Interstellar travel could be getting closer. This paper (or at least a link to it) was posted on to the Fediverse.

Broadband, High-Reflectivity Dielectric Mirrors at Wafer Scale: Combining Photonic Crystal and Metasurface Architectures for Advanced Light sails

• Paper arXiv:2312.04471

Sounds promising and at present does seem smaller spacecraft can be moved in this way, but it is a start. Good possibilities for future research and use.

I will download and read this paper later.

• arXiv

Tags

#Paper.#arXiv,#Optics,#Space,#propulsion,#light