“This has never been done before, to push macroscopic objects at speeds approaching the speed of light,” said Lubin, a professor in the Department of Physics. New propulsion technologies are required - and this is where the UCSB directed energy research program of using light as the “propellant” comes in.
rocket fuel) is out it can’t provide enough energy to move the craft fast enough, and the weight of it and current systems needed to propel the ship are not viable for the relativistic speeds the craft needs to achieve. Traditional onboard chemical propulsion (a.k.a. That challenge is a major focus of Lubin’s work, in which he reimagines the technology it would take to reach the next solar system in human terms. If they were headed to the closest star, it would take them more than 80,000 years to reach it. But the car-sized probes, traveling at speeds of more than 35,000 miles per hour, took 40 years to reach there and their distance from Earth is only a tiny fraction of that to the next star. The Voyager missions have proven that we can send objects across the 12 billion miles it takes to exit the bubble surrounding our solar system, the heliosphere. The biggest challenge to human-scale interstellar travel is the enormous distance between Earth and the nearest stars. Such drive toward ceaseless exploration lies at the core of who we are as a species.” We explore at smaller and smaller levels down to subatomic levels and we also explore at increasingly larger scales. “Look at the history of the human species. “I think it’s our destiny to keep exploring,” Rothman said. The result of their collaboration was published in the journal Acta Astronautica. “The Apollo moon voyages were among the most momentous events in my life and contemplating them still blows my mind,” said Rothman, a distinguished professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and a self-admitted “space geek.”Ī mere 50 years have passed since that pivotal era, but humanity’s knowledge of space and the technology to explore it have improved immensely, enough for Rothman to join experimental cosmologist Lubin in considering what it would take for living beings to embark on a journey across the vast distance separating us from our nearest neighbor in the galaxy.
Born of a generation that saw breathtaking advances in space exploration, they carry the unbridled optimism and creative spark of the early Space Age, when humans first found they could leave the Earth. Although we may not see it in our lifetimes - at least not some real version of the fictional warp-speeding, hyperdriving, space-folding sort - we are having early conversations of how life could escape the tether of our solar system, using technology that is within reach.įor UC Santa Barbara professors Philip Lubin and Joel Rothman, it’s a great time to be alive. No longer solely in the realm of science fiction, the possibility of interstellar travel has appeared, tantalizingly, on the horizon.
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