Stephen Hawking joins futuristic bid to explore outer space

NEW YORK — With famed physicist Stephen Hawking at his side, an Internet investor announced Tuesday that he’s spending $100 million on a futuristic plan to explore far outside our solar system.

Yuri Milner said the eventual goal is sending hundreds or thousands of tiny spacecraft, each weighing far less than an ounce, to the Alpha Centauri star system. That’s more than 2,000 times as far as any spacecraft has gone so far.

Propelled by energy from a powerful array of Earth-based lasers, the spacecraft would fly at about one-fifth the speed of light. They could reach Alpha Centauri in 20 years, where they could make observations and send the results back to Earth.

They might discover a planet or planets there — experts think there may be some, but there’s no proven sighting yet — and possibly even find signs of life there or elsewhere, said Milner and a panel of experts at the announcement. The three stars that make up Alpha Centauri are the closest stars to our star — the sun.