Billionaire Russian philanthropist Yuri Milner with the help of Professor Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook are planning to send a tiny spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. The light-propelled ‘nanocraft’ will travel to our closest neighboring star system at 20% the speed of light ‘sailing’ on laser rays. Times of Israel reports: Milner and Hawking are spearheading the “Breakthrough Starshot” team of scientists working on the bold research program to create a fleet of super-compact, ultra-light space vehicles or “nanocraft.” The goal is to send the light-propelled mini-space vehicles — each no bigger than a cell phone — to Alpha Centauri, which is 4.37 light years away, or 25 trillion miles, from Earth. They estimate it could take about 20 years to reach the star system from the time of the launch — rather than the 30,000 years it would take with today’s fastest spacecraft. “Space travel as we know it is slow. How do we go faster and how do we go further? How do we make this great leap?” Milner, who is planning to initially commit $100 million to the project, told a press conference in Manhattan. Milner — one of the original investors in Facebook — said the team hoped [...]