Astrophysicist Proposes Paperclip-Sized Spacecraft Could Travel at Lightspeed to a Black Hole

'It sounds like science fiction: a spacecraft, no heavier than a paperclip, propelled by a laser beam,' writes this report from ScienceDaily, 'and hurtling through space at the speed of light toward a black hole, on a mission to probe the very fabric of space and time and test the laws of physics.'

'But to astrophysicist and black hole expert Cosimo Bambi, the idea is not so far-fetched.'

Reporting in the Cell Press journal iScience, Bambi outlines the blueprint for turning this interstellar voyage to a black hole into a reality... 'We don't have the technology now,' says author Cosimo Bambi of Fudan University in China. 'But in 20 or 30 years, we might.' The mission hinges on two key challenges — finding a black hole close enough to target and developing probes capable of withstanding the journey.

Previous knowledge on how stars evolve suggests that there could be a black hole lurking just 20 to 25 light-years from Earth, but finding it won't be easy, says Bambi. Because black holes don't emit or reflect light, they are virtually invisible to telescopes... 'There have been new techniques to discover black holes,' says Bambi. 'I think it's reasonable to expect we could find a nearby one within the next decade....'

Bambi points to nanocrafts — gram-scale probes consisting of a microchip and light sail — as a possible solution. Earth-based lasers would blast the sail with photons, accelerating the craft to a third of the speed of light. At that pace, the craft could reach a black hole 20 to 25 light-years away in about 70 years. The data it gathers would take another two decades to get back to Earth, making the total mission duration around 80 to 100 years... Bambi notes that the lasers alone would cost around one trillion euros today, and the technology to create a nanocraft does not yet exist. But in 30 years, he says that costs may fall and technology may catch up to these bold ideas.

'If the nanocraft can travel at a velocity close to the speed of light, the mission could last 40-50 years,' Bambi writes in the article, while acknowledging his idea is certainly very speculative and extremely challenging...'
'However, we should realize that most of the future experiments in particle physics and astrophysics will likely require long time (for preparation, construction, and data collection) and the work of a few generations of scientists, be very expensive, and in many cases, we will not have other options if we want to make progress in a certain field.'

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