Once it was just a dream, a science fiction idea. Something that belonged to a distant and indeterminate future. But today, that dream is becoming reality. An extraordinary project is underway: a spacecraft will depart from Earth to the nearest stars, those of the Alpha Centauri system. The mission will make use of a sail, inflated by a powerful beam of laser beams, which will propel the shuttle at the extraordinary speed of 20% of light. A daring, almost impossible feat, but a real one. And there is one part of this project that concerns Italy closely: the system that will manage the communication of scientific data, entrusted to the team of experts from the University of Padua, the university that was once home to Galileo Galilei.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk dreams of taking humans to Mars. But the technology required to reach near-light speeds is not suitable for humans, who would not survive such extreme acceleration. However, a slower, gentler pace could prove to be the key to the future of space travel.
The project in which the University of Padua is participating is coordinated by Professor Paolo Villoresi and collaborates with the prestigious international project Breakthrough Starshot, a venture involving the brightest minds from institutions such as Caltech and MIT. The goal? To reach Proxima Centauri B, a planet 4.34 light years away from us, a world that could resemble Earth, perhaps capable of harbouring life. But even at breakneck speed, the journey will take at least 30 years. Tens of years of acceleration and deceleration, amidst the frozen silence of interstellar space.
Despite the difficulties, once they arrive, the scientific data collected by the spacecraft will have to be transmitted back to Earth. And this is where the system developed in Padua comes into play, an incredible device that transforms signals into light impulses, effectively creating a kind of “interstellar telephone” that connects us with the edge of the cosmos. An advanced space communication technology that, through precisely directed beams of light, will allow the spacecraft to call “home”, bringing the information it gathers to our world.
But while data travels at the speed of light, the same fate is about to be written by a new initiative: Starbottle.
The two initiatives intersect in a fascinating common vision: a future in which cosmic distances are no longer an obstacle, and stars are not just objects in the sky, but stages in a human journey towards infinity.
After decades of waiting, perhaps the answer will come. But the Universe has its own time. And we, patient and dreamers, are ready to listen to its silence.
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