It sounds like something taken straight from the pages of a high-concept science fiction novel.
But scientists now want to launch an interstellar mission into the heart of a distant black hole.
The plan is to create a tiny spacecraft no heavier than a paperclip, propelled by lasers, and accelerated to nearly the speed of light.
Although it might take up to 100 years, scientists say this bold mission could change everything we know about physics.
However, this groundbreaking project could come with eye-watering costs of up to £1 trillion for the lasers alone.
To make things even more difficult, the technology required to actually build the spacecraft doesn’t yet exist.
Despite these issues, Professor Cosimo Bambi, of Fudan University in Shanghai, is optimistic that it could be possible within a few decades.
Professor Bambi told the Daily Mail: ‘The technology can be developed and it is just an issue of time, money, and motivations.’
It sounds like something taken straight from the pages of a high-concept science fiction novel. But scientists now want to launch an interstellar mission into the heart of a distant black hole
While it might sound like something out of science-fiction blockbuster Interstellar (pictured), Professor Cosimo Bambi, of Fudan University in Shanghai, is optimistic that it could be possible within a few decades
Black holes are among the strangest and most mysterious objects in the known universe.
They are formed when enormous dying stars collapse into an ultra-dense point where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape.
Under these extreme conditions, the laws of physics as we know them start to break down and change in unusual ways.
The problem for scientists is that, since black holes emit no light or other forms of radiation, it is extremely difficult to learn about how they behave.
Professor Bambi’s proposal, published today in the journal iScience, is to probe the very fabric of spacetime by sending a spacecraft directly into the heart of a black hole.
However, for this plan to work, scientists will need two things: a black hole close enough to visit, and a spacecraft capable of surviving the journey.
For the spacecraft, Professor Bambi proposes using something called a nanocraft.
Traditional spacecraft, which burn chemical fuel, are too slow and clunky to reach the speeds required.
Scientists have proposed a bold plan to send an ultra-fast spacecraft no larger than a paperclip into a black hole that might be hiding somewhere within 20 light-years of Earth (illustrated)
Instead, a nanocraft is essentially a microchip attached to a large, lightweight sail.
Lasers based on Earth or in orbit blast this sail with photons to accelerate the craft to a third of the speed of light.
The nano-technology required to make this possible doesn’t yet exist, and the required cost of powering the lasers would be exorbitant, but Professor Bambi isn’t daunted.
‘If we use current technology, the cost would be around one trillion GBP, so it is definitely beyond the budget of any scientific experiment,’ he said.
‘However, if we consider the trend of the past 20 years and we extrapolate this trend to the future, we find that the cost would reduce to something like one billion GBP in 20-30 years: £1 billion is roughly the typical budget in today’s large space missions.’
Unfortunately, this mission’s biggest obstacle is outside of anyone’s control.
Professor Bambi says: ‘In my opinion, the key point is that we need to be “lucky” and have a black hole within 20-25 light-years from the Solar System.’
At this distance, it would still take the nanocraft about 70 to 80 years to reach the black hole and then another 20 to 25 years for its data to return to Earth.
The hardest part of the mission will be finding a black hole within 25 light-years of Earth. At this distance, it will still take 70 to 80 years for the craft to reach its destination. Any further than 40 light-years and it will not be worth trying to send the craft
That gives a total mission time of up to a century, which, although a daunting challenge, is still a feasible goal.
‘If the closest black hole is not within 20-25 light years, but still within 40-50 light years, it would be more challenging to reach the necessary technological requirements for the mission, but it would still be possible,’ says Professor Bambi.
‘If the distance of the closest black hole exceeds 40-50 light years, I am afraid we have to give up.’
Currently, the nearest black hole scientists have found is Gaia-BH1 at 1,560 light-years from Earth.
Although that is very close by cosmic terms, it’s still much too far away for humanity to reach with conventional spacecraft.
Instead, Professor Bambi’s hope is that scientists may soon detect a black hole much closer to home.
Our best theories about stellar evolution suggest that there should be a black hole lurking around 20 to 25 light-years from Earth.
But since black holes don’t give off any of their own light, finding this hidden giant will not be an easy task.
As scientists get better at hunting for black holes, Professor Bambi says that we should know whether there is one within 25 light-years in the next five to ten years.
If there is a suitable black hole in our galactic neighbourhood, then Professor Bambi believes this mission would be well worth the astronomical price tag.
Black holes are the sources of the strongest gravitational fields found anywhere in nature, which makes them an ideal laboratory to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Einstein’s theories make certain predictions about how space and time should react to the push and pull of intense gravitational forces.
However, many scientists believe that the areas inside or around a real black hole are different from what the theory predicts.
By taking the first accurate measurements of these regions, scientists would finally be able to know just what those differences are.
Professor Bambi says: ‘The motivation of such a mission would be to test the gravitational field around a black hole, compare the measurements with the theoretical predictions of General Relativity, and hopefully find some deviations.’
That could settle some big questions like whether the rules of physics change near a black hole, or if Einstein’s theories even work at all under the universe’s most extreme conditions.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .