By Free Republic | Created at 2025-01-08 15:07:40 | Updated at 2025-01-09 07:23:57
16 hours ago
We Could Send A Spacecraft To Our Closest Stars With Electron Beams, Physicists Suggest
IFL Science ^ | January 08, 2025 | James Felton
Posted on 01/08/2025 6:41:26 AM PST by Red Badger
Using this method, the probe could potentially reach the star system in decades.
Proxima centauri, captured by Hubble. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
A team of physicists has outlined a possible way of sending probes deep into interstellar space within a reasonable timescale, using relativistic electron beams.
Space is that annoying combination of "really cool" and "really big". We can see really awesome stuff going on out there, but unless we come up with ways to significantly improve our propulsion methods, we aren't going to be taking a look at them any time soon.
Traveling at the speed of Voyager, it would take over 73,000 years to reach our nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Even if we had solid evidence of life on Proxima Centauri b – the planet discovered in Proxima Centauri's habitable zone – it would be tough to persuade someone to commit their ancestors to travel through space on a generation ship for longer than it took humanity to go from just a few thousand people to 7.674 billion.
In 2016, the long-term project Breakthrough Starshot was set up to figure out a way that we could do the next best thing; send a probe to the Alpha Centauri system, potentially to photograph it before returning to Earth.
VIDEO AT LINK...............
Early designs, which rely on components getting small and light enough to propel with relative ease, proposed that scientists could propel the small craft using a light sail and a directed laser, while later suggestions have involved firing elementary particles or microwaves at the probe. The problem with these ideas, according to the new paper, is that the cost of running the source beam is very high, and it is difficult to prevent the beam from spreading out, making it inefficient. Equally irritating is the fact that the further away from the source beam, the less power you can transfer to it.
"A current project, Breakthrough Starshot, envisions beam ranges on the order of 0.1 AU from a very large laser array that directly pushes on light sails. Using the energy of the beam to expel reaction mass from the vehicle requires less power for a given thrust than using the beam momentum directly for missions where the total velocity change is much less than the beam velocity," the team explains in their paper. "However, neither mode of operation fundamentally changes the tradeoff requirements for beams."
Attempting to work around this problem, the team suggested alternative methods of accelerating crafts using a solar sail using electrons accelerated to relativistic speeds. At these speeds they can experience a "relativistic pinch", an effect well-studied in particle accelerator and beam physics, which the team believes would help stop the spreading problem.
"In the frame of reference co-moving with the electron beam, this can be thought of as relativistic time dilation; there is not enough time in the beam frame for the space charge to spread the beam very far," the team explains. "Or, in a frame of reference at rest with respect to the Sun, one can think of these as relativistic increases in the electron momentum effectively reducing the charge-to-mass ratio of the electrons, again slowing the spread of the beam."
Accelerating the beam up to relativistic speeds, and keeping it directed at the target probe, would be somewhat of a challenge, and is still not something that will take place any time soon. The team suggests that the most promising idea is a "solar statite", or a hypothetical craft that uses its own solar sail to modify its orbit of the Sun. With this maneuverability, it could have a continuous view of the probe it is directing the beam at. Using this method, we could potentially reduce travel time to decades, rather than millennia.
Though this could potentially make the project feasible without too many advancements, some will still be necessary before we can send a probe to our nearest stars, and potentially habitable planets.
"By using thermoelectric conversion in a near-solar statite, large, GW-class beam infrastructure can potentially be launched in the near term without waiting for the industrialization of near-Earth space," the team concludes. "However, the usefulness of this approach depends on the discovery of a high-specific-power means of reception and conversion of that energy, either as beamed momentum or to eject reaction mass or push on the interplanetary medium as reaction mass."
The study is published in the journal Acta Astronautica.
TOPICS: Military/Veterans; Science; UFO's; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
1 posted on 01/08/2025 6:41:26 AM PST by Red Badger
To: MtnClimber; SunkenCiv; rktman; mowowie; SuperLuminal; Cottonbay
Warp 2, Mr. Chekov!....................
2 posted on 01/08/2025 6:42:47 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
To: Red Badger
We will never get to the stars with this method. I have absolutely zero trust in any government keeping up with a sustained multi decade effort supporting people who can’t vote because they’re billions of miles away.
To: Red Badger
I suppose going to Proxima Centauri makes more sense than going to war with France over Greenland…
4 posted on 01/08/2025 6:46:30 AM PST by GaltAdonis ( )
To: Red Badger
All they need is money. Better clean-up around the home planet before adventuring off somewhere that probably won’t support life.
5 posted on 01/08/2025 6:47:04 AM PST by Sequoyah101 (Donald John Trump. First man to be Elected to the Presidency THREE times since FDR.)
To: GaltAdonis
France?.....................
6 posted on 01/08/2025 6:48:18 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
To: Red Badger
Like just about all red dwarf stars, Proxima Centauri frequently erupts with large flares that would incinerate any potentially life-bearing planets. So it’s lifeless.
To: wildcard_redneck
Suppose that we suddenly get a message from outer space that there is another planet with billions of ‘people’ on it and they want to communicate with us.
Democrats would fall all over themselves trying to get there and sign them up to vote!..........
8 posted on 01/08/2025 6:50:53 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
To: Red Badger
9 posted on 01/08/2025 6:51:53 AM PST by MCF (If my home can't be my Castle, then it will be my Alamo)
To: Sequoyah101
HAHAHA you are trying to take money away from scientists!!
Wait, how is cold fusion working out? it was supposed to go in operation decades back.
10 posted on 01/08/2025 6:54:11 AM PST by Bobbyvotes (Congrats to Trump/Vance tea.m. America has been saved. For a while at least. )
To: Red Badger
Hasn’t AI solved this problem yet?
11 posted on 01/08/2025 6:55:14 AM PST by enumerated (81 million votes my ass)
To: Red Badger
“Greenland Belongs to the EU And Will Resist ‘Attack on Sovereign Borders’, France Warns Trump”
.
A story just posted here… Search FR for it if you wanna.
12 posted on 01/08/2025 6:55:24 AM PST by GaltAdonis ( )
To: Red Badger
Yeah, I guess some uppity Frog just warned the US to leave Greenland alone.
13 posted on 01/08/2025 6:56:44 AM PST by AnglePark (My opinion is the most worthless thing I own.)
To: Red Badger
I agree that if there is a civilization on a planet that we can reach we would definitely try to go there and it would be well-supported by government. I would imagine we would never try to land on the planet though because of possible cross-contamination of bacteria. I wouldn’t be worried about viruses because they need to be genetically compatible with their hosts and there is zero chance of that with alien life.
To: Red Badger
The problem with ‘Physicist’ is that their heads are full of protons, neutrons and electrons... What they aren’t full of is any common sense.
15 posted on 01/08/2025 6:58:59 AM PST by jerod (Nazis were essentially Socialist in Hugo Boss uniforms... Get over it!)
To: wildcard_redneck
Either figure out a way to create portals (bend space/time) or fuggedaboutit.
16 posted on 01/08/2025 7:01:31 AM PST by cgbg (It is time to pull the Deep State out of the mass media--like ticks from a dog.)
To: jerod
The problem with ‘Physicist’ is that their heads are full of morons..................
17 posted on 01/08/2025 7:02:24 AM PST by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
To: Telepathic Intruder
“Proxima Centauri frequently erupts with large flares that would incinerate any potentially life-bearing planets.” .
Ya learn something new every day! Thanks.
Although this certainly changes my long term real estate investment strategies…
LOL…
18 posted on 01/08/2025 7:03:47 AM PST by GaltAdonis ( )
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson
