"Is this for real?"
That was the only line in an email my graduate student send me about a month ago. Along with her terse question was a link to a new paper on the astrophysics preprint archive (a website where newly completed research get posted). The paper's title was enough to set me back: "A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight" by Philip Lubin. "Wow," I thought to myself. "Is this for real?" I downloaded the paper and started reading.
One week later, as I was still crawling through the paper's physics, Russian billionaire philanthropist Yuri Milner announced the $100 million Starshot program — intended to leapfrog humanity across interstellar space.
Listening to even the briefest outline of the plan, I realized they were talking about Lubin's road map. While my student and I were asking whether this was for real, someone else was already sinking a ton of money into making it a reality.
So who is this guy Philip Lubin? What, exactly, is his "road map?" And, most importantly, is this for really for real?
To read more, click here.