Stephen Hawking says his 'Star Chip' nano probes could reach Proxima b within 20 years and other top stories.

• Stephen Hawking says his 'Star Chip' nano probes could reach Proxima b within 20 years

  

  Stephen Hawking says a tiny space probe, powered by a light sail capturing Earth-based lasers, could reach our nearest neighbour star in about 20 years. Picture: Bryan Bedder/GettyRENOWNED physicist Stephen Hawking wants us to send a starship to Alpha Centauri. And he says he knows how to get it there in just 20 years.Speaking at a festival in Trondheim, Norway, Hawking told his audience that he was convinced humanity absolutely had to leave Earth.Finding and migrating to a second habitable plan..

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• Could asteroids bombard the Earth to cause a mass extinction in 10 million years?

  

  Scientists have spent decades debating whether asteroids and comets hit the Earth at regular intervals. At the same time, a few studies have found evidence that the large extinction events on Earth – such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66m years ago – repeat themselves every 26m to 30m years. Given that there’s good evidence that an asteroid triggered the dinosaur extinction, it makes sense to ask whether showers of asteroids could be to blame for regular extinction events. The questi..

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• Software on Mars rover allows it to pick research targets autonomously

  

  Taking only 21,000 of the Curiosity mission's total 3.8 million lines of code, AEGIS accurately selected desired targets over 2.5 kilometers of unexplored Martian terrain 93% of the time, compared to the 24% expected without the software. …more.

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• Camera captures microscopic holograms at femtosecond speeds

  

  The iridescent picture indicates the occurrence of a spark known as a filament. Credit: ITMO University. Researchers from ITMO University have built a setup for recording holograms of tiny objects like living cells at femtosecond speeds. The new method ...

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• Nuclear Fusion: Sustainable Energy From Plasma Hotter than the Sun Edges Closer

  

  The prospect of fusion energy—a potentially limitless and clean source of power—has just edged a little closer. Scientists believe they have solved a fundamental problem with building reactors that produce fusion power.Nuclear fusion produces energy in the same way as the sun and stars, combining lightweight atomic nuclei by using high pressures and temperatures of around 150 million degrees Celsius (270 million degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the center of the sun. It can be created using hydro..

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• Updated Kepler catalog contains 219 new exoplanet candidates

  

  NASA’s Kepler space telescope team has identified 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and in the habitable zone of their star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Scientists have published a catalog of exoplanet discoveries made by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, identifying 219 previously-unknown planet candidates circling stars elsewhere in the galaxy, including 10 would-be worlds that appear to be about the same size of Earth with temperatures potentially hospitable for life. Cull..

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• Multifunctional catalyst for poison-resistant hydrogen fuel cells

  

  Reaction mechanism with a catalyst for fuel cells that use hydrogen and carbon monoxide as fuels. Credit: Kyushu University. Demand for eco-friendly fuel sources is increasing as the goal of diminishing reliance on fossil fuels becomes commonly recognized.

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• Uranus Might Finally Get A Visitor After All These Years

  

  Uranus is the loneliest thing in the solar system. It hasn't had contact with anyone in over 30 years, since NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft whizzed by it on 24 January 1986. Thankfully, some good folks at NASA and elsewhere are advocating for missions to Uranus and its Ice Giant companion, Neptune, which could take place at some point in the next few decades. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech The team's 529-page-long report, released this month, elucidates the benefits of visiting these two woefully-unders..

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• The Hunt For Gravitational Waves Is Officially Headed To Space

  

  It took around a hundred years between Albert Einstein crafting his theory of general relativity and the confirmation of one of its wildest predictions, gravitational waves. So naturally, folks have been especially sceptical about funding expensive projects to look harder for them. But now that experiments are actually finding gravitational waves, scientists are ready to take the next step: Space. Artist rendering of LISA (Image: ESA-C Carreau) Since Albert Einstein first predicted their exi..

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• Powerful magnetic beams might one day solve our space junk problems

  

  Scientists working with the  European Space Agency (ESA) are investigating a novel technology that might one day rid the planet of all its orbiting space junk. The idea is to use powerful magnetic beams from a chaser satellite to nudge redundant satellites out of orbit.In the future, derelict satellites could be grappled and removed from key orbits around Earth with a space tug using magnetic forces. The cleaner satellite is pictured in the far right corner.  Credit: Philippe Ogaki / ESA.We’ve o..

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