isnaini azizah
A nonprofit organization named the Fermi Explorer Mission has announced an audacious plan to launch a spacecraft towards our closest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, by the close of 2029. This ambitious undertaking, if successful, could see the probe traverse the vast expanse of 4.4 light-years, a journey that might take up to 80,000 years to complete. The mission’s novelty lies in its trajectory, a path ingeniously discovered by an artificial intelligence system developed by Physical Superintelligence (PSI), an AI research lab dedicated to exploring the frontiers of physics. PSI is making its public debut today, backed by a substantial $58 million in funding, with Breakthrough Energy, a prominent climate-investment group co-founded by Microsoft luminary Bill Gates, leading the charge.
This endeavor is not the first attempt at interstellar travel. In 2016, tech mogul Yuri Milner unveiled Breakthrough Starshot, a similarly ambitious mission aimed at sending humanity’s inaugural spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. The original concept proposed utilizing powerful lasers to propel minuscule probes at a staggering one-fifth the speed of light, a velocity theoretically capable of reaching Alpha Centauri within two decades. Milner had pledged $100 million to fund a proof-of-concept for this project. However, a decade has passed, and no launch has materialized.
Philip Johnston, co-founder and president of the Fermi Explorer Mission, articulated their distinct approach: "We didn’t want to do another Breakthrough Starshot. We’re dead set on something actually launching." This new mission, currently supported by individual private donors, boasts a remarkably modest projected cost of just $15 million.
To achieve this, Johnston explained their philosophy: "we are not constraining ourselves to doing it in a human lifetime. Let’s just figure out the way to get to another star." The spacecraft is slated to carry a payload of at least 1kg, comprising a diverse collection of artistic and scientific instruments, messages, and a replica of the Golden Record. This iconic gold-plated disc, originally attached to NASA’s Voyager probes in 1977, serves as a cosmic time capsule, containing sounds and images of Earth intended for any extraterrestrial civilization that might encounter it.
The engineering challenges inherent in plotting an interstellar journey are immense. Alpha Centauri, a system of three stars, is approximately 25 trillion miles from Earth. For perspective, Voyager 1, one of the fastest objects ever launched by humanity, has been in flight since 1977 and has covered less than 1% of this colossal distance. At its current velocity, a journey to Alpha Centauri would necessitate over 70,000 years.
Johnston and his team dedicated a year to the arduous task of devising a viable route for a small, solar-powered spacecraft costing a mere $15 million to reach Alpha Centauri. They repeatedly encountered the formidable obstacle of powering the spacecraft sufficiently without rendering it excessively heavy, which would, in turn, demand more fuel.
During their protracted struggle, Johnston mentioned their predicament on a podcast hosted by Alex Wissner-Gross, a physicist and co-founder of PSI. Wissner-Gross promptly offered to process the problem through their proprietary AI system, aptly named "Get Physics Done." This open-source software is designed to tackle complex physics research questions by segmenting them into manageable tasks and autonomously selecting the most appropriate simulations to run, leveraging advanced AI models such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT.
Remarkably, a week later, the AI system presented a novel trajectory, much to Johnston’s astonishment. According to a preprint paper, the AI ingeniously combined well-established orbital maneuvers in an unprecedented manner. The proposed strategy involves the spacecraft initially decelerating to swing in close proximity to the sun, venturing even closer than Mercury. During each of these close passes, the spacecraft would engage its engine, allowing its solar panels to receive four times the usual amount of sunlight. This maneuver, coupled with a high-speed thrust, would generate significantly more energy than such a burst would yield anywhere else. Crucially, because the engine would only operate near the sun, the solar panels could remain compact, thereby keeping the spacecraft lightweight.
Matt Pines, co-founder and CEO of PSI, elaborated on the AI’s process, stating that the system conducted the bulk of the research autonomously over three days, processing an astonishing billion tokens. An astrophysicist on PSI’s staff provided guidance, ensuring the AI adhered to the mission’s specific requirements, requested cost analyses and clearer visualizations, and meticulously reviewed the output for any potential errors.
"The fact that it came up with an entirely different mission profile, one that was creative and not one [the Fermi team] had considered—that was the more surprising aspect," Pines remarked. However, he also acknowledged the AI’s limitations, noting that the model currently lacks the nuanced judgment and intuition of a human researcher. It struggles to discern which problems are intrinsically interesting or which approaches are most promising, often leading it down unproductive paths or preventing it from exploring alternative strategies. "I don’t think we’ve yet figured out how these models can internally represent something like that [research taste]," he admitted.
Even with the Fermi probe’s anticipated launch, Johnston expressed a pragmatic view: "we’re pretty confident that we will not be the first to arrive" at Alpha Centauri. He reasons that as spacecraft technology continues to advance, future missions with even marginal improvements in engine efficiency could significantly outpace the Fermi probe. For instance, an engine 20% faster than today’s, launched a thousand years from now, could still reach Alpha Centauri over 10,000 years before the Fermi probe.
However, the Fermi project transcends mere engineering ambition; it is deeply rooted in addressing one of physics’ most enduring enigmas. In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi posed a profound question: given the sheer number of stars in the galaxy, many far older than our sun, and the theoretical capacity for even slow interstellar travel to colonize the entire galaxy within a few million years, why have we not yet detected any signs of extraterrestrial civilizations? This paradox suggests that either interstellar travel is far more challenging than anticipated, or that other intelligent species have simply chosen not to explore.
The launch of the Fermi probe, by demonstrating humanity’s capability and desire to reach another star, could reframe these possibilities. It implies that the absence of evidence might not stem from an inherent difficulty in interstellar travel or a lack of interest from other civilizations. Instead, it could point towards more disquieting conclusions. Perhaps life as we know it is extraordinarily rare, or intelligent life, while common, tends to extinguish itself before it can achieve interstellar expansion.
"If the latter is true, one of those reasons could be that once you hit super intelligence, that for some reason is self-destructive," Johnston posited. He further speculated, "Maybe in the next 50 years, there’s some great filter that we do not pass through, that all intelligent civilizations, for some reason, do not pass through." This chilling prospect underscores the profound implications of the Fermi mission, extending beyond the pursuit of scientific discovery to a deeper contemplation of humanity’s place in the cosmos and the potential existential challenges that may lie ahead.
