An astrophysicist's crazy idea: creating a tiny spacecraft to study black holes

A black hole is an astronomical object with such a strong gravitational pull that nothing, not even light, can escape it. This is how NASA describes it on its official blog , where it indicates the surface of a black hole, called the event horizon, defines the limit where the speed required to evade it exceeds the speed of light, which is the speed limit in the cosmos. Additionally, matter and radiation are trapped and cannot escape, therefore, this means that humans cannot visit them , however, astrophysicist Cosimo Bambi believes that this is possible thanks to a spacecraft the size of a paper clip .

Specifically, Bambi has proposed a century-long mission to send a nanocraft into a black hole using a powerful laser beam , thereby testing the foundations of physics and general relativity. However, this idea faces enormous technological challenges and a financial cost of trillions of dollars.

Despite these drawbacks, Bambi tells the journal Interesting Engineering that this mission could become a reality in the next few decades : "We should be lucky and find a black hole 20-25 light years away. This, of course, is beyond our control. If a black hole exists 20-25 light years from the Solar System, it should not be difficult to find a community interested in sending a probe to study this object."

The mission would be completed in 100 years

The mission is based on the idea of a nanocraft, a gram-scale probe equipped with a microchip and a light sail . This probe would be bombarded with photons from powerful lasers located on Earth, accelerating the probe to approximately one-third the speed of light; thus, traveling at this speed , it would reach a black hole 20–25 light-years away in approximately 70 years .

The entire mission is expected to last between 80 and 100 years , plus an additional two decades for the collected data to be transmitted back to Earth. But as we mentioned, the feasibility of such a space mission depends on the distance to the nearest black hole, considering that they are difficult to detect because they don't emit light.

Despite this, Bambi remains optimistic and believes that current and future techniques will allow scientists to find a suitable candidate within the next decade, keeping in mind that if the black hole is located between 40 and 50 light-years away, the mission becomes much more complex. However, if it is located farther than 50 light-years away, the technological hurdles are considered too great, and the mission would likely be abandoned.

Is this mission feasible?

Current spacecraft are fueled by chemical propellants and are too slow for interstellar travel, so Bambi requires a nanoship—a technology that doesn't yet exist—and the lasers needed to propel it, which today would cost around a trillion euros .

But if successful , a probe sent to an isolated black hole would provide a much longer-term study system , allowing for direct and precise measurements and experiments. It could also answer some of the deepest questions in physics , such as whether black holes have an event horizon and whether Einstein's theory of general relativity holds true under the most extreme conditions in the universe.

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