The problem with getting to the end of the universe is a simple one. Basically, its a fuck of a long way away. Further than anything else. Scientific fact. If you take the Northern Line all the way to High Barnet (which certainly feels like the end of the world) you’re not much closer to the edge of the universe. The real problem being that the universe is expanding at the speed of light. And nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. I tried once, got flashed by a speed camera, cost me 60 quid and 3 points on my license.

The universe is approximately 3 billion years old. Thus the edges of it are approximately 3 billion light years away. If you could travel at the speed of light, in 3 billion years time you’d only have reached where the edge of the universe is today, not then. By then it will another 3 billion light years away. How frustrating would that be? “Oy, I’ve come all this way and you’re not even here”.

So space travel involves big distances. But ‘out of the box’ thinking has come up with a way, if not to reach exactly the edge of the universe, then at least to get some ways in. Or out.

Internet billionaires have teamed up with Stephen Hawking, maybe they’ve hacked into Stephen Hwaking, who knows, and come up with a brilliant idea. Make tiny little ‘craft’, smaller and lighter than mobile phones, attach a really thin (metamaterials; several microns thick) sail which you then ‘power’ away by blasting it from planet Earth with enough laser beams to blind every commercial airline pilot currently working. The kind of ‘power’ that the entire planet uses at one time would be blasted at this poor little craft, propelling it to 20% of the speed of light. Only 20%? That’s not much. No, its only 32 million miles per hour.

It can reach Alpha Centuri, our nearest star after the sun, in ‘just’ 20 years. Uber could get you there cheaper, but it would take 42 million years in a Prius.

And this tiny ‘craft’ has a camera, so it can take selfies along the way.

I mean; how clever is that?

Original thought. Man’s finest expression.

Unless that ‘man’ is Jimmy Page or Robert Plant. Whose finest expression, Stairway to Heaven, the ultimate rock anthem’s rock anthem, the most bestest, wonderfullest, guitar-hero-est, amazingest song, was possibly nicked from someone else. Oh, that’s not so original then. Not according to the band ‘Spirit’ who recorded a song Taurus 3 years before Stairway came out and let’s just say ‘the similarities are possibly beyond the merely coincidental’, and then we won’t get sued. Unlike Page and Plant who are being sued. And as that song has generated, they reckon, over £400 million in royalties, its worth a fight.

To the future… and beyond!

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx