“55 years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space,” said Milner, who is named after Gagarin and was born the same year as his historic flight, in a statement. “Today, we are preparing for the next great leap—to the stars.”
Milner and Hawking announced an overview of the Breakthrough Starshot plan in alivestreamed press conference on Tuesday, at One World Observatory in New York City. To bridge the enormous distance between our Solar System and Alpha Centauri, the pair proposed revving thousands of tiny postage-stamp-sized “nanocrafts” to relativistic speeds reaching 20 percent the speed of light.

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