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I'm sure that many of you growing up like me used to spend time dreaming about visiting another planet or another star.
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You've probably heard the phrase, "born too late, to explore the world and born too early
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to explore the universe," which implies that our ancestors explored the unknown parts of Earth while our
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descendants will be exploring the unknown parts of our universe, leaving us in the 21st century as the
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awkward middle children with little exploration to accomplish. But is this really the case? and could our
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civilization actually reach out and touch another star during your lifetime?
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For reference the nearest other known star closest to our sun is here called Proxima Centauri, but it's still
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4.25 light-years away from us
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That doesn't seem too bad
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So let's explore how to get there using current technology.
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I've talked about the voyager 1 space probe in previous videos, so to summarize,
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this probe is the farthest away from earth that a man-made object has ever been so far.
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It is currently almost 140 astronomical units away from our sun, meaning that it's
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140 times farther away from the sun than earth is. To have reached this distance,
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voyager utilized gravity assists from both the Jupiter and Saturn to reach a speed of 17 km/s.
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But even at this far away distance and at the same speed, it would take voyager another
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73,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri.
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NASA, however is currently set to launch another space probe just next year in 2018
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that will become the fastest moving object humanity has ever created.
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It's called the parker solar probe and it will be sent to study the outer corona of the sun.
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Utilizing repeated gravity assists from Venus, the probe will enter into an elliptical orbit around the sun and at its
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closest point to the sun in orbit, the probe will achieve a velocity of an amazing
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200 kilometers per second. That's fast enough to zip around the entire earth at the equator
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in 3 minutes and 24 seconds. But it's still only a tiny
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0.07% of the speed of light which means that even at that speed it would take the probe well over
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7,000 years to reach proxima centauri
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So is there any technology that we could reasonably see happening in our lifetime that would enable us to at least
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see another star system up close?
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Various ideas have been proposed throughout history but perhaps the most credible one is a recent idea called Breakthrough Starshot.
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I briefly mentioned Breakthrough Starshot in my video from two weeks ago,
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but i didn't go into very much detail about how ambitious and revolutionary this project really is.
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If successful,
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breakthrough starshot will be one of the most important events of the entire 21st century.
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The plan calls to develop a tiny ship on the scale of
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centimeters weighing only a few grams with a sail attached to it,
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4 meters across by 4 metres tall. It actually calls for a thousand of these tiny ships and sales to be
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created and for all of them to be lifted into orbit by a larger mothership on a conventional rocket.
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Once in orbit the mothership will deploy one tiny ship and sail at a time.
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The sail attached to the tiny ships
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will work much like a sail does on a boat on earth but instead of wind providing the necessary
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propulsion it will be a huge 1 square kilometer ground-based array packed with
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high-powered lasers. This square kilometer of lasers will all concentrate to their collective power onto the tiny sails of the ships
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one at a time, and this should be capable of propelling each vessel to 20% the speed of light in only 10 minutes.
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Once all 1,000 ships are on their way, they should be able to reach proxima centauri in about 20 years.
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And since the scheduled flight time is in the year 2036,
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that means that the first human-made spacecraft
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to arrive in another star system could take place in the near-ish future of 2056.
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That's not to say that the project is without any problems however,
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A collision with even a speck of dust at that speed would destroy any of the craft, which is why
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1000 of them are going all at once so at least
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some of them will make the journey. In addition the square kilometer laser array on the ground will use up
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100 gigawatts of power for each sale that it propels. Which is roughly equivalent
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to the peak electricity consumption in france at 7:00 in the evening.
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Acquiring that much power is difficult but still possible.
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Finally, the cost of the entire project is estimated to be at 10 billion dollars,
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which sounds like a lot at first, but consider this,
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Nasa's budget for 2018 is 19.1 billion dollars, and the cost for the International Space Station has been
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150 billion dollars. The U.S. military budget meanwhile in 2015 was nearly
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600 billion dollars and the us federal budget for 2018 is well over 4 trillion dollars.
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Taking 10 billion dollars out of any of these enormous amounts of money is not very much to ask for.
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Especially when you consider that there is a planet that orbits inside the habitable zone of Proxima-Centauri
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named proxima-Centauri b
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The ships from Breakthrough Starshot will be capable of taking pictures of this mysterious planet that could reveal
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oceans, continents, and other surface features if they exist.
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Proxima-Centauri B will become the primary focus of future human colonization efforts in our galaxy.
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10 billion dollars is a very small price to pay for
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potentially securing the future of human civilization in our universe.
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And although all of us watching this video were likely born in the century before
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humans themselves will visit another star system, we can take pride in laying the
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foundations for our descendants to be the explorers that will carry our names and legacies with them.
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Any society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
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If you still have lingering questions regarding the math behind interstellar flight,
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how planets outside of the solar system are discovered, or how we know how big the universe is,
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then you should know that this video was directly based off the astronomy course offered at brilliant.org.
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Brilliant is a truly wonderful online learning platform where you can learn about
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For example, in their astronomy course they have a section where they help you calculate the time it would take to
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accelerate a solar sail to 20% light speed, and how long it would take the sail
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to reach the Alpha-Centauri system, which is the exact math that i used in the creation of this video.
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To learn much more about interstellar travel or any other interesting topics,
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This free trial is currently only offered to those who click on
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brilliant.org/reallifelore in the description. So if you liked what you just watched and you're
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curious to learn more give brilliant a try and you'll be supporting my channel at the same time.
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inside of the habitable zone of Proxima-Centauri, named Proxima-Centauri B.
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If revealed to be truly habitable in this way,
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math and science in an easily approachable way by solving fun and challenging problems.
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head over to brilliant.org/reallifelore for an exclusive 3-day free trial.
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Cheers.