Celebrated scientist Stephen Hawking and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in an hugely ambitious project, will send a "nano craft" deep into the space to remote regions that humans have never seen.

The Starshot Project will send tiny robots to the Alpha Centuri star system, 25 trillion miles away. Getting there through normal means would take 30,000 years, but this new venture will reduce this to just 20 years, using the tiny rockets.

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Lead space scientists believe that the Alpha Centauri system may have an earth-like planet in its "habitable zones." The nano craft will attempt to take pictures of these habitable zones and potentially find other worlds.

This robots, which will be sent to space, have been described as "gram scale nano crafts." Web tycoon Yuri Milner has said that this nano craft will make its way through space using a "sail pushed by a light beam."

Zuckerberg and Miner will provide about $99 million to cover the initial stage of development.

A huge laser on Earth would fire beams into the sails to power the starchips, which would reach a top speed of 134million mph - a fifth of the speed of light. At that rate the ships could arrive at Alpha Centauri within two decades, before beaming back data about the far-off star and any life on its orbiting planets.

TagsStephen Hawking, china, Mark Zuckerberg, The Starshot Project