Stephen Hawking has outlined a futuristic plan to reach distant stars with tiny spacecraft flying at a fifth of the speed of light.
The scientist said he could develop a fleet of laser-powered “nanocraft” to be fired into deep space and send back information.
The small vessels would consist of a tiny ship and a large “sail” which would be powered by energy from lasers fired at them from Earth.
Hawking predicted that powerful beams will propel the ships to 100million miles per hour – around a fifth of the speed of light.
He is the public face of the $100million venture, called Breakthrough StarShot, which is funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.
At a launch event in New York City, Hawking said the ships could be developed and launched within a generation, and reach Alpha Centauri – 4.37 light years away – 20 years later.
The nanocraft would be equipped with tiny cameras and would hopefully be able to send back images of planets in distant star systems.
Hawking said: “Albert Einstein once imagined riding on a light beam, and his thought experiment led him to the theory of special relativity.
“A little over a century later, we have the chance to attain a significant fraction of that speed: 100 million miles an hour.
“Only by going that fast can we reach the stars on the time-scale of a human life.”
