- Mission with nanocraft and laser sails at ~0,3c to reach a nearby black hole.
- Ideal target at 20-25 light-years; beyond 40-50 light-years it would be unfeasible.
- Key tests: event horizon, Kerr metric, and possible variations in physical constants.
- Huge cost and strong skepticism, but parallel advances could make it plausible in decades.
What sounds like a science fiction movie is, in reality, a serious exercise in engineering and physics: send a ship to a black hole to study firsthand one of the most extreme environments in the cosmos. The proposal, signed by the astrophysicist Cosimo Bambi and published in the journal iScience, raises a multi-decade mission to bring microprobes closer to the nearest black hole we can locate.
The idea is based on developing technologies: Ultralight nanocraft with sails powered by Earth-based lasers capable of reaching about a third of the speed of light. If a target were confirmed at 20-25 light years, the route would be of the order of 60-75 years, and sending data to Earth would add other 20-25, placing the entire mission in a range of 80-100 years.
What the mission and its technology would be like
The concept avoids traditional chemical propulsion, limited by the Tsiolkovsky equation, and relies on push from Earth with laser beams. With powers of the order of terawatts, a probe weighing just a few grams could be accelerated in minutes to relativistic speeds, something impossible for a conventional fuel-laden rocket.
Inspired by initiatives such as Breakthrough Starshot, the plan envisions candles of light coupled with microchips with sensors and communications. Once the destination is reached, the mission architecture would divide functions: one unit would act as sentry ship in safe orbits, and another would approach the gravity well more closely to carry out fine measurements of space-time.
The roadmap includes four major steps: initial laser acceleration, interstellar cruise without active propulsion, maneuver to cage itself in orbit (or close trajectory) to the target and, finally, prolonged scientific phase with data sent to the sentinel and retransmission to Earth.
In rough numbers: if the craft reaches ~0,3c, it could cover 20-25 light years in 6-7 decades. Latency in communications, inevitable due to the speed of light, would add two decades to receive the results in our radio telescopes.
The goal: to locate a really nearby black hole
The bottleneck is no less important: find a black hole ~20-25 light years away. Although many are known, the closest confirmed, GAIA-BH1, is about 1.560 light years, clearly too far away for a single-generation mission with the proposed technology. Discover the differences between a black hole and a wormhole.
Stellar population models suggest that, By pure statistics, there should be at least one at that distance scale. The challenge is to find it, because black holes they do not emit or reflect light and reveal their presence through indirect effects: gravitational microlensing, disturbances in companion stars, or very faint emissions of matter from the interstellar medium falling towards them.
Scientific teams propose search strategies with telescopes like James Webb or large networks in radio, and it is not ruled out that gravitational waves help identify isolated candidates. For Bambi, it is plausible that the study of nearby galaxies allows you to locate a target at the appropriate distance.
The boundary condition is clear in the mission design: over 40-50 light years times and complexity escalate excessively, to the point of returning the project is unviable with current parameters.
What experiments would be done next to the black hole?
The big scientific challenge is to subject gravity to its toughest test. The mission would test, with in-situ instruments, whether General relativity faithfully describes the extreme environment of a black hole or if deviations emerge that point to physics beyond Einstein.
First test: the Kerr metric, which models space-time around a rotating black hole. By measuring orbits, precessions, and redshifts of signals emitted by the probe, this could be verified. if the predictions fit with a precision never before achieved.
Second test: the existence of the event horizonWith two probes, one at a safe distance and the other approaching, classical theory anticipates that the signal from the closest one weakens and reddens until it vanishes asymptotically. Exotic alternatives (e.g., 'ball of strings' type configurations) would predict a sudden blackout by impact with a surface.
Third test: possible variations of fundamental constants in extreme gravitational fields. Comparing atomic lines sensitive to the fine structure constant would allow look for tiny changes that would rewrite our understanding of physics.
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