Philip Lubin, a researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Experimental Cosmology Group, has proposed an innovative propulsion method that could eventually transport humans to Mars in 3-days or less. It involves an unmanned spacecraft with a one-meter DE-STAR laser sail that is propelled by aiming a powerful laser at it while still in Earth orbit, thus accelerating the craft to a significant fraction of the speed of light. “As an example, on the eventual upper end, a full scale DE-STAR 4 (50-70 GW) will propel a wafer scale spacecraft with a one meter laser sail to about 26 percent the speed of light in about 10 minutes, reach Mars (1 AU [astronomical unit, the Earth-Sun distance]) in 30 minutes, pass Voyager 1 in less than 3 days, pass 1,000 AU in 12 days and reach Alpha Centauri in about 15 years,” said Lubin. Click here to view the first image in today’s viral picture gallery. Continue reading for the five most popular viral videos today, including one of the Star Wars Imperial March being played in major keys.

5. Never Dare a Hacker

4. Imperial March in Major Keys

3. Japanese Clock Writes the Time

2. Climbing the Tallest Residential Building Yet

1. Robot Solves Rubik’s Cube in 0.887-Seconds

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