WEBVTT

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos

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<v Speaker 1>with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a

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<v Speaker 1>gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for

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<v Speaker 1>unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries

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<v Speaker 1>of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful

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<v Speaker 1>slumber under the night sky.

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<v Speaker 2>So I want you to imagine standing outside on a

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<v Speaker 2>clear night, right away from the city lights.

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<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, best way to see the sky exactly.

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<v Speaker 2>You look up and you just see thousands of stars.

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<v Speaker 2>And for well the entirety of human history, those stars

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<v Speaker 2>have been little more than untouchable points of light.

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<v Speaker 3>To us, right, just distant data points.

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<v Speaker 2>Yes, I mean, we measure their luminosity, We watch them

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<v Speaker 2>wobble to guess if their planets. We do all as

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<v Speaker 2>crazy spectroscopic analysis on the light. But the idea of

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<v Speaker 2>actually getting a visual you know, yeah, like a true

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<v Speaker 2>ultra high definition, twenty meter resolution photograph of a planet

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<v Speaker 2>orbiting an entirely different sun.

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<v Speaker 3>It sounds like pure science fiction, right.

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<v Speaker 2>It always felt like something fundamentally locked away behind centuries

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<v Speaker 2>of future engineering. The distances are just they're too.

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<v Speaker 3>Vast there, really are. I mean, space is big in

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<v Speaker 3>a way the human brain isn't built to understand exactly.

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<v Speaker 2>But and this is what we're getting into today on

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<v Speaker 2>this deep dive. There is a meticulously detailed engineering roadmap

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<v Speaker 2>out there now. T. Marshall Eubanks and the team at

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<v Speaker 2>Space Initiatives, Inc. They've demonstrated that within our lifetime we

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<v Speaker 2>could actually have those images.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, of a planet orbiting our closest stellar neighbor. Right.

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<v Speaker 2>We are moving from the realm of abstract telescopic data

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<v Speaker 2>to tangible, close up visual evidence of another solar system,

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<v Speaker 2>and not in five hundred years, but within the span

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<v Speaker 2>of a normal human life, which is just wild to me.

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<v Speaker 3>It forces a complete reassessment of our whole technological trajectory really,

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<v Speaker 3>because we are looking at the in situ exploration of

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<v Speaker 3>Proxima B.

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<v Speaker 2>Approxima B is the exoplanet right in the habitable zone

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<v Speaker 2>Approxima century right exactly.

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<v Speaker 3>And that phrase in situ, that's the game changer here.

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<v Speaker 3>It fundamentally alters the scientific return. We're no longer talking

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<v Speaker 3>about just relying on a few photons that have traveled

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<v Speaker 3>four light years to hit a mirror in Earth orbit.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, hoping we catch a glimmer.

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<v Speaker 3>Right, we are talking about physical presence in that alien system,

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<v Speaker 3>and doing it within a human timeframe means we have

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<v Speaker 3>to completely abandon the incremental advancements we've been making in

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<v Speaker 3>traditional propulsion, because.

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<v Speaker 2>The Apollo air mechanics, right, lighting a controlled explosion under

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<v Speaker 2>a giant metal cylinder, that won't get us there, not

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<v Speaker 2>even close. I mean, if we look at the Voyager

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<v Speaker 2>one spacecraft, it's currently moving at roughly what thirty eight

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<v Speaker 2>thousand miles per hour around that Yeah, which sounds fast.

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<v Speaker 3>Right by terrestrial standards, that's blistering, but by interstellar standards,

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<v Speaker 3>it's basically a rounding error above zero.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, at that velocity, reaching Proxima Centauri would take well

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<v Speaker 2>over seventy.

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<v Speaker 3>Thousand years seventy thousand, So to bridge a gap of

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<v Speaker 3>over four light years, which is about twenty four trillion

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<v Speaker 3>miles within a couple of decades, we have to defeat

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<v Speaker 3>what they call the tyranny of the rocket equation.

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<v Speaker 2>The Coosky rocket equation. Yeah, it is the absolute supreme

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<v Speaker 2>bottleneck of spaceflight.

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<v Speaker 3>Break that down for us a bit.

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<v Speaker 2>So simply put every gram of payload you want to move,

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<v Speaker 2>requires propellant to move.

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<v Speaker 3>It makes sense. But that propellant has a mass, right,

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<v Speaker 3>so now you need additional propellant to accelerate the initial propellant.

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<v Speaker 3>Oh wow, it becomes this brutal exponential penalty. You end

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<v Speaker 3>up with vehicles where ninety nine percent of the mass

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<v Speaker 3>is just highly explosive liquid just to nudge a tiny,

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<v Speaker 3>tiny fraction of functional payload up into a vacuum.

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<v Speaker 2>So if you want to go really fast, if we

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<v Speaker 2>want to.

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<v Speaker 3>Travel at relativistic speeds, say twenty percent, the speed of

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<v Speaker 3>light carrying fuel becomes a physical impossibility. The mass ratio

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<v Speaker 3>just becomes infinite.

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<v Speaker 2>So the solution they propose is conceptually simple, but from

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<v Speaker 2>an engineering standpoint absolutely terrifying.

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<v Speaker 3>Oh it's wild.

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<v Speaker 2>We just leave the fuel behind exactly. Instead of putting

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<v Speaker 2>the engine on the spacecraft, we heat the engine on Earth.

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<v Speaker 2>We build an enormously powerful laser array and use it

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<v Speaker 2>to push an incredibly lightweight spacecraft that's equipped with a

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<v Speaker 2>photon sail.

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<v Speaker 3>And people might wonder, how does light push anything? Light

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<v Speaker 3>has no mass?

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<v Speaker 2>Right, I was going to ask that, But.

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<v Speaker 3>Because energy and momentum are inextricably linked in physics. Photons

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<v Speaker 3>do actually carry momentum, so when a laser photon strikes

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<v Speaker 3>a highly reflective sail and bounces off, it transfers a

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<v Speaker 3>minuscule physical push.

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<v Speaker 2>So it's like windsurfing, but instead of the wind pushing

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<v Speaker 2>your sail, you have a giant stationary fan on the beach,

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<v Speaker 2>aimed perfectly at your back, just pushing you across the ocean.

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<v Speaker 3>That's a perfect analogy, actually, and it is the relentless

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<v Speaker 3>accumulation of that microscopic momentum that makes this viable. A

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<v Speaker 3>single photon's momentum is negligible.

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<v Speaker 2>Sure, don't feel flashlight beam hitting.

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<v Speaker 3>In exactly, but a gigawat class laser array focused on

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<v Speaker 3>a specialized sail in the vacuum of space that delivers

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<v Speaker 3>trillions upon trillions of photons every single second.

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<v Speaker 2>And there's no air resistance.

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<v Speaker 3>Right without atmospheric drag to slow it down. That continuous

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<v Speaker 3>bombardment accelerates the craft continuously. You apply that gigawat beam

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<v Speaker 3>for just a few minutes or hours, and the craft

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<v Speaker 3>reaches twenty percent the speed of light before it even

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<v Speaker 3>leaves our solar system.

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<v Speaker 2>Okay, but wait, the challenge with that frictionless ocean of space.

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<v Speaker 2>Is that the laser itself isn't perfect, right. Look, if

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<v Speaker 2>you're aiming massive, incredibly powerful lasers into space, are we

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<v Speaker 2>sure we can actually hit something that small over such

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<v Speaker 2>vast distances.

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<v Speaker 3>That is a massive hurdle. You're talking about the diffraction limit, right.

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<v Speaker 3>A beam of light naturally spreads out the further it travels.

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<v Speaker 3>If we are firing from Earth or even Earth orbit,

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<v Speaker 3>keeping that beam tight enough to hit a meter wide

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<v Speaker 3>sail a million mile away requires an optical array of

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<v Speaker 3>just staggering proportions.

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<v Speaker 2>Because it'll just turn into a wide, weak flashlight beam.

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<v Speaker 3>Otherwise, precisely to keep the spot size of the laser

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<v Speaker 3>small enough to remain entirely on the sale at lunar

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<v Speaker 3>distances and beyond, you essentially need a phased array of

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<v Speaker 3>lasers spanning square kilometers.

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<v Speaker 2>Square kilometers of lasers.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and if you build it on the Earth's surface,

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<v Speaker 3>you introduce the absolute nightmare of atmospheric distortion. The atmosphere

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<v Speaker 3>is always boiling and churning.

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<v Speaker 2>Which makes stars twinkle, right.

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<v Speaker 3>Exactly, But that twinkling would scatter a concentrated laser beam instantly,

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<v Speaker 3>so you have to employ extreme adaptive optics. We're talking

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<v Speaker 3>deformable mirrors that physically change shape thousands of times a

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<v Speaker 3>second to perfectly counteract the atmospheric turculence.

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<v Speaker 2>That's insane, it.

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<v Speaker 3>Is It ensures the combined beam wavefront is perfectly flat

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<v Speaker 3>as it exits the atmosphere.

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<v Speaker 2>And we aren't pulling this concept out of thin air either.

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<v Speaker 2>Like the Japanese Space Agency JAXA demonstrated the foundational physics

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<v Speaker 2>with icrows back into using solar photons.

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<v Speaker 3>YEAP sunlight pushing a sale.

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<v Speaker 2>And the Planetary Society followed up with light Sale two.

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<v Speaker 2>Plus you had the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, which spent millions

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<v Speaker 2>mathematically validating the transition from solar power to focused laser power.

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<v Speaker 2>So the physics of a light driven sail are solid.

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<v Speaker 3>The physics are extremely solid, but the propulsion system dictates

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<v Speaker 3>the entire anatomy of the spacecraft.

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<v Speaker 2>Right, because if the laser array is pushing, the payload

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<v Speaker 2>has to be virtually massless. We can't attach a heavy

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<v Speaker 2>mars er over to a photon sale.

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<v Speaker 3>No, absolutely not.

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<v Speaker 2>We are looking at a payload measured not in tons

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<v Speaker 2>but in grams. And Ubank's team they call them coracles soracles.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and the microengineering required for a coracle is arguably

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<v Speaker 3>as daunting as the laser array itself. To achieve a

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<v Speaker 3>fifth of light speed without requiring a laser that consumes

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<v Speaker 3>the energy output of a medium sized country, the entire spacecraft,

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<v Speaker 3>including the sale, must weigh just a couple of grams.

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<v Speaker 2>A couple of grams.

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<v Speaker 3>You have to pack propulsion, navigation, powered generation, communication, and

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<v Speaker 3>scientific instrumentation onto a platform the size and weight of

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<v Speaker 3>a paper clip.

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<v Speaker 2>It's the ultimate exercise in miniaturization. Let's break down what's

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<v Speaker 2>actually in that payload. Because you obviously can't fit a

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<v Speaker 2>standard telescopic lens on something that flat, right.

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<v Speaker 3>A long camera tube is out of the question.

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<v Speaker 2>So they're proposing a two hundred millimeter annulus aperture folded optic.

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<v Speaker 3>Camera, which is a brilliant piece of engineering.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Essentially they are etching microscopic mirrors into a flat wafer,

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<v Speaker 2>bouncing the incoming light back and forth internally to mimic

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<v Speaker 2>the focal length of a massive bulky camera. It gives

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<v Speaker 2>you deep space telescopic resolution in a completely two dimensional

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<v Speaker 2>form factor.

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<v Speaker 3>And alongside that folded optic system, you need a communication layer.

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<v Speaker 3>A gram scale probe obviously cannot house a high gain

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<v Speaker 3>radio dish like standard probes.

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<v Speaker 2>So how does it phone home?

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<v Speaker 3>It relies on the sale itself acting as an antenna, or,

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<v Speaker 3>in some designs, highly specialized meta materials woven to directly

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<v Speaker 3>into the sale fabric. But we have to face a

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<v Speaker 3>harsh reality here. A single gram scale camera, no matter

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<v Speaker 3>how brilliantly engineered, is scientifically weak.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, i'd imagine.

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<v Speaker 3>So if you send one single coracle to Proximu Sentaury,

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<v Speaker 3>the signal to noise ratio of its transmission back to

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<v Speaker 3>Earth would be atrocious, the imaging would be highly restricted.

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<v Speaker 2>Basically, you send one, you get a blurry, noisy thumbnail

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<v Speaker 2>after a twenty year weight exactly.

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<v Speaker 3>So, the paradigm shift here is abandoning the monolithic spacecraft model.

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<v Speaker 3>We aren't sending a flagship like Cassini or Voyager. We're

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<v Speaker 3>sending an insects swarm.

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<v Speaker 2>Thousands of these individual coracles launched in rapid succession. And

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<v Speaker 2>the swarm isn't just for redundancy, right, like, it's not

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<v Speaker 2>just backups. The swarm is the fundamental mechanism of how

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<v Speaker 2>the science actually works.

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<v Speaker 3>Yes, the swarm operates as a vast distributed interferometer.

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<v Speaker 2>Okay, interferometer, explain that for us.

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<v Speaker 3>So interferometry relies on the wave nature of light. If

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<v Speaker 3>you have two small telescopes separated by say ten kilometers,

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<v Speaker 3>and they observe the exact same target simultaneously, you can

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<v Speaker 3>mathematically combine their light waves. Okay, when those waves interfere

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<v Speaker 3>with each other, they synthesize an image with the resolution

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<v Speaker 3>of a single mirror that is ten kilometers wide.

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<v Speaker 2>Way, so it's like sending one highly trained, heavily armored

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<v Speaker 2>knight versus sending an entire colony of ants. One ant

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<v Speaker 2>can't do much, but the colony together can move mountains.

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<v Speaker 3>That's a great way to look at it.

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<v Speaker 2>And we did exactly this to capture the first image

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<v Speaker 2>of a black hole with the event horizon telescope. Right,

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<v Speaker 2>We networked observatories across the globe to turn the Earth

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<v Speaker 2>into one giant lens.

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<v Speaker 3>We did, But applying that to the coracles is just wild.

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<v Speaker 3>You have this diffuse cloud of microscopic cameras spread out

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<v Speaker 3>over thousands of kilometers, hurtling through the target solar system

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<v Speaker 3>at sixty thousand kilometers a second. Mind blowing, and by

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<v Speaker 3>time stamping and combining their individual observations, they synthesize an

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<v Speaker 3>optical capability larger than our entire planet.

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<v Speaker 2>It totally circumvents the mass limit brilliantly, you distribute the

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<v Speaker 2>mass of a massive telescope across thousands of gram scale nodes.

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<v Speaker 2>But I mean that astronomical capability requires a target worthy

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<v Speaker 2>of the effort, oh definitely, And we are aiming this

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<v Speaker 2>swarm at the Proximus Centauri system, which is the tertiary

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<v Speaker 2>component of the Alpha Centaury group. And Proxima Centauri is

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<v Speaker 2>an m dwarf. It's a red dwarf star. It's violently

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<v Speaker 2>different from our yellow Sun.

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<v Speaker 3>Very different. It's a fraction of the mass, significantly cooler,

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<v Speaker 3>and it emits most of its light in the infrared spectrum.

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<v Speaker 2>And the target proxima B orbits within the star's habitable zone.

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<v Speaker 2>But because red dwarfs are so cool, that habitable zone

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<v Speaker 2>practically scrapes the surface of the star, like Proxima B

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<v Speaker 2>orbits closer to its star than Vircuy does.

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<v Speaker 3>To our Sun, which introduces some extreme conditions that close

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<v Speaker 3>proximity almost guarantees the planet is tidally.

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<v Speaker 2>Locked, meaning one side always faces the star exactly.

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<v Speaker 3>The gravitational gradients across the planet's diameter, over billions of years,

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<v Speaker 3>dissipate its rotational energy. Eventually its orbital period matches its

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<v Speaker 3>rotational period. So one hemisphere faces the eternal, glaring red

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<v Speaker 3>Sun while the other faces the freezing absolute zero of

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<v Speaker 3>deep space.

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<v Speaker 2>So because Proximobe is tidally locked, we aren't just looking

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<v Speaker 2>at a static terminator line like some peaceful twilight zone

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<v Speaker 2>in the middle.

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<v Speaker 3>Now, the atmospheric dynamics would be chaotic.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, The atmospheric circulation models suggest ferocious supersonic winds constantly

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<v Speaker 2>transferring heat from the boiling day side to the frozen

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<v Speaker 2>night side.

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<v Speaker 3>And that assumes the planet has managed to hold on

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<v Speaker 3>to its atmosphere at all, because we have to factor

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<v Speaker 3>in the tantrums. The tantrums m dwarfs are violently convective.

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<v Speaker 3>They undergo magnetic reconnection events that utterly dwarfs anything our

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<v Speaker 3>Sun produces. The stellar flares from proximusentaury are catastrophic. They

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<v Speaker 3>periodically bathe the habitable zone and lethal doses of ultraviolet

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<v Speaker 3>radiation and high energy X rays.

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<v Speaker 2>So an unshielded atmosphere subjected to that relentless stellar wind

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<v Speaker 2>and flaring activity instantly at risk of being stripped away completely,

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<v Speaker 2>leaving just a sterile, irradiated rock.

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<v Speaker 3>Exactly. It's a harsh.

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<v Speaker 2>Neighborhood, which raises the immediate question for me, why go

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<v Speaker 2>Like if astrobiologists snow proximusentry regularly sceralizes its inner system

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<v Speaker 2>with X ray flares, why dedicate the first interstellar mission

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<v Speaker 2>to looking for biology there? Doesn't that make it a

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<v Speaker 2>terrible place for biology. It feels like pointing our most

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<v Speaker 2>advanced technology at a cosmic blast furnace.

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<v Speaker 3>That is a very common objection, but it is the

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<v Speaker 3>ultimate test of biological resilience. You have to remember M.

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<v Speaker 3>Dwarf's account for roughly seventy to eighty percent of the

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<v Speaker 3>stellar population in our galaxy.

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<v Speaker 2>Wow that many.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, they are the standard, not the exception. Our Sun

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<v Speaker 3>is actually kind of the odd ball. So if life

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<v Speaker 3>requires the quiet, stable environment of a G type star

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<v Speaker 3>like our Sun, then life is exceptionally ruer in the universe.

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<v Speaker 2>I see.

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<v Speaker 3>However, if we survey Proxima B and find that a

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<v Speaker 3>thick atmosphere has survived, or that biology has somehow adapted,

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<v Speaker 3>perhaps retreating to subsers. We're thriving under the ice of

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<v Speaker 3>the dark side. It implies that life is aggressively tenacious.

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<v Speaker 2>Well, that makes sense. Proximabe is the crucible that will

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<v Speaker 2>tell us that the galaxy is teeming with life or

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<v Speaker 2>mostly just dead space.

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<v Speaker 3>Exactly if life can survive there, it can probably survive anywhere.

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<v Speaker 2>So we have a target that could redefine biology, and

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<v Speaker 2>we have a propulsion system to get us there in

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<v Speaker 2>twenty years. But bridging those two points introduces the most

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<v Speaker 2>severe navigational challenge ever conceived.

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<v Speaker 3>It's an absolute nightmare.

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<v Speaker 2>Because you have thousands of disconnected paper clips flying at

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<v Speaker 2>twenty percent of light speed. They are over four light

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<v Speaker 2>years away. If a coracle detects a trajectory error and

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<v Speaker 2>radios Earth for a course correction, that radio wave takes

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<v Speaker 2>over four years to reach.

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<v Speaker 3>Us, right, and our reply takes another four years.

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<v Speaker 2>That is an eight year ping for a single instruction. Like,

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<v Speaker 2>they cannot be remote controlled. You can't have a guy

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<v Speaker 2>with a joystick on Earth.

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<v Speaker 3>No. Complete autonomy is absolute mandatory, and you can't use

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<v Speaker 3>standard inertial navigation systems either. Yeah, gyroscopes and accelerometers, they

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<v Speaker 3>naturally drift over a twenty year cruise. They just aren't

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<v Speaker 3>precise enough over that time span, so they have to

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<v Speaker 3>navigate by the cosmos itself. They'll be utilizing pulsar navigation.

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<v Speaker 2>Using stars as lighthouses.

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<v Speaker 3>Specifically millisecond pulsars. These are rapidly rotating neutron stars emitting

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<v Speaker 3>beams of electromagnetic radiation with literal atomic clock precision.

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<v Speaker 2>So the probes measure the arrival times of these X

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<v Speaker 2>ray pulses. But it's not as simple timing exercise, as it.

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<v Speaker 3>Not at all. At twenty percent the speed of light,

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<v Speaker 3>the probe experiences significant relativistic time dilation.

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<v Speaker 2>Okay, Einstein's relativity kicks out.

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00:15:38.799 --> 00:15:41.559
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, the onboard clock actually ticks slower relative to the

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<v Speaker 3>rest of the universe. Furthermore, as the probe races toward

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<v Speaker 3>a pulsar or away from it, the incoming X ray

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<v Speaker 3>pulses are severely Doppler shifted.

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<v Speaker 2>Like the siren of an ambulance changing pitch as it

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<v Speaker 2>drives past you.

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<v Speaker 3>Exactly the same principle, but with light and X rays.

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<v Speaker 3>So the autonomous software has to calculate complex Lorenz transfers

316
00:16:00.840 --> 00:16:02.320
<v Speaker 3>just to figure out where it is in the three

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<v Speaker 3>D space.

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<v Speaker 2>Wait, so the computational density required to process relativistic pulsar

319
00:16:06.919 --> 00:16:10.440
<v Speaker 2>navigation on a gram scale chip. Yep, that is immense.

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00:16:10.600 --> 00:16:14.279
<v Speaker 3>It is a phenomenal software and hardware challenge. But knowing

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00:16:14.320 --> 00:16:17.440
<v Speaker 3>your location is only the first step. You also have

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<v Speaker 3>to coordinate with the rest of the.

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00:16:18.919 --> 00:16:22.480
<v Speaker 2>Swarm, right because of the interferometry we talked about exactly now.

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<v Speaker 3>The researchers model three operational modes for this. The first

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<v Speaker 3>is sending them as entirely independent agents. They drift, they

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<v Speaker 3>don't talk to each other, They just fly by and

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<v Speaker 3>snap photos.

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00:16:32.519 --> 00:16:35.879
<v Speaker 2>Which I guess drastically lowers the engineering threshold, but it

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00:16:35.919 --> 00:16:37.440
<v Speaker 2>kind of ruins the science.

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<v Speaker 3>Doesn't it It does. Without coordination, you can't synthesize the interferometer,

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<v Speaker 3>you just get thousands of redundant, blurry images of the

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<v Speaker 3>same hemisphere.

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<v Speaker 2>Okay, So what's the second option?

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00:16:47.840 --> 00:16:50.559
<v Speaker 3>The ideal, and by far the most challenging, is what

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00:16:50.600 --> 00:16:54.600
<v Speaker 3>they call the time coherent swarm. In this architecture, the

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00:16:54.720 --> 00:16:59.039
<v Speaker 3>probes actively monitor their relative positions when the flyby occurs.

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00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:02.840
<v Speaker 3>They don't just bro podcast randomly. They calculate the exact

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00:17:02.919 --> 00:17:06.519
<v Speaker 3>distance to Earth and synchronize their radio transmissions down to

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<v Speaker 3>the picosecond.

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00:17:07.359 --> 00:17:08.480
<v Speaker 2>Down to the piico second.

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00:17:08.599 --> 00:17:12.319
<v Speaker 3>Yes, the goal is for the individual weak radio waves

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00:17:12.319 --> 00:17:15.839
<v Speaker 3>from thousands of pobes to physically align their phases in

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<v Speaker 3>the interstellar medium so they arrive at Earth as a single, unified,

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<v Speaker 3>coherent wavefront.

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00:17:22.160 --> 00:17:24.559
<v Speaker 2>Wow. I picture it like a stadium full of people

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<v Speaker 2>holding up flashlights. If everyone turns their flashlight on and

347
00:17:27.640 --> 00:17:30.000
<v Speaker 2>waves it around randomly, this statium just looks like a

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00:17:30.039 --> 00:17:33.079
<v Speaker 2>chaotic blur from a distance exactly. But if you network

349
00:17:33.119 --> 00:17:35.279
<v Speaker 2>them all and every single person flashes their light at

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<v Speaker 2>the exact same nanosecond, it creates a blinding focused beacon

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<v Speaker 2>that could be seen from low Earth orbit.

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<v Speaker 3>That is the exact principle.

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<v Speaker 2>Yes, But getting thousands of independent probes to execute that

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00:17:45.480 --> 00:17:50.480
<v Speaker 2>nanosecond synchronization while dodging interstellar dust that sounds like a nightmare.

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00:17:50.720 --> 00:17:54.400
<v Speaker 3>And you brought up a great point. Dodging interstellar dust.

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00:17:54.640 --> 00:17:58.440
<v Speaker 3>The interstellar medium is not completely empty. It is filled

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<v Speaker 3>with microscopic dust, grain, and stray hydrogen atoms. When you

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<v Speaker 3>collide with a speck of dust at sixty thousand kilometers

359
00:18:06.519 --> 00:18:09.640
<v Speaker 3>per second, the kinetic energy exchange.

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00:18:09.160 --> 00:18:11.680
<v Speaker 2>Is explosive because of the speed right, it.

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00:18:11.640 --> 00:18:15.240
<v Speaker 3>Will physically pit the optics, it'll shred the ultra thin sale,

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00:18:15.720 --> 00:18:18.519
<v Speaker 3>and it will completely fry the microscopic circuitry.

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00:18:18.640 --> 00:18:21.880
<v Speaker 2>So we are effectively firing a cosmic shotgun blast and

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00:18:22.039 --> 00:18:24.440
<v Speaker 2>just hoping a few of the pellets hit the exact

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00:18:24.480 --> 00:18:25.720
<v Speaker 2>right spot to take a picture.

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00:18:25.880 --> 00:18:29.160
<v Speaker 3>Yes, you essentially have to accept a brutal attrition rate.

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00:18:29.759 --> 00:18:33.200
<v Speaker 3>Maybe you launch ten thousand coracles and the dust claims

368
00:18:33.240 --> 00:18:37.319
<v Speaker 3>half of them. The relativistic impacts simply vaporize them en route.

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00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:38.720
<v Speaker 2>That sounds disastrous.

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00:18:38.759 --> 00:18:41.880
<v Speaker 3>Actually that's the beauty of the swarm architecture. It completely

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<v Speaker 3>inverts traditional mission risks. Oh how so, think about a

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<v Speaker 3>billion dollar monolithic probe. If it hits a dust grain

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00:18:48.839 --> 00:18:52.160
<v Speaker 3>and loses its main bus, the mission is entirely dead,

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<v Speaker 3>twenty years of planning gone. But if the swarm loses

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00:18:56.079 --> 00:18:59.759
<v Speaker 3>five thousand units, the remaining five thousand just recalibrate the

376
00:18:59.799 --> 00:19:03.440
<v Speaker 3>in frometry baseline. They just adapt, They absorb the casualties

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00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:06.680
<v Speaker 3>and keep flying. Statistical resilience is their armor.

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00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:09.119
<v Speaker 2>That makes total sense. So by the time this surviving

379
00:19:09.200 --> 00:19:13.000
<v Speaker 2>vanguard reaches the Proximus Andry system, the swarm has likely

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<v Speaker 2>drifted into a sprawling cloud roughly one hundred thousand kilometers across.

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<v Speaker 3>A massive diffuse cloud.

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00:19:19.119 --> 00:19:22.079
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and that sprawling formation brings us to the climax

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00:19:22.119 --> 00:19:25.039
<v Speaker 2>of the mission, which is violently brief. Yeah, because they

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00:19:25.039 --> 00:19:29.559
<v Speaker 2>cannot decelerate right. The close approach flyaby approximate b lasts

385
00:19:29.680 --> 00:19:32.200
<v Speaker 2>less than sixty seconds, less than a minute. You travel

386
00:19:32.240 --> 00:19:35.759
<v Speaker 2>silently for twenty years dodging microscopic bombs in the void,

387
00:19:36.160 --> 00:19:39.319
<v Speaker 2>all for a sixty second window. The velocity is sixty

388
00:19:39.359 --> 00:19:42.200
<v Speaker 2>thousand kilometers every second. The cameras have to run at

389
00:19:42.240 --> 00:19:43.279
<v Speaker 2>absurd speeds.

390
00:19:43.359 --> 00:19:47.119
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, The payload specifications demand high dynamic range cameras firing

391
00:19:47.200 --> 00:19:49.359
<v Speaker 3>up to one million frames per second.

392
00:19:49.400 --> 00:19:52.559
<v Speaker 2>A million frames a second, because the logic there is

393
00:19:52.599 --> 00:19:55.720
<v Speaker 2>that at those speeds, a standard exposure time would just

394
00:19:55.839 --> 00:19:57.359
<v Speaker 2>capture a blurred streak right.

395
00:19:57.319 --> 00:20:01.079
<v Speaker 3>Now, exactly, You need microsecond exposures just to freeze the terrain,

396
00:20:01.319 --> 00:20:03.799
<v Speaker 3>which means you need millions of them to successfully map

397
00:20:03.839 --> 00:20:05.720
<v Speaker 3>the surface as you scream past.

398
00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:09.440
<v Speaker 2>But the data generation during that minute must be catastrophic,

399
00:20:09.720 --> 00:20:13.160
<v Speaker 2>like a single probe. Firing a megapixel camera at a

400
00:20:13.160 --> 00:20:17.400
<v Speaker 2>million frames per second generates terabytes of raw data almost instantly.

401
00:20:17.559 --> 00:20:21.240
<v Speaker 3>It does multiply that across a swarm of thousands of

402
00:20:21.279 --> 00:20:24.799
<v Speaker 3>surviving probes, and you have petabytes of deep space imagery

403
00:20:24.839 --> 00:20:26.039
<v Speaker 3>sitting in their memory banks.

404
00:20:26.079 --> 00:20:29.119
<v Speaker 2>And here hits the brutal physics of the communication bottleneck.

405
00:20:29.720 --> 00:20:32.000
<v Speaker 2>You have an antenna the size of a postage stamp,

406
00:20:32.119 --> 00:20:35.359
<v Speaker 2>backed by a microwatt power source, trying to push data

407
00:20:35.400 --> 00:20:37.039
<v Speaker 2>through four light years of interference.

408
00:20:37.119 --> 00:20:38.759
<v Speaker 3>The bandwidth is agonizingly thin.

409
00:20:39.039 --> 00:20:41.240
<v Speaker 2>Even if the probe survive the flyby and spend the

410
00:20:41.279 --> 00:20:44.240
<v Speaker 2>next fifty years doing nothing to transmitting, they can only

411
00:20:44.279 --> 00:20:47.599
<v Speaker 2>physically send a tiny fraction of the data they collected.

412
00:20:47.960 --> 00:20:52.400
<v Speaker 3>Right. This creates an acute triagen crisis. The probes have

413
00:20:52.559 --> 00:20:55.480
<v Speaker 3>terabytes of data, but they can only send megabytes. They

414
00:20:55.480 --> 00:20:59.079
<v Speaker 3>have to aggressively filter, and they have to do it autonomously.

415
00:20:58.519 --> 00:21:00.279
<v Speaker 2>Because Earth can't help them decide. No.

416
00:21:00.519 --> 00:21:03.240
<v Speaker 3>Earth is four years away by radio. So this requires

417
00:21:03.359 --> 00:21:08.079
<v Speaker 3>edge computing driven by a highly specialized on board neural network, and.

418
00:21:08.039 --> 00:21:09.640
<v Speaker 2>They use what's called a look ahead strategy.

419
00:21:09.720 --> 00:21:12.440
<v Speaker 3>Right now, Yes, because the swarm is a deep cloud, right,

420
00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:15.279
<v Speaker 3>it's spread out along the axis of travel. So the

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00:21:15.400 --> 00:21:18.079
<v Speaker 3>vanguard probes, the ones at the very front they arrive

422
00:21:18.400 --> 00:21:21.400
<v Speaker 3>hours or even a day before the main cluster. Okay,

423
00:21:21.839 --> 00:21:25.480
<v Speaker 3>As they approach, they take preliminary low resolution optical and

424
00:21:25.559 --> 00:21:29.880
<v Speaker 3>thermal readings of the system. Their onboard AI processes those

425
00:21:29.920 --> 00:21:34.079
<v Speaker 3>approach vectors. It is specifically trained to ignore the mundane.

426
00:21:33.839 --> 00:21:36.640
<v Speaker 2>Like vast stretches of empty ocean or barren rock.

427
00:21:36.880 --> 00:21:40.240
<v Speaker 3>Exactly, it looks for anomalies. The AI is hunting for

428
00:21:40.319 --> 00:21:43.880
<v Speaker 3>high albedo reflections that might indicate ice caps or specific

429
00:21:43.960 --> 00:21:47.400
<v Speaker 3>thermal gradients that suggest active cry volcanism. Or maybe it

430
00:21:47.480 --> 00:21:50.559
<v Speaker 3>spots an unusual shadow profile that might be an uncataloged

431
00:21:50.559 --> 00:21:54.240
<v Speaker 3>exa moon. Once the vanguard AI flags an anomaly, it

432
00:21:54.279 --> 00:21:57.480
<v Speaker 3>broadcasts the coordinates backward to the trailing main fleet.

433
00:21:57.839 --> 00:22:01.680
<v Speaker 2>It effectively acts as a spotter. It's like trying to

434
00:22:01.720 --> 00:22:05.039
<v Speaker 2>photograph a specific license plate on a highway while you

435
00:22:05.079 --> 00:22:08.079
<v Speaker 2>are blasting past at mock ten and you only have

436
00:22:08.160 --> 00:22:11.440
<v Speaker 2>enough memory card space to save three pictures. The AI

437
00:22:11.559 --> 00:22:14.359
<v Speaker 2>is the passenger screaming look left, take the shot.

438
00:22:14.680 --> 00:22:17.079
<v Speaker 3>That's a brilliant way to put it. It tells the

439
00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:21.079
<v Speaker 3>thousands of trailing cameras ignore the northern hemisphere, focus all

440
00:22:21.079 --> 00:22:25.119
<v Speaker 3>folded optics on this specific coordinate cluster near the terminator line.

441
00:22:25.160 --> 00:22:26.000
<v Speaker 2>That is so smart.

442
00:22:26.119 --> 00:22:29.279
<v Speaker 3>And more importantly, once the main fleet executes the flyby

443
00:22:29.319 --> 00:22:32.839
<v Speaker 3>and fills its memory banks, the AI dictates exactly which

444
00:22:32.880 --> 00:22:36.839
<v Speaker 3>packets of data represent the highest scientific value. It ruthlessly

445
00:22:36.880 --> 00:22:39.920
<v Speaker 3>deletes petabytes of dark sky and redundant terrain to ensure

446
00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:43.799
<v Speaker 3>the exact frames containing a potential coastline or strange atmospheric

447
00:22:43.799 --> 00:22:46.799
<v Speaker 3>cloud are prioritized for the transmission back to Earth.

448
00:22:46.880 --> 00:22:50.799
<v Speaker 2>It is localized light speed decision making, So assuming the

449
00:22:50.799 --> 00:22:53.880
<v Speaker 2>eye performs perfectly, the data is compressed, the phase alignment

450
00:22:53.920 --> 00:22:56.880
<v Speaker 2>is locked, and the time coherence WARM broadcasts its wall

451
00:22:56.920 --> 00:22:58.519
<v Speaker 2>of light back home, and then.

452
00:22:58.680 --> 00:23:02.000
<v Speaker 3>Four point two years later, that highly refined data stream

453
00:23:02.440 --> 00:23:05.519
<v Speaker 3>washes over our radio observatories here on Earth.

454
00:23:05.559 --> 00:23:08.200
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so if this wall of light reaches us, what

455
00:23:08.319 --> 00:23:11.720
<v Speaker 2>are we actually going to see? What secrets will proximate field?

456
00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:15.319
<v Speaker 2>The primary return is the optical data. Right through the

457
00:23:15.359 --> 00:23:18.920
<v Speaker 2>synthesized aperture of the swarm, we achieve twenty meters surface

458
00:23:18.960 --> 00:23:20.920
<v Speaker 2>resolution of proxima.

459
00:23:20.440 --> 00:23:22.599
<v Speaker 3>B twenty meters, which is.

460
00:23:22.599 --> 00:23:25.759
<v Speaker 2>That isn't just a pixelated blob of color. At twenty meters,

461
00:23:25.799 --> 00:23:29.079
<v Speaker 2>you are resolving major geological formations. You are seeing the

462
00:23:29.160 --> 00:23:32.880
<v Speaker 2>jagged edges of mountain ranges, the distinct boundaries of continent

463
00:23:32.960 --> 00:23:37.680
<v Speaker 2>sized land masses, and potentially the swirling fourtexes of extreme

464
00:23:37.720 --> 00:23:41.519
<v Speaker 2>weather systems. Driven by those tidally locked temperature extremes.

465
00:23:41.559 --> 00:23:44.079
<v Speaker 3>We might even see weather patterns. And because the vanguard

466
00:23:44.119 --> 00:23:47.240
<v Speaker 3>captures approach and departure angles, we even get thermal mapping

467
00:23:47.240 --> 00:23:47.880
<v Speaker 3>of the dark side.

468
00:23:47.920 --> 00:23:51.039
<v Speaker 2>The visual data is visceral just thinking about it, but

469
00:23:51.119 --> 00:23:54.559
<v Speaker 2>the most profound discoveries will likely come from transmission spectroscopy,

470
00:23:54.599 --> 00:23:55.240
<v Speaker 2>won't they.

471
00:23:55.480 --> 00:23:59.599
<v Speaker 3>Yes, almost certainly. As the swarm flies through the system,

472
00:24:00.039 --> 00:24:03.119
<v Speaker 3>it will position itself so that the light from proximusentry

473
00:24:03.519 --> 00:24:08.039
<v Speaker 3>passes through the atmosphere of Proxima B before hitting the cameras.

474
00:24:07.799 --> 00:24:09.400
<v Speaker 2>Right, And we do that now with the games Web

475
00:24:09.400 --> 00:24:13.920
<v Speaker 2>Space telescope exactly when an exoplanet transits its star. We

476
00:24:13.960 --> 00:24:17.440
<v Speaker 2>analyze the starlight that silters through the planet's atmospheric rim

477
00:24:17.920 --> 00:24:22.920
<v Speaker 2>different molecules like water, methane, carbon dioxide. They absorb very

478
00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:26.599
<v Speaker 2>specific wavelengths of light. By looking at the spectrum that

479
00:24:26.599 --> 00:24:28.640
<v Speaker 2>makes it to our telescope and seeing which colors are

480
00:24:28.720 --> 00:24:31.920
<v Speaker 2>quote unquote missing, we can determine exactly what the atmosphere

481
00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:32.359
<v Speaker 2>is made of.

482
00:24:32.599 --> 00:24:36.119
<v Speaker 3>But the limitation of web is distance and noise. We

483
00:24:36.160 --> 00:24:39.279
<v Speaker 3>are looking across light years. The coracles are doing it

484
00:24:39.319 --> 00:24:41.359
<v Speaker 3>in situ, right there in the atmosphere.

485
00:24:41.400 --> 00:24:43.319
<v Speaker 2>Oh, the clarity must be unbelievable.

486
00:24:43.480 --> 00:24:46.799
<v Speaker 3>It is. And because they are moving at relativistic speeds,

487
00:24:46.839 --> 00:24:50.440
<v Speaker 3>the onboard spectrometers must account for massive Doppler shifting.

488
00:24:50.480 --> 00:24:52.640
<v Speaker 2>Again right, Because they are flying toward.

489
00:24:52.480 --> 00:24:55.279
<v Speaker 3>The light, the starlight hitting the probe is heavily blue

490
00:24:55.279 --> 00:24:58.039
<v Speaker 3>shifted as the probe races toward the star, and the

491
00:24:58.079 --> 00:25:02.119
<v Speaker 3>absorption lines of the atmosphere areviolently skewed by the relative velocity.

492
00:25:02.720 --> 00:25:05.519
<v Speaker 3>But once the AI corrects for that, the sensitivity of

493
00:25:05.559 --> 00:25:10.279
<v Speaker 3>the data allows us to hunt for specific complex molecular chains.

494
00:25:10.519 --> 00:25:14.960
<v Speaker 2>We are hunting for biomarkers exactly. Finding methane is interesting,

495
00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:16.920
<v Speaker 2>but methane can be geological.

496
00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:18.160
<v Speaker 3>Right right. Volcanoes make methane.

497
00:25:18.279 --> 00:25:22.119
<v Speaker 2>But finding methane alongside high concentrations of oxygen is a

498
00:25:22.200 --> 00:25:25.880
<v Speaker 2>massive red flag because those gases react and deplete each

499
00:25:25.880 --> 00:25:29.440
<v Speaker 2>other quickly. If they are both present in a stable atmosphere,

500
00:25:29.759 --> 00:25:33.240
<v Speaker 2>something is actively and continuously replenishing them, and.

501
00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:36.160
<v Speaker 3>In our experience on Earth. That's something is a global

502
00:25:36.400 --> 00:25:39.160
<v Speaker 3>biological mechanism life life.

503
00:25:39.640 --> 00:25:42.640
<v Speaker 2>But the search extends beyond biology to techno signatures too,

504
00:25:42.680 --> 00:25:43.079
<v Speaker 2>doesn't it.

505
00:25:43.200 --> 00:25:46.079
<v Speaker 3>Yes, the spectrometers will be tuned to look for molecules

506
00:25:46.119 --> 00:25:49.799
<v Speaker 3>that do not occur through natural, thermodynamic or geological processes,

507
00:25:50.039 --> 00:25:56.039
<v Speaker 3>like what complex chlorofluorocarbons, nitrogen dioxide and unnatural concentrations or

508
00:25:56.160 --> 00:26:00.119
<v Speaker 3>specific isotopic ratios of heavy metals in the atmosphere. Finding

509
00:26:00.119 --> 00:26:04.759
<v Speaker 3>those would strongly indicate active industrial scale artificial chemistry.

510
00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:09.279
<v Speaker 2>Finding alien industrial smog on the closest star to Earth.

511
00:26:09.119 --> 00:26:10.240
<v Speaker 3>It would change everything.

512
00:26:10.279 --> 00:26:13.200
<v Speaker 2>It would be the most chilling and paradigm shattering discovery

513
00:26:13.200 --> 00:26:16.640
<v Speaker 2>in human history. But and this is where the mission

514
00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:19.599
<v Speaker 2>profile gets crazy. There is a secondary method of chemical

515
00:26:19.640 --> 00:26:23.680
<v Speaker 2>analysis proposed that is far more aggressive. Ah. Yes, the

516
00:26:23.799 --> 00:26:27.359
<v Speaker 2>impactors the swarm relies on density and near the center

517
00:26:27.400 --> 00:26:31.359
<v Speaker 2>of the formation. The probes are tightly clustered. Statistically, it

518
00:26:31.440 --> 00:26:34.440
<v Speaker 2>is a near certainty that several coracles will not execute

519
00:26:34.440 --> 00:26:38.039
<v Speaker 2>a clean flyby their trajectory will intersect the planet itself.

520
00:26:38.079 --> 00:26:41.519
<v Speaker 3>They essentially become kinetic impactors kamacaze probes right.

521
00:26:41.400 --> 00:26:44.039
<v Speaker 2>And a gram of mass might sound insignificant, but kinetic

522
00:26:44.160 --> 00:26:46.920
<v Speaker 2>energy scales with the square velocity right, so it's sixty

523
00:26:46.960 --> 00:26:49.519
<v Speaker 2>thousand kilometers per second. The kinetic energy of a single

524
00:26:49.559 --> 00:26:52.759
<v Speaker 2>gram is roughly equivalent to forty tons of TNT.

525
00:26:52.960 --> 00:26:54.279
<v Speaker 3>It's a massive explosion.

526
00:26:54.359 --> 00:26:56.839
<v Speaker 2>If it hits the atmosphere, it doesn't gracefully burn up

527
00:26:56.880 --> 00:27:01.319
<v Speaker 2>like a shooting star. It undergoes near instantaneous vaporization. It

528
00:27:01.359 --> 00:27:04.799
<v Speaker 2>creates a highly energetic plasma flash in the upper atmosphere.

529
00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:08.200
<v Speaker 2>And if the planet has no atmosphere, the probe slams

530
00:27:08.200 --> 00:27:12.200
<v Speaker 2>into the bedrock, creating a hypervelocity crater and an explosive

531
00:27:12.240 --> 00:27:14.079
<v Speaker 2>plume of ejected mantle material.

532
00:27:14.200 --> 00:27:17.359
<v Speaker 3>And the incredible thing is this isn't viewed as a failure.

533
00:27:17.680 --> 00:27:20.319
<v Speaker 3>It is leveraged as impact spectroscopy.

534
00:27:20.440 --> 00:27:21.640
<v Speaker 2>Oh, they use the explosion.

535
00:27:21.799 --> 00:27:25.279
<v Speaker 3>Yes, the trailing members of the swarm, positioned just off

536
00:27:25.319 --> 00:27:28.319
<v Speaker 3>the impact vector, will train their million frame per second

537
00:27:28.319 --> 00:27:31.160
<v Speaker 3>cameras directly on the explosive flash.

538
00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:31.640
<v Speaker 2>Wow.

539
00:27:31.759 --> 00:27:35.079
<v Speaker 3>By running a spectroscopic analysis on the light emitted from

540
00:27:35.079 --> 00:27:38.920
<v Speaker 3>that vaporized plasma, they gather an exact elemental breakdown of

541
00:27:38.960 --> 00:27:43.400
<v Speaker 3>the planetary surface or deep atmospheric layers. That standard transmission

542
00:27:43.400 --> 00:27:44.960
<v Speaker 3>spectroscopy could never penetrate.

543
00:27:45.039 --> 00:27:48.400
<v Speaker 2>Well wait, you're glossing over the planetary protection aspect. Like

544
00:27:48.759 --> 00:27:53.640
<v Speaker 2>astrobiologists are hyper cautious about contaminating Christine environments. We bake

545
00:27:53.720 --> 00:27:56.279
<v Speaker 2>our Mars rovers and industrial events for weeks just to

546
00:27:56.359 --> 00:27:59.599
<v Speaker 2>kill terrestrial microbes. Very sure, here we are talking about

547
00:27:59.640 --> 00:28:04.920
<v Speaker 2>intentionally or accidentally firing a man made object at relativistic

548
00:28:04.960 --> 00:28:10.160
<v Speaker 2>speeds into a potentially habitable biosphere. Doesn't creating a hypervelocity

549
00:28:10.160 --> 00:28:13.759
<v Speaker 2>explosion on an alien world raise some ethical questions. We

550
00:28:13.799 --> 00:28:18.279
<v Speaker 2>are introducing artificial isotopes, heavy metals, and earth manufactured silicon

551
00:28:18.519 --> 00:28:20.559
<v Speaker 2>directly into an alien ecosystem.

552
00:28:20.720 --> 00:28:24.000
<v Speaker 3>It's a valid concern, but the planetary protection protocols focus

553
00:28:24.079 --> 00:28:28.000
<v Speaker 3>primarily on biological contamination. At twenty percent the speed of light,

554
00:28:28.039 --> 00:28:30.759
<v Speaker 3>the kinetic heat of impact is so absolute that the

555
00:28:30.759 --> 00:28:35.680
<v Speaker 3>molecular bonds of any terrestrial biological hitchhiker are violently ripped.

556
00:28:35.480 --> 00:28:37.559
<v Speaker 2>Apart, so nothing could survive the crash.

557
00:28:37.640 --> 00:28:40.799
<v Speaker 3>The probe is sterilized on a subtomic level upon impact.

558
00:28:41.200 --> 00:28:44.680
<v Speaker 3>And as for the material itself, you are introducing artificial isotopes, yes,

559
00:28:45.119 --> 00:28:48.200
<v Speaker 3>but you must weigh that against the natural background mechanics

560
00:28:48.200 --> 00:28:51.960
<v Speaker 3>of the system. We Proxima B is constantly bombarded by

561
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:56.319
<v Speaker 3>high velocity interstellar dust and natural micrometeorites. The addition of

562
00:28:56.359 --> 00:28:59.359
<v Speaker 3>a gram of carbon, fiber and silicon, while unnatural, is

563
00:28:59.400 --> 00:29:02.640
<v Speaker 3>a localized kinetic event that is practically indistinguishable from the

564
00:29:02.680 --> 00:29:04.480
<v Speaker 3>background oars of cosmic bombardment.

565
00:29:04.839 --> 00:29:09.000
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so the scientific return of knowing the bedrock composition

566
00:29:09.079 --> 00:29:12.200
<v Speaker 2>of an alien world is deemed worth the localized kinetic

567
00:29:12.279 --> 00:29:16.400
<v Speaker 2>disruption exactly, and the mission continues even after the impactors

568
00:29:16.400 --> 00:29:19.599
<v Speaker 2>are vaporized and the main fleet screams pass Proxima B

569
00:29:20.160 --> 00:29:23.119
<v Speaker 2>because they can't stop. They are still moving at a

570
00:29:23.160 --> 00:29:25.839
<v Speaker 2>fifth of light speed, heading out into the deeper black

571
00:29:25.920 --> 00:29:27.200
<v Speaker 2>of the Alphacentury system.

572
00:29:27.599 --> 00:29:31.039
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, their journey isn't over. Roughly a year after the

573
00:29:31.079 --> 00:29:34.400
<v Speaker 3>PROXIMY encounter, the surviving swarm will pass by the Alpha

574
00:29:34.480 --> 00:29:36.559
<v Speaker 3>centaury Ab binary.

575
00:29:36.119 --> 00:29:38.279
<v Speaker 2>Pair, the two larger stars in that system.

576
00:29:38.359 --> 00:29:41.519
<v Speaker 3>Right, Alpha centaury A and B are much larger sun

577
00:29:41.640 --> 00:29:44.920
<v Speaker 3>like stars. Now, the flyby will be distant, roughly ten

578
00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.759
<v Speaker 3>thousand astronomical units away, but the swarm will reorient its folded.

579
00:29:49.400 --> 00:29:51.039
<v Speaker 2>Optics to look back at them.

580
00:29:51.160 --> 00:29:53.960
<v Speaker 3>Yes, they will use the vast baseline of their spread

581
00:29:53.960 --> 00:29:57.599
<v Speaker 3>out formation to conduct deep field interfrometry on the binary stars.

582
00:29:58.039 --> 00:30:01.240
<v Speaker 3>They'll be searching for planetary bodies in the orbits, mapping

583
00:30:01.240 --> 00:30:04.200
<v Speaker 3>the stellar winds, and broadcasting that data back to Earth

584
00:30:04.279 --> 00:30:07.680
<v Speaker 3>until their RADIOI stop batteries finally fail or the interstellar

585
00:30:07.720 --> 00:30:10.039
<v Speaker 3>medium just degrades their sales completely.

586
00:30:10.279 --> 00:30:14.839
<v Speaker 2>It is an almost unbelievable architectural vision. We started by

587
00:30:14.839 --> 00:30:17.400
<v Speaker 2>looking at those untouchable points of light in the night sky,

588
00:30:17.799 --> 00:30:20.799
<v Speaker 2>and the profound realization here is that the physics to

589
00:30:20.799 --> 00:30:23.200
<v Speaker 2>touch them it already exists.

590
00:30:23.400 --> 00:30:27.200
<v Speaker 3>Yes, the Zielkowski equation limits our rockets, but it doesn't

591
00:30:27.200 --> 00:30:27.839
<v Speaker 3>limit our light.

592
00:30:28.200 --> 00:30:32.039
<v Speaker 2>Building a gigawatt adaptive optic laser array on Earth and

593
00:30:32.160 --> 00:30:35.640
<v Speaker 2>microengineering folded optic cameras onto a few grams of graphine.

594
00:30:35.759 --> 00:30:39.400
<v Speaker 2>It's a monumental engineering mountain to climb, but it requires

595
00:30:39.559 --> 00:30:42.440
<v Speaker 2>no new physics. It requires no warp drives or a

596
00:30:42.519 --> 00:30:43.519
<v Speaker 2>theoretical wormhole.

597
00:30:43.599 --> 00:30:46.519
<v Speaker 3>No, it just demands a total revision of what exploration means.

598
00:30:46.799 --> 00:30:50.039
<v Speaker 3>The vanguard of humanity won't be heavy steel hulls occupied

599
00:30:50.039 --> 00:30:54.000
<v Speaker 3>by astronauts. It will be a diffuse, artificially intelligent cloud

600
00:30:54.000 --> 00:30:56.960
<v Speaker 3>of microscopic mirrors. Riding a silent beam of light, so

601
00:30:57.079 --> 00:31:00.880
<v Speaker 3>beautifully put, they will absorb casualties. Autonomous networks will make

602
00:31:00.920 --> 00:31:04.440
<v Speaker 3>split second triosh decisions, and they will synthesize an eye

603
00:31:04.559 --> 00:31:06.880
<v Speaker 3>larger than our world to stare down the dark of

604
00:31:06.920 --> 00:31:07.960
<v Speaker 3>a red dwarf star.

605
00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:12.200
<v Speaker 2>It completely reframes our place in the technological timeline. We

606
00:31:12.319 --> 00:31:15.440
<v Speaker 2>were the generation that possesses the theoretical capability to look

607
00:31:15.480 --> 00:31:18.359
<v Speaker 2>back at the stars up close. But I want to

608
00:31:18.400 --> 00:31:20.960
<v Speaker 2>leave you with a thought that flips this entire architecture

609
00:31:20.960 --> 00:31:24.960
<v Speaker 2>on its head. We've discussed the colossal engineering required to

610
00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.440
<v Speaker 2>build a gigawatt laser array here on Earth. That beam,

611
00:31:29.799 --> 00:31:32.759
<v Speaker 2>focused tightly enough to push a swarm of sales across

612
00:31:32.799 --> 00:31:36.279
<v Speaker 2>four light years would be incredibly.

613
00:31:35.599 --> 00:31:37.000
<v Speaker 3>Bright, Oh incredible.

614
00:31:37.039 --> 00:31:39.799
<v Speaker 2>It would punch right through the interstellar medium. If you

615
00:31:39.839 --> 00:31:42.079
<v Speaker 2>stood on a planet fifty light years away and looked

616
00:31:42.119 --> 00:31:44.799
<v Speaker 2>in our direction while the beamer was firing, you would

617
00:31:44.799 --> 00:31:49.359
<v Speaker 2>see a distinct, artificial and blindingly powerful flash of light.

618
00:31:49.559 --> 00:31:53.319
<v Speaker 3>The laser itself becomes an unmistakable techno signature, visible across

619
00:31:53.359 --> 00:31:54.480
<v Speaker 3>galactic distances.

620
00:31:54.680 --> 00:31:57.680
<v Speaker 2>Exactly so, if we can do it and the physics

621
00:31:57.720 --> 00:32:00.920
<v Speaker 2>are universal, the timeline s as someone else out there

622
00:32:00.960 --> 00:32:05.440
<v Speaker 2>could have already done it. Astronomers regularly catalog transient luminous events,

623
00:32:05.720 --> 00:32:08.960
<v Speaker 2>these strange, unexplained, incredibly powerful flashes of light in the

624
00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:12.400
<v Speaker 2>deep night sky that don't perfectly match the profile of

625
00:32:12.480 --> 00:32:13.799
<v Speaker 2>supernovas or pulsars.

626
00:32:13.839 --> 00:32:15.200
<v Speaker 3>That is a fascinating point.

627
00:32:15.319 --> 00:32:17.599
<v Speaker 2>It really makes you wonder the next time you look

628
00:32:17.640 --> 00:32:19.799
<v Speaker 2>up at a clear night sky and see a sudden,

629
00:32:20.240 --> 00:32:23.079
<v Speaker 2>brief flare of light from a distant star system, you

630
00:32:23.160 --> 00:32:26.920
<v Speaker 2>have to ask, are we watching a natural stellar phenomenon,

631
00:32:27.279 --> 00:32:29.839
<v Speaker 2>or are we seeing the exhaust beam of another civilization

632
00:32:30.359 --> 00:32:33.000
<v Speaker 2>firing up their own gigwatt lea's or array and launching

633
00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:34.759
<v Speaker 2>their own swarm of corgels out into the dark