Will Starshot's Insterstellar Journey Succeed?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 พ.ค. 2016
- Will Breakthrough Starshot make it to Alpha Centauri? Let's find out.
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Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Starshot is an interstellar travel expedition unlike any other before it. It’s many years in the making and is contingent on a series of incredible advancements in nanotechnology, materials science and laser power. Despite these hurdles, the project has been backed by some of the greatest minds in science today, including Stephen Hawking, legendary engineer Freeman Dyson, UK Astronomer Royal Martin Rees and dark energy Nobel Laureate Saul Perlmutter. Just how likely is it that Starshot’s journey to Alpha Centauri will succeed?
Written and hosted by Matt O’Dowd
Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com)
And be sure to check out our good friend Physics Girl's video on Lightsails! • Spaceships pushed by L...
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Satya Prakash
• What Does Dark Energy ...
Scot McPhee
• What Does Dark Energy ...
Sandeep Siwach
• What Does Dark Energy ...
Accessless
• What Does Dark Energy ...
Adrian Abdel
• What Does Dark Energy ...
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Breakthrough Starshot Initiative
breakthroughinitiatives.org/In...
Geoffrey Landis on light sails
www.geoffreylandis.com/laser_i...
"graphene can do everything" and "the solution is lasers" are two new things I want on T-shirts.
+Eric Vilas LoL Hellzyea! I'd sport that shyt!
+Eric Vilas Amen!!!
+Eric Vilas I wouldn't mind a "The solution is lasers" shirt with Matt's face in foreground and a cool laser show in the background.
+Eric Vilas Yeah, and "the universe is dark and full of terrors"
might aswell cop a "im a virgin" shirt while youre at it
inb4 the first thing we get back from Alpha Centauri is a message politely asking us to stop bombarding them with our probes.
Lol exactly my thought. Any aliens living there are going to love us obnoxiously shooting 1000s of super high velocity projectiles at them.
Highly unlikey that anyone would notice the probes
I doubt any intelligent life would ever notice crafts that small going at that speed in space, look at it this way. The Alpha Centaurians might have already sent proves here and they probably fascinating over our planet for all we know.
lol
New favorite quote: "The solution is so often lasers."
I want a T-Shirt!
I think a list of things lasers do plus that quote would make the tee awesome.
And 2nd one is graphene can do anything...
See ya'll in 2066, meet back here?
seb nev Your comment will be famous in 2066..
I'll be long gone by then but love the idea lol
If TH-cam is still a thing, sure. I’ll be here.
Im gonna be there
But I hope everyone who in this comments are less than age 30s...
I'd be glad to watch Space Time for 50 years.
Maybe there will not be TH-cam but there will be PBS.
you sure this is spacetime? I actually understood what you were on about.
That shows that PBS Spacetime knows a big proportion of their viewers dont understand half of what they say. Im part of that proportion of viewers.
They basically dumbed it down to a basic level.
***** I was making a joke. Why be such a dick?
+Billy Overton I don't think he is --I agree with both of you.
I'd prefer it dumbed down a bit more, but then they don't want to lose more savvy viewers, so they strike a balance, present enough that most people can follow while adding some technical bits for those who appreciate it.
+MusicalRaichu sorry, but I'd like to stay indignant. I like how high-brow it is. that's why I made the joke.
Aliens from Alpha Centauri will think they're under attack when they see the thousands of light sails heading they're way. Intergalactic war initiated. LOL
Actually, the term is inter-*_stellar_* or maybe *_intra_*-galactic, intergalactic is things related to/between whole galaxies.
I stand corrected. Thank you.
Must have been a Beastie Boys tune in my head when I wrote that.
Digs Fossils-n-Knives
No problem, I guess.
Actually no, the Only intelligent species there are the Na'vi, and we know they are in the stone age
@@odst1778 didn't some scientist said the habitable planet in centauri is still young so the alien life would probably be like microorganisms or something
There's another reason to launch thousands of Starshot probes: So they can act as radio relays. Sending a low-power radio signal over a span of light-years is just not going to happen without relays that can perform error-correction and rebroadcast the signal.
The real question- for having such a strong beard and arm hairs how does he lack a forest of chest hair?
deforestation
He subscribes to alpha m. and followed the advice of trimming any hair peeking out of the neckline
+jack chatham lmao
lol who wonders this
This is why we have the large hadron collider.
Any money spent on science is a great investment.
+Dan Hunter And obama should increase NASAs funding by 200000% rite science is so great xd
Noodler
Yes that is exactly what I meant.
_Dan Hunter_ very true
Noodler obama😢
Atom Bombs
You guys have to make a "the solution is so often lasers" tee-shirt
friggin' lasers
I guess that beats nukes as the answer to everything.
I will be 66 years old when i see Alpha Centauri, and when i do, i don't really care what happens to me after that lol.
Sick Dece I dont even know wtf is happening on science now.
I'll be around 72, prob dead till then :(
Ever the optimist: Hopefully medical science advances at a rate that makes those ages less relevant.
Hopefully there is a permanent presence on moon and mars by then
I bet we have faster travel by then or a telescope that can see alpha Centauri well enough.
08:03 , I felt the same when my hogwarts letter got lost because of bad weather
+Emir Kaya I'm pretty sure my dog ate the owl.
+PBS Space Time thats pretty funny "dog ate the owl" Buahahahaha I have dogs also I know
+PBS Space Time oh :(
+PBS Space Time - Doesn't Dark Energy come from the Poles of Black Holes???
I love that you put Great Atuin and the Discworld in your shot of space. Great reference and a great honour for the late Sir Terry Pratchett.
Imagine being an alien and suddenly there's thousands upon thousands of tiny spacecrafts flying at your planet and taking pictures.
They won't be happy I assume
Bun Bun... Those aliens are probably nothing more than microbial life. Therefore they'd have no idea of what it was coming at them.
@@brucemacmillan7128 at most primitive cavemen
@@-TurkiFaisalMAlAyesh the delta in evolutionary time scale between primitive caveman and current human life is indistinguishable. Max 10,000 years. Life has been evolving on this planet for billions of years. On that scale we are basically cavemen.
I think we all to frequently assume that life is similar to us. Check the space time video on the paper describing “living” magnetic monopoles in the heart of stars. If we do want to find life we need to be prepared to look for things operating on totally different timescales and communication methods
Don't know about other humans, but I would honestly will be very happy when suddenly a lot of alien probes starting taking pictures of me. It would mean we found aliens and those aliens found us interesting enough to take pictures of us.
"their email to me, got caught in my spam filter" omg Imao so hard. you guys are awsome and love the shows
so lasers are the solution to everything, and graphene can do anything...can graphene do lasers?
+Ujvári Mátyás It sure can phys.org/news/2016-01-graphene-plasmons-tunable-terahertz-laser.html
+ballandpaddle lol :v
+Ujvári Mátyás graphene can be made by lasers .. graphene can be easily made by 1 mw laser striking obliquely on a graphite sheet .. technically LASERS are the mother of everything ...
Solar freaking thorium graphene lasers!
damn you, now my screen is all cocoa'd X_X
I just love these shows. it's all so well explained. best channel on youtube
+Paul Budden Mee too Paul. just got off work and here I am... sUckin up the knowledge. The universe rawks!
It’s not the best channel on TH-cam tho.
How good of picture quality are they expecting with something moving at 20% the speed of light?
Artists impression of anti motion blur kind of quality.
You'll have to wait 20 years for the answer
How good of a picture quality are they expecting with a camera that weighs 1 gram
Its finna bring back 1 blue pixel and people gonna be like "Water! Its a sign of life it has water!"
@@quixotika3232 finna?
challenge accepted. Im turning 30 next month. That means, I only have to make it to 80-81. Totally doable
vegans live past 100 good luck
C.E. Kirk I have to make it to 63.
Why, work out, eat healthy, 92 is doable...... good luck good sir
add 4.25 yrs to send the pics back
I just hope CRISPR gene therapy can do anti aging among other things before I die. In theory we could be biologically immortal.
After you're done with the Dark Energy series, could you do a series explaining the new hypothesis for the EM Drive? There's a lot of ground to cover: Rindler space, the Unruh effect and Unruh radiation, Dr. McCullough's "MiHsC" model of inertial mass, and how all that might apply to the EM Drive. It'll be a lot to explain, and again it's just a hypothesis, but I think it'll be worth checking out if just to increase the discussion. (plus, it'll also help with my own understanding of it...)
Without even looking at it I can tell you the new hypothesis on the EMDrive is probably wrong, even if EMDrive is 100% legit. If the EMDrive works, the experiments will need to get sophisticated enough to definitively prove it works before anyone finds out how it works.
What is the EMDrive?
+Graham Rich What is Google?
Kevin J. Dildonik If the EMDrive was that well-understood it would be known as something definitively proven by now. It isn't.
+Luis Dias www.google.com/search?q=google
Stellar Dohaeris!
+abhinav shubham Aria lUv'r! ;)
I love the quote, "The solution is SO OFTEN lasers!"
My second favourite quote is, "Graphene can do everything!"
"Their email to me got caught in my spam filter... I assume" T_T Feels bad man
These projects are always worth doing regardless of "how many hospitals could be built with the money."
I wont be around to see it but have no problem with my taxes going to funding it.
I would rename it Hawking~Shot with a spec of his ashes on some of them as tribute and a touch of romance.
+wiredjoker - Too right. One always feels better about humanity when it isn't hell-bent on just making itself richer.
If people like us want to voluntarily fund it there's no need to use taxes. Taxes are how one pays for things by forcing people to pay whether they want to or not. Personally I'd rather have much lower taxes so I can choose where more of my money goes. We all know the government isn't spending most tax money on space or hospitals, it mostly goes to war and cronies and distortions of the economy.
+wiredjoker Hawking is a hero and all, but such a spacecraft shouldn't be called after him. He is in no way the only important figure in this project and it would be unfair for all other scientists/people involved in this.
Bringing his dust out to space would be quite nice tho, even if a bit too dramatic :)
Dobromir Manchev - It does seem to be getting the name "Starshot".
You don't need to take away from hospitals. Take some money from the annual 720 billion US military budget, and we should have a real space program in no time.
I'll have to try this out in Kerbal Space Program...
Poor Jeb, he wouldn't be able to go along. Unless.. more lasers? Bigger sails? And struts of course. Lots of struts.
+rynstrs Time to strut your stuff I guess.
Build a larger craft out of 1,000's of small independent craft and assemble them like lego's upon arrival ...
No, make them self replicating or just build an automated factory on the moon which sends out swarms of those things. First step to drone network plus possible dyson sphere if the sail could be turned into a mirror for sunbeam focusing.
Mr. O'Dowd, I did an English oral on why you are one of the most important people on Earth and I won the majority of the votes! Thanks for being such a great inspiration.
It doesn't even matter if it ultimately succeeds. As long as the idea generates investment into the necessary technologies, we all will benefit in ways we cannot predict. I suspect that if this garners enough attention and money it could equal or even exceed the effects of the Apollo program on the development of society and technology.
And that I would definitely see in my lifetime.
Here's hoping!
+Kirhean Poetically worded bud. Luv it.
They should build the laser on the moon, less atmospheric interference (zero). And If you build it on the dark side, no one have to fear it, because it never points towards earth.
+Andreas Hölldorfer
How will you point it at the spaceship during the long periods when it is not in line of sight?
+Nilguiri Wouldn't that problem also arise with a laser built on Earth, though? And I don't think one built in space could harness enough energy to function, so I suppose the moon is a good option c:
+Andreas Hölldorfer There are methods of compensating for the atmospheric interferences being developed and those will have a major impact on astronomy in general because you can finally get the resolution of telescops over 0,5'' (google seeing if you want to learn more)
+Andreas Hölldorfer What if the moon isn't facing Alpha Centauri? A solution would be to build it on one of the poles so it has a continuous line of sight.
But then the moon will be pushed closer and closer to the earth, due to conservation of momentum.... :O
That means more tides! And thus more surfing! Yay!
This channel is the best channel on astrophysics i've found so far! You're amazing!
This is amazing. Even if its a bit of a long shot, my parents might be alive to see another star system, and that is just the best.
OK, so focusing a 100 GW laser on a 1 m disc of approximately zero thickness, how many nines reflectivity do you need to not turn the sail into plasma?
+wstockall All of them.
+wstockall Quite a lot, but if you match the frequency to the material you can achieve that kind of reflectivity. It's billions of times poorer for all the other frequencies, but you don't need to worry about those.
+wstockall 99.999% reflectivity or alternatively 10^-9 absorption, according to breakthroughinitiatives.org/index.php?controller=Forum&action=viewforum&id=5&page=3
+Gareth Dean If you accelerate the sail to 20% of light speed in a few minutes, won't the Doppler shift be enough to move the frequency out of that range?
wstockall
Very much so unless you did something to counteract it. Possibly a tunable laser would be needed. It'd depend on what frequency was used and how specifically it interacted with the sail.
"We have encountered an alien form on Alpha Centauri, these strange objects have been flagged as "Alpha Aliens" until we can learn more about them"
+TimmacTR That Stellaris refernce ...
I really really enjoy these videos, thanks for working on them
I want PBS Space Time to make a tee-shirt that says, "The solution is so often Lasers" & "Graphine can do Anything"
How are they expecting those low powered nano-crafts to beam information 4.4 light years away? We have enough trouble receiving information from probes within our own solar system (see New Horizons).
+Adi Serghei The light beamer would act as an extremely sensitive receiver as well as a transmitter. It's one of the many challenges, but by no means the most difficult. Continued advances in batter, laser, photo-detection, and signal processing tech should get us there.
+PBS Space Time but will continued advances in batter produce some kind of post-singularity super pancake?
+Adi Serghei i had the same question, but imagine this, those probes are going to be sent in around 20 years... the new horizon probes were sent like 10 years ago, so imagine how much the technology could advance...
+The Bealzibub That's the point of having thousands of them. Sending one craft is like sending one soldier into a war. It's unrealistic.
+Adi Serghei True but solution I have works if you have thousands of probes launched (which they intend to do). Since all the crafts will have communications capabilities they can just relay the information from one craft to another all the way back to earth. Less likely to lose data.
Love the show! As far as a possible dealbreaker for Starshot, it seems that sending a radio signal back from that distance is something we (as in NASA/ESA/JPL/JAXA/etc) have never done. A gram-scale craft would presumably have very limited transmitting power.
Pigeons?
I never thought I'd write a comment online, but this is one of my favorite shows of all time.. On any platform. My opinion of TH-cam is fundamentally changed because of your show, keep up the good work.
7:23 most motivating reason I've heard to get in shape yet
I'm just wondering what pictures at such relativistic speeds look like. Talk about a blur...
+crobc1 blue shifting is one thing. But remember at 0.2c you'd have both a 2% time dilation and 2% space contraction (is that only in the direction of travel or all around?). So, objects it takes a picture of could look visibly warped.
Hey Guys, love the show!
is there a episode somewhere you guys talk about planet x?
+Semchance Semajiin bfy.tw/5bQB
Rekt
OH SHIT! PBS Space Time! I love you guys even more.
+PBS Space Time best reply. Best channel please exist for the rest of time.
+PBS Space Time ! ^_^
I flat LOVED the Discworld Turtle in the background....kudos!! :)
I find it truly fascinating how we have come full circle. Our ancestors explored the world with sails, our generation and future ones will explore the galaxy on sails. This is bad ass
Faith in humanity restored
im 13 and i have to exercise and eat healthy to live for 50 year
i dont think im obese
+torgeir “torgeir03” HD Better will be not to be killed by stupid, crashing the car or drinking to death.
+torgeir “torgeir03” HD You'll get there buddy!
cool! I'll be waiting for that episode
I guess they'll figure out how to cut the travel time in half by the time it launches
I want to add some ideas to this. - First. - This idea is GREAT! - Hundreds (thousands), of tiny sails (w/cameras etc.) will certainly be the way we explore other solar systems. - As the tech progresses, we will be able to reach farther and farther systems in a human lifetime. - There has to be some discussion about slowing a set of these into orbit around the target star.
(I don't really have any idea right now, except the possible use of the target stars light to 'steer' into an orbital trajectory.)
These 'nano-ships' could eject a tiny probe into these worlds. (I know that we have this 'no contamination directive' - but after a decades-long trek through deep space, wouldn't our ships be sterilized?), and even the tiniest data about a world would be hugely valuable. -
As far as the 'private' investment concept. - the free enterprise concept is (in my opinion) the best motivator for advancement, HOWEVER, if we let it go too far, the first habitable world will be 'owned' by the investors. This will (*science-fiction dystopia alert*) possibly lead to the rich and industrial leaders of our planet losing interest in maintaining the livability of the Earth, because they have found a world to migrate to after ours cannot sustain life. Without a doubt, the rich and industrial leaders on our planet will have seats on the shuttle. - But there will certainly be millions or billions left to slowly die after the Earth is drained of resources. - Granted, this is centuries into the future. But we should agree on how the discoveries made by private investment exploration must be used to further the betterment of life ON EARTH, not the betterment of life AFTER EARTH.
Will there be a _"The Solution is so Often Lasers"_ t-shirt in a future? XD
how do you dislike this stuff?
+Seth ThunderShard by clicking the dislike bar.
+Vaibhav Gupta So, there are 32 confused people?
2 words Flat earthers
May be language problems.. failed to understand what the guy is trying to say 😄
So happy to see Discworld floating by at the end of this video 8:38
great channel, very intersting and well brought content!
I find it so amazing and almost poetic that humans first used big sail ships to discover and travel to new lands and that now we will likely use sails again to discover and explore the stars. I can just picture a giant star ship with a giant solar sail on it and how similar yet high tech it could look compared to old sail ships, and we can have space pirates! :)
i have a question: wouldnt the other star when the spaceship comes reflect the spaceship backwards like a ping pong
+gökçe arslan Not by very much, the star's light would be trillions of times weaker than the massive laser we'd use to get it there.
+Gareth Dean k
gökçe arslan If there's intelligent life on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, it would be so cool if they had similar plans of their own, and decided to use _their_ lasers to direct the Starshots back where they came from, along with a swarm of their own nanocrafts. Then we could send stuff back and forth between the systems, and would probably establish some kind of radio communication with them along the way.
I thought that too, but I realized that once the probe is far enough for our laser to be pointless (damn you inverse square law), the probe could fold up, or even detach from the sail. That would make the surface area much less.
@@bobsonmcgregory7247 yeah good idea but in space there is no air to slow it down. Why not stick opposite thrusters or similar lasers to beam in opposite direction to slow it down?
Great job guys, your videos are amazing !
Can we actually use the light of another star to slow down if we approach closer enough to it ?
In the game Elite: Dangerous (Physics Engine if you must) there is a cool story about this. In that universe they discovered semi light speed travel and sent out a spaceship to the nearest star to sol, which at 0,3c would take about 50 years or so. Yet a mere 20 years later after the spaceship's departure, witchspace was discovered trough alien tech which enabled faster then light travel. By the time this spacecraft was halfway there were space stations setting up colonies. This is actually a possibility for a mission as Starshot, minus the witchspace of course.
"their e mail to me got into the spam filter" yes indeed
If the solar sail is made out of this reflective material and we're gonna shoot it with a strong laser beam, is there a possibility of a ricochet beam coming back down to earth, or does it scatter based on the fact that once it does reflect it's no longer 100% focused?
Your channel is awesome! It's my favourite on youtube
Great A'Tuin floating was a nice touch.
This is interesting. I'd love it if we found intelligent life around alpha cen, and then drove a couple hundred of those ships into the planet we found it on in order to give them a boost, or at least make them aware there's other life.
We should kill them before they kill us
Holy fuck 20% C in a few minutes how could any craft handle that kind of acceleration!
anything is possible with graphene
Kieran Calder Yes! graphene is the most useful invention since duct tape.
its not the acceleration that damages the body, its friction. since space is nearly nearly empty any acceleration would not affect the structural integrity.
+Rajeev Ranjan yeah it could of whatever is accelerating has multiple components. A massive enough g load can damage any electronic systems.
+Rajeev Ranjan I mean if you accelerate to 60,000,000 m/s in about 3 minutes you would be subjected to about 34,000 g's. I'm pretty sure a robust nanocraft could survive it. But that's a ridiculous amount of acceleration. Still about one tenth of what you'd get on the surface of a white dwarf though.
I don't think it can be overstated how much a successful interstellar project like this would inspire future generations.
Greatest channel on TH-cam! Greetings from Sweden. :)
We must write, "Humans wer here" on the moon.
+Allthetrollfaces Or at least "Cha"
lifelesspig Or a giant penis
We drew a great big penis on the surface of Mars #neverforget
Jimmy Neutron Star draw earth 🌏
Jimmy Neutron Star yep spacex should do that
Exploration is always worth the money, that's why we live : curiosity
That is not true for most of us.
I dont know te full extent of it, but great job making these so people will want to watch in order. Very useful in understanding.
Loved the humor in this episode ❤️
Is our sun and the alpha centauri system revolving in the galaxy at the same speed? Is either faster or slower?
They probably have periods of differing speed and rotation, but over the revolution of the entire galaxy (about 250 million years) they most likely maintain the same relative place in the grand scheme of things, there will be periods where they are much closer to each other, just like mars is alot closer to us every 2 years or so....
Intel has pretty much called an end to Moores law.
+1019wc1019 Only for desktop CPU die shrinks.
I've never made it to the end of a PBSspacetime video before deciding it deserves a like
this guy is great at explaining these things
Omg omg omg do it DO IT! Don't really care how we do it, but as long as we don't destroy the earth in the process I would love to live to see interstellar data! That and a manned mission to another planet.
Manned mission?? Never in your life atleast to alpha centauari
@@RonaldoTheGoat1234 I should have clarified, I presumed the manned mission would be within the solar system. Always been fascinated by Mars and the ideas of how people could live there...
@@jadjoaquinquesada-khoury6176 oh thanks for clarifying
Working from the other direction, I assume we aren't the only species to think of this plan. Is there any way to detect if other laser powered nano-craft are being shot into the galaxy? What would we have to look for? The laser would be very narrow and we probably couldn't see it unless it was pointed directly at us so... what would another race sending out nanoships look like, if anything?
+James ‚Teneroth‘ Williams Frankly, we probably don't even have technology to detect our own probes at such distances... If we would happen to encounter such probes ourselves, chances are the probes themselves would look and function very similar to what we are planing to pull off. As for the race that send them, that is an open question...
+James “Teneroth” Williams I had exactly this thought! And if it's cheap to send out millions of these, what are the chances that one might wander into our solar system? One reason we might not expect this is that, moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, they're way faster than the Milky Way's escape velocity. That means the galaxy wouldn't be littered with drifting Starshots.
I hadn't thought of that... My thought was that if everyone is sending these out by the million there would be impacts. Small or not, traveling at a significant portion of the speed of light would cause some pretty gnarly impacts, possibly sending relativistic particles off in all directions. Those would be easier to detect than the starshots themselves, at least in my mind. The 'Oh-my-god particle' comes to mind.
PBS Space Time I was wondering, is the radiation from the star strong enough to slow these little probes down enough to catch them in orbit?
+KohuGaly Hell no. Zipping around the solar system is one thing, but getting to a significant fraction of the speed of light is orders of magnitude different.
A giant laser beaming at the nearby star (and beyond) ?
So much for Hawking's warning about revealing our presence and position to aliens :-)
You just defined my potential career for this! I will study hard in a university and work in continuing moore’s law!
A few thoughts:
-The sail should be a circle, rather than square. As you can see in the shadows under a tree (or any time light goes through a small hole), light tends to end up in round splotches rather than squares.
-We should perhaps build the laser array on the far side of the moon to prevent accidents and misuse, and also because there'd be no atmosphere to reduce the quality of the laser beam.
-Rather than sending a specific number of craft, we should just send craft continuously and never stop, making upgrades to the probes as we go. Think about it: if we send 1,000 probes and then stop, we'll get pictures and a signal from those 24 years later and then that'll be it. No more data. But if we send them continuously, we'll get a constant stream of data and pictures for 24 years, and more if we keep sending afterward.
Good plan
The light ends as round splotches because the light IS a round splotch. If the sun was square.... it would be square splotches. For example look at sunlight through leaves during solar eclipse.
@@seditt5146 You are completely right
@@vulture4117 yeah due to the way light rays go through a pinhole it behaves sort of like a lens and projects an images which gets larger, and dimmer further from the pinhole the projection gets. Try this pretty cool experiment. Get into a dark room on a sunny day and block off all windows but allow a hole maybe quarter to half Inch or so to let light in. It will behave like a camera and you will see an image of the outside projected onto a wall, piece of paper, or whatever however it will be inverted. If you can image a straight line from the projected image to where its at outside the reason why this happens might make perfect sense. The first cameras ever were large rooms with a small 4 inch hole with maybe a lens in which an artist would paint the projected image onto a canvas . These were basically proto cameras before we had film.
Careful, Ikaros.
Sounded like my doorbell was ringing at 6:21 haha don't trip me out like that, space man.
The awesome factor on this is just amazing!
It's not the future until I have a flying car
+gottalikeit2010 - But you wouldn't like everyone having flying cars. Noisy, drunk, crashing out of the sky, hitting birds, crashing into buildings, landing on people, idiots interfering with the airports and planes. Sigh.
+gottalikeit2010 yo, just buy a plane or a helicopter.
+Derek Gunn That's a non-issue. By the time flying cars arrive they will be self-driving from the beginning.
+gottalikeit2010 Flying cars have been around for years, you just have to search for them.
+Max Loh self driving land cars would still be cheaper and more reliable than flying ones
Would there be any adverse effects on our atmosphere from the heat generated by firing the proposed mega-laser to propel the nano craft?
Another hole on the ozone? Worth it!!
No
this channel is tickling my imagination with every episode
On rewatching this again and seeing the project backers, I looked at the video production date: 2014! This needs updates! And in light of SpaceX's progress with Starship, it is now a possibility to built those lasers on the Moon; solves all the atmospheric problems. Efforts have also restarted on nuclear powering, Orbital Assembly is pursuing in space construction of spinning habitats with robotics, but solar power would be fine. AI and robotics have also come quite some ways to support all this.
How the hell do they send the data back from the probe.
I guess a very sensitive antenna on the receiving end, and the signal would probably need to be in a rather empty (and low-energy) wavelength to get a good SNR. Definitely a technical obstacle for such a small probe!
With luck we will master spooky action at a distance. If so then it may be possible to send the signals back instantly at very low energy.
"I thought that didn't allow information transfer?"
It doesn't.
reason they are sending a swarm of these.
Search : Quantum Entanglement
They will go for it and use a swarm of these to relay data back to the earth INSTANTLY via Quantum Entanglement
jesus christ its happening
You can't send information faster than speed of light. That's not how quantum entaglement works...
For some reason this makes me think of LEGO ships. Thousands of tiny ultra light individual components that can travel at 20% of c that when they arrive at their destination combine into one larger ship to then perform more complicated tasks and when they are done, they can separate back to their individual components and travel fast again
The proposed laser array could be used as a weapon to hit targets in orbit and, with an orbiting mirror, to hit targets on the ground. I think it would require extraordinary international cooperation for the laser array to be permitted to be built.
This is such an exciting and magnificent advancement opportunity!
Covering light year distances....wont it likely run into a tiny piece of space debris??
Probally not or yes maybe... Space is wierd but the best answer is just to launch a bunch of them and see what happens.
It took months to get the pictures back from Pluto. I notice that the issue of getting the pictures sent back from over 4 light-years away was glossed over.
It will take 4 years
Also, did pictures from pluto come back via laser or radio/other means? Non light speed communications return at... non light speeds.
Radio is a form of light. It travels at light speed. The pictures from Pluto took months not because of the distance but because the probe's data upload speeds make DSL look like Google Fiber.
WarmWeatherGuy are you forgetting the bit where he said how long it will take?
A successful QSO with something that far away boggles the mind. But so does finding planets that far away.
this is amazing! all I want is to see other worlds.
The 2 main problems are:
1: Lasers only work on a very restricted frequency. As the spacechip accelerates, the relative frequency drops. How they will compensate the frequency shift long enough to get even 10% of c?
2: How to send the signal back to earth with that little power? It would be hidden in the noise of the star. Is at least factible, or they are betting on unknown advances in communication?
Fuck sake scrap a few jets and pay for this.
5:04, what the hell's a jigawatt??
A billion watts
watch?v=I5cYgRnfFDA
+Stop throwing fridges at me
he's quoting MJ Fox, not asking a question ;)
Oh ok lmao
It should be gigawatts
If you click on the purple channel icon to the left, you can see an ion thruster lifting its power supply from the ground. Consequently, it can accelerate at well over 9.8/m^2, nearly 6 orders of magnitude faster than the Dawn spacecraft! It could also run on commercially available solar cells and carry a small propellant tank as well. Right now it is just a rough working prototype, but it has potential....
Well explained!
If distance is not that much of a problem, and if we are planning to build swarms of nanocrafts anyway, why limiting interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri? Wouldn't it be more rewarding to send multiple swarms to different stars at the same time? Maybe towards stars which are already known to have planets
Yeah, but that would take 100's of years
+Lord Waffle Not necessarily; if I am not wrong, there are more interesting stars at like 6-7 light years or less. My point is, why not sending more swarms at the same time instead of focusing only on Alpha Centauri?
+TheRealBileth I know, but I'm just saying it would take about 50 years to get to those types, and we are focusing on closer stars at the moment. So yes, we could send probes, but it would take very long.
You said "there are no dealbreakers" here, but that's not true. We don't have the material capable of
A) Withstanding 100GW of power per square meter / or reflecting it perfectly
B) Withstanding acceleration of 60000g (from their website)
C) Being incredibly thin
You can't just just brush it off with "oh, we will use graphene or whatever".
+crobc1 What are these mirrors made of? Can these mirrors withstand 60000g? If not, it's a dealbreaker right there.
+crobc1 bunker buster bombs don't really survive whatever accelerations they experience. So that's a really strange argument.
+crobc1 First of all, you're confusing deceleration for a few microseconds (if that) with constant acceleration for 2 minutes. That's like 9 orders of magnitude difference. You can momentarily hit your head at 150G, but you can't survive continuous acceleration of even at 10g - an average human blacks out between 4g and 6g.
Second of all, that acceleration is still less than 60000g. The electronics in the artillery shells experiences 15500g. Now go through this list and find the fastest continuous acceleration that we can achieve today:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(acceleration)
And then realize how many orders of magnitude away we are.
+crobc1 First of all, you didn't name such mirrors. What are they exactly? Dielectric mirror, I assume, but which one can withstand 100GW/m^2?
Second of all, NO, you can't just pick one of the requirements and declare that you had solved the problem. You must satisfy ALL the requirements, including the ones I didn't mention (I'm sure I missed something).
"And do you seriously think that these physicists would propose to do something that is impossible, or within known engineering capabilities or an incremental improvement thereof" - yes, people make crazy claims all the time, including scientists. If you actually do look at their proposal, there's very little substance. They are basically hoping these materials and technologies will materialize if they through money at the problem. And you know, I really hope I'm wrong, and they are right. But so far all I see is wishful thinking.
We have 20 years to solve those problems... Bro 10 years ago people were amazed with the snake Game haha
Off the scale for awesomeness.
Good show too :)
My thoughts on the expanding of the universe: We're actually in a black whole that's probably a double torus inferno and we are nearing a 'curve' so everything seems to be pulling away. We can't 'see' far enough away to be able to notice. We're not even close to being able to map the universe, but the strings of galaxies are mighty beautiful and beyond awe inspiring! We generally think that when someone stands still that they are not moving, but often don't realize that they are standing on the surface of something orbiting a star that's traveling through our galaxy at unimaginable velocities already. Then our galaxy is moving through the cosmos at even greater velocities. Would anyone care to place a velocity on us as we sit and watch these videos?