these probes will be moving fast. We're talking whirr-past-Mars-in-an-hour, swing-past-Pluto-in-a-day fast.
So how the hell will this all work? Well, it's complicated, but here's a hint: frickin' laser beams. https://www.thrillist.com/tech/nation/stephen-hawkings-plan-to-go-to-alpha-centauri/tech
