How to send a probe to a black hole
Astrophysicist Cosimo Bambi has a bold idea: send a super-light "nanocraft," powered by lasers from Earth, to explore black holes.
This mini spacecraft could zip along at about one-third the speed of light.
Bambi thinks that, with tech improving fast, this wild-sounding mission could actually happen in the next few decades.
The nanocraft would run experiments on things like event horizons
The plan is for the nanocraft to reach a nearby black hole within 100 years—no small feat since black holes are basically invisible and found by how they affect nearby stars.
Once there, the craft would run experiments on things like event horizons and put Einstein's theories to the test in extreme conditions.
If it works, we could learn way more about space-time and gravity—kind of like when scientists first detected gravitational waves or snapped that famous black hole photo.