Wafer-thin light sail could help us reach another star sooner

A light sail designed using artificial intelligence is about 1000 times thinner than a human hair and weighs as much as a grain of sand – and it could help us create a spacecraft capable of reaching another star sooner than we thought.

The Breakthrough Starshot mission to travel to Alpha Centauri – the closest star to our solar system – was announced in 2016 and invited researchers to design a spaceship powered by light.

The…