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  • This real-life lore video is made possible by brilliant.org stay tuned for an exclusive

  • brilliant offer available only for real-life lore viewers at the end of this video.

  • I'm sure that many of you growing up like me used to spend time dreaming about visiting another planet or another star.

  • You've probably heard the phrase, "born too late, to explore the world and born too early

  • to explore the universe," which implies that our ancestors explored the unknown parts of Earth while our

  • descendants will be exploring the unknown parts of our universe, leaving us in the 21st century as the

  • awkward middle children with little exploration to accomplish. But is this really the case? and could our

  • civilization actually reach out and touch another star during your lifetime?

  • For reference the nearest other known star closest to our sun is here called Proxima Centauri, but it's still

  • 4.25 light-years away from us

  • That doesn't seem too bad

  • So let's explore how to get there using current technology.

  • I've talked about the voyager 1 space probe in previous videos, so to summarize,

  • this probe is the farthest away from earth that a man-made object has ever been so far.

  • It is currently almost 140 astronomical units away from our sun, meaning that it's

  • 140 times farther away from the sun than earth is. To have reached this distance,

  • voyager utilized gravity assists from both the Jupiter and Saturn to reach a speed of 17 km/s.

  • But even at this far away distance and at the same speed, it would take voyager another

  • 73,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri.

  • NASA, however is currently set to launch another space probe just next year in 2018

  • that will become the fastest moving object humanity has ever created.

  • It's called the parker solar probe and it will be sent to study the outer corona of the sun.

  • Utilizing repeated gravity assists from Venus, the probe will enter into an elliptical orbit around the sun and at its

  • closest point to the sun in orbit, the probe will achieve a velocity of an amazing

  • 200 kilometers per second. That's fast enough to zip around the entire earth at the equator

  • in 3 minutes and 24 seconds. But it's still only a tiny

  • 0.07% of the speed of light which means that even at that speed it would take the probe well over

  • 7,000 years to reach proxima centauri

  • So is there any technology that we could reasonably see happening in our lifetime that would enable us to at least

  • see another star system up close?

  • Various ideas have been proposed throughout history but perhaps the most credible one is a recent idea called Breakthrough Starshot.

  • I briefly mentioned Breakthrough Starshot in my video from two weeks ago,

  • but i didn't go into very much detail about how ambitious and revolutionary this project really is.

  • If successful,

  • breakthrough starshot will be one of the most important events of the entire 21st century.

  • The plan calls to develop a tiny ship on the scale of

  • centimeters weighing only a few grams with a sail attached to it,

  • 4 meters across by 4 metres tall. It actually calls for a thousand of these tiny ships and sales to be

  • created and for all of them to be lifted into orbit by a larger mothership on a conventional rocket.

  • Once in orbit the mothership will deploy one tiny ship and sail at a time.

  • The sail attached to the tiny ships

  • will work much like a sail does on a boat on earth but instead of wind providing the necessary

  • propulsion it will be a huge 1 square kilometer ground-based array packed with

  • high-powered lasers. This square kilometer of lasers will all concentrate to their collective power onto the tiny sails of the ships

  • one at a time, and this should be capable of propelling each vessel to 20% the speed of light in only 10 minutes.

  • Once all 1,000 ships are on their way, they should be able to reach proxima centauri in about 20 years.

  • And since the scheduled flight time is in the year 2036,

  • that means that the first human-made spacecraft

  • to arrive in another star system could take place in the near-ish future of 2056.

  • That's not to say that the project is without any problems however,

  • A collision with even a speck of dust at that speed would destroy any of the craft, which is why

  • 1000 of them are going all at once so at least

  • some of them will make the journey. In addition the square kilometer laser array on the ground will use up

  • 100 gigawatts of power for each sale that it propels. Which is roughly equivalent

  • to the peak electricity consumption in france at 7:00 in the evening.

  • Acquiring that much power is difficult but still possible.

  • Finally, the cost of the entire project is estimated to be at 10 billion dollars,

  • which sounds like a lot at first, but consider this,

  • Nasa's budget for 2018 is 19.1 billion dollars, and the cost for the International Space Station has been

  • 150 billion dollars. The U.S. military budget meanwhile in 2015 was nearly

  • 600 billion dollars and the us federal budget for 2018 is well over 4 trillion dollars.

  • Taking 10 billion dollars out of any of these enormous amounts of money is not very much to ask for.

  • Especially when you consider that there is a planet that orbits inside the habitable zone of Proxima-Centauri

  • named proxima-Centauri b

  • The ships from Breakthrough Starshot will be capable of taking pictures of this mysterious planet that could reveal

  • oceans, continents, and other surface features if they exist.

  • Proxima-Centauri B will become the primary focus of future human colonization efforts in our galaxy.

  • 10 billion dollars is a very small price to pay for

  • potentially securing the future of human civilization in our universe.

  • And although all of us watching this video were likely born in the century before

  • humans themselves will visit another star system, we can take pride in laying the

  • foundations for our descendants to be the explorers that will carry our names and legacies with them.

  • Any society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

  • If you still have lingering questions regarding the math behind interstellar flight,

  • how planets outside of the solar system are discovered, or how we know how big the universe is,

  • then you should know that this video was directly based off the astronomy course offered at brilliant.org.

  • Brilliant is a truly wonderful online learning platform where you can learn about

  • For example, in their astronomy course they have a section where they help you calculate the time it would take to

  • accelerate a solar sail to 20% light speed, and how long it would take the sail

  • to reach the Alpha-Centauri system, which is the exact math that i used in the creation of this video.

  • To learn much more about interstellar travel or any other interesting topics,

  • This free trial is currently only offered to those who click on

  • brilliant.org/reallifelore in the description. So if you liked what you just watched and you're

  • curious to learn more give brilliant a try and you'll be supporting my channel at the same time.

  • inside of the habitable zone of Proxima-Centauri, named Proxima-Centauri B.

  • If revealed to be truly habitable in this way,

  • math and science in an easily approachable way by solving fun and challenging problems.

  • head over to brilliant.org/reallifelore for an exclusive 3-day free trial.

  • Cheers.

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