Alpha Centauri

With our current technology, the journey to Alpha Centauri would take millennia, but there are plans for tiny probes that could do it in as little as 20 years. Now, a physicist has detailed a method to use magnetic sails as a braking system to slow craft down to a cruising speed once they get there.

As part of its push to probe the secrets of the Alpha Centauri system, the Breakthrough initiatives will fund a hardware upgrade for the Very Large Telescope in Chile, equipping it with new imaging capabilities to better hunt for habitable planets in the region.

An initiative launched this week called Project Blue has outlined plans for a telescope designed specifically to photograph Earth-like planets, which it plans to launch by the end of this decade.