 Some of the most used tropes in science fiction include the ability to travel vast distances very quickly and the perception of communications from extraterrestrial intelligences outside of our own solar system. But there's a group that is working right now to make those two things reality and unlike groups before them, they've got the brains and the bucks to make it happen. This is your space pod for April 27th, 2016. You may have heard of this group. They've been able to make front page news with their announcements and unlike previous groups before them, there actually is a very good chance that they may be able to pull this off. Breakthrough Initiatives, a project started by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner with a team that includes people such as physicist Stephen Hawking, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former director of NASA's Ames Research Center, Pete Wharton. The expertise is immense and the funding is full. Two major projects have been announced since its formal introduction on July 20th, 2015. The first Breakthrough Listen is a $100 million initiative to provide the most comprehensive look out into the cosmos to try to find extraterrestrial communications. A third of that is dedicated to actual time on radio telescopes. Another third of that is dedicated to building newer and more sensitive instruments and then the final third of that is dedicated to hiring the astronomers and staff needed to actually pull this off. Breakthrough Listen will attempt this by looking for both radio and laser communications. This is being carried out right now by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia here in the United States for observing the Northern Hemisphere Sky. While the Southern Hemisphere Sky is being observed by the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia, Green Bank is the largest steerable radio telescope in the world, while Parkes is the second largest in the Southern Hemisphere. Neither is a pushover choice. These powerful radio telescopes will allow the detection of the equivalent of the total radio output of the Earth within 17 light years and are sensitive enough to detect a transmitter of the same power as the average aircraft radar system within 1,000 light years. Overall Breakthrough Listen will provide 10 years of observation data of the million closest stars to our solar system, the 100 closest galaxies, and exotic objects like white dwarfs and black holes. Scientists at the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, who you may know as SETI, welcome all of this influx of data. Now, they have said that one day of data gathering for Breakthrough Listen will actually bring in the equivalent of a year's worth of data gathering that SETI does on average. All the data generated is given to the public open and freely for whoever may want to research it. But there's also something else that Breakthrough Initiatives just announced. They're going to attempt to tackle true interstellar space travel. On August 25th, 2012, Voyager 1 officially crossed into interstellar space, finally making humans an interstellar species. But it took Voyager 1 over 35 years of travel at an average speed of just over 17 kilometers per second to finally exit our solar system's influence. If we're going to be serious about leaving the solar system, especially if we're very, very serious about no longer sending robotic emissaries and actually sending ourselves to the stars, we're going to need to go a lot, a lot, a lot faster than we currently do. And that's where Breakthrough Starshot comes in. With details released just this month, the Breakthrough Initiative announced the development of a proof-of-concept spacecraft fleet called Starships, which sounds delicious. Now, these micro spacecraft would be able to accelerate to somewhere between 15-20% of the speed of light and perform a flyby of the closest stars to our sun, the Alpha Centauri system, after about 20-30 years worth of travel. That's quite a lofty goal, especially considering that these Starships are expected to fly at a third of the speed of light, thousands of times faster than Voyager 1. Now, how big are these spacecraft, you ask? Well, if we were to make one, they would fit in the palm of my hand. Barely a centimeter in size, a fleet of Starships would be launched on a carrier spacecraft containing several thousand Starships. Now, they send out several thousand Starships at once, because quite a few of them will be damaged on the way to the Alpha Centauri system, so sending out a lot means that at least some of them will make it. Once they're deployed, they would all unfurl a solar sail about 16 square meters in size. Then a laser array on Earth would fire nearly 100 gigawatts of energy at them, accelerating the Starships up to speed in approximately 10 minutes. Now, power sources, instruments, and cameras would need to be extremely small. Every single piece of technology needed for those Starships would need to be evolved in order of magnitude beyond its current capabilities. But I'm very optimistic about breakthrough initiatives chances. Listen is underway right now and Starshot is a proof of concept, essentially a technological demonstration. So even if the end goal of sending a probe interstellar doesn't actually happen by the end of this program, at least those technologies are getting the jumpstart that they deserve. Thanks for watching The Space Pod. I'm Jared Head. What do you think of breakthrough initiatives? Well, let me know in the comments below. And also don't forget to like and subscribe to us. 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