One thing I'm always asked when I talk about interstellar topics is how long it would take a spacecraft like Voyager to get to the nearest star. After explaining how far away Proxima Centauri and the slightly farther Centauri A and B really are, I tell the audience that Voyager, if headed in that direction, would be facing a travel time of over 70,000 years. That usually shifts the conversation considerably, because many people assume that if we can get to the outer planets, the nearest stars can't be that far behind. If only it were so. The Centauri stars are, of course, only the closest known (and who knows, perhaps there's a brown dwarf a bit closer). Assume a space technology able to travel at close to the speed of light and you're still dealing with travel times that amount to years, although time for the crew would be shorted according to those interesting Einsteinian effects that cause the crew of a vehicle traveling at 86 percent of lightspeed to experience half the elapsed...

By Larry Klaes Larry Klaes' look at the Allen Telescope Array reminds us of the power of philanthropy at getting serious projects funded. It's a topic we'll be re-visiting as the Tau Zero Foundation comes online early in the coming year. I'm reminded also of the One Laptop Per Child project, which is seeing private donations for these educational tools supplanting government shortfalls in some developing countries. Properly targeted, the philanthropic dollar is a powerful thing, and think of the results if the ATA finds a genuine signal! Cornell astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan left quite a legacy in a number of science fields, including and especially those which were considered to be somewhat fringe at one time. One prime example of his support of a science field that was not universally accepted in earlier eras was SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. At a time when many astronomers did not seriously consider the possibility of other beings existing...