Sentences with phrase «gigawatt laser»

Researchers would nudge them on their way using an Earth - based 100 gigawatt laser.

That's why, back on Earth, a 100 gigawatt laser will shoot into the sky and dump enormous amounts of energy into this sail, accelerating the craft to 20 per cent of light speed — enough to coast the 4 light years to Alpha Centauri in 20 years.

And you shine a laser, 50 Gigawatt laser, on it for about two minutes.

From Earth orbit, each featherweight spacecraft would be boosted toward Alpha Centauri at 20 percent light - speed by a minutes - long pulse from a ground - based, 100 - gigawatt laser array.

Not exact matches

To create this exotic state of matter, researchers at the FLASH facility in Hamburg, Germany, took a thin piece of aluminium foil and blasted it with an X-ray laser that generated about 10 million gigawatts of power per square centimetre.

Despite these perks, Avi Loeb, an astronomer at Harvard University and chair of Breakthrough Starshot's Scientific Advisory Committee, remains unconvinced this alternative proposal offers realistic advantages over Starshot's plan to use gigawatt - class lasers to boost smaller sails to the stars.

Then a ground - based laser array with a combined capacity of 100 gigawatts of peak power, spread out over a dry, high - altitude site like Chile's Atacama Desert, would zap each sail, one at a time, for a few minutes.

A ground - based laser array in a high - altitude site like Chile's Atacama Desert, shown in this artist's rendering, could send 100 gigawatts of power to orbiting space probes, enough to accelerate them to a significant fraction of the speed of light.