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Jun 8, 2019

Halo Drive: Lasers and Black Holes Could Launch Spaceships to Near Light Speed

Posted by in categories: alien life, futurism

Future spaceships could use black holes as powerful launch pads to explore the stars.

A new study envisions firing laser beams that would curve around a black hole and come back with added energy to help propel a spacecraft to near the speed of light. Astronomers could look for signs that alien civilizations are using such a “halo drive,” as the study dubs it, by seeing if pairs of black holes are merging more often than expected.

Study author David Kipping, an astrophysicist at Columbia University in New York, came up with the idea of the halo drive through what he calls “the gamer’s mindset.”

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