NEBULA VOLUME 44 Issue 2 PAGE 2
Solar mass and 44.5 % of Solar visual luminosity. During the pair’ s 79.91 year orbit about a common centre, the distance between them varies from about that between Pluto and the Sun, to that between Saturn and the Sun. Proxima Centauri is at the slightly smaller distance of 4.24 light years from our Sun, making it the closest star to our Solar System, though not visible to the naked eye. An Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri has been detected, and as far as I know, has been scientifically verified as actually existing, the results were recently published in Nature. This planet may be a destination of future interstellar spacecraft, including the afore-mentioned nano probes currently being developed for a fly-by mission by the Breakthrough Starshot Project.
Many other future space craft for travelling to and between the stars have been envisaged over the last 50 years, such as so-called Generation Starships or Space Arks, in which whole generations live and die on board the giant craft on decades or centuries-long journeys to other stars. Putting the astronauts into deep sleep by means of advanced cryonics have also been speculated upon and proposed. But Breakthrough Starshot is an audacious attempt to send a series of nano-probes the size of fairly large computer chips to the Proxima System. The project was launched in April, this year, and will be initially funded by the Russian billionaire, Yuri Milner, and is being endorsed by Professor Stephen Hawking, Mark Zuckerberg and Kip Thorne. According to Milner,‘ if the Voyager spacecraft had left our planet when humans first left Africa, travelling at 11 miles a second, it would be arriving at Alpha Centauri just about now’. By contrast, if the nano probes set off some time in the 2030s, after a 20 year journey, they should be in a position to start sending data from Proxima round about the year 2060. However, at the present moment in time, Breakthrough Starshot is still very much in the early planning stage, and there’ s a real possibility that either the costs involved will be too prohibitive, or that the probes may meet with an unforeseen accident in deep interstellar space. Still, it seems to be well worth giving the project the best start possible, and the benefits, scientifically, could be stupendous and compe l- ling.
LOCATION MAP
There’ s no doubt, in my opinion, that manned interstellar travel won’ t be taking place any time soon. Some physicists and engineers don’ t think that it will ever prove possible, or feasible, to launch vessels that may well be vast in size and even more in terms of expense. To send a team of humans to even the nearest stars would utterly bankrupt the global economy within the economic parameters of the present time, and it may well prove politically impossible for governments to sell to the tax-payers the idea of funding a few humans to the stars, even though the benefits may not be felt by people on Earth for centuries to come. Nevertheless, my guess is that within the next couple of centuries, the first manned star ships will be blasting off from our ancestral home planet, to colonise and explore other worlds in other star systems. We may learn an incredible amount about how our Sun and its attendant planets formed, originally. We may, also, discover strange, new life forms which would keep scientists busy for centuries to come. It’ s all got to be, definitely, worthwhile.
HOW TO GET TO OUR MEETINGS
Carlton Hill, Friends Meeting House, 188, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9DX
Directions from Woodhouse Lane:
By car, turn into St. Mark ' s street there is a small car park on the right.
From Headingley, the bus stop is just after you pass the meeting house
By foot: 25 mins uphill going out of town to the University.
By bus: all buses to the university: 1,28,56,93,95,96,97. From the city centre ask for the stop outside the Chemical Engineering Dept, the stop after the Parkinson Building Steps.