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Letter: The extraordinary energy of a 1-gram star probe

Published 29 May 2019

From John Fewster, London, UK

You report a plan to send a swarm of 1-gram devices towards Alpha Centauri at 20 per cent of light speed (13 April, p 32). Each will have kinetic energy equivalent to half a kiloton of TNT explosive, comparable to a small nuclear device. Any entity on the receiving end may get the wrong message.

Issue no. 3232 published 1 June 2019

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