McGill Interstellar Flight Research Group

Someone was asking what the interstellar medium around the Sun looks like in 3D. Here's a quick render. I might add an improved version of this to a room in my Star Central VR world.

Brown: dust, red: ionized gas, blue: hot stars.

Unfiltered glimpses of our solar system revealed through raw, breathtaking images. Our group works with one goal in mind: to someday capture such images from other solar systems.

NASA’s First-Ever Alien-Hunting Space Telescope Could Enlighten Our New Dark Age The Habitable Worlds Observatory is poised to tell us whether Earthlike planets are common—if it can get off the ground

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: NASA’s next-gen Habitable Worlds Observatory may be our best chance to find alien life. But can a nation busy ripping itself apart unite to launch a mission to solve life’s cosmic mysteries? By @nadiadrake.bsky.social (and me).

www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-...

A $100-Million Mission to Another Star Just Disappeared An abandoned plan to visit another star highlights the perils of billionaire-funded science

“How a Billionaire’s Plan to Reach Another Star Fell Apart”
Our group is still at it, stubbornly in the trenches, steadily chipping away at the key problems that must be solved to reach the nearest stars. The work continues. Onward!
www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

Why a Hint of an Atmosphere on this Alien Planet is Such a Big Deal A monumental sign of an atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1e could be the precursor to finally finding a living world around another star

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: For the 1st time, we’ve seen hints of an atmosphere around a potentially habitable exoplanet. If confirmed, this would be a monumental discovery, opening a new era in the search for life beyond Earth. By @astrojonny.bsky.social.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/jwst...

YouTube video by Jake Andrew Kurlander Simulated Solar System Discoveries of LSST

Jake Kurlander - talking about the predicted LSST asteroid and TNO discoveries - 80% Solar System small bodies will be discovered in the first two years #EPSCDPS2025

A schematic of an interstellar objects orbit through the solar system, complete with a listing of the types of observations we can take of the object (and when we could take them) overlaid at the top.

Michelle's final paper investigates interstellar objects (such as the 3 detected interstellar comets) for signs of alien technosignatures! So far, all 3 objects are comets, but if there were a probe out there, how could we find out? This paper outlines the methods. 🔭 ☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2508.16825

Lightsails for Interstellar Travel: Photonics for Propulsion, Thermal Management and Stability Lightsails are a highly promising spacecraft concept that has attracted interest in recent years due to its potential to travel at near-relativistic speeds. Such speeds, which current conventional cra...

We’re reading “Lightsails for Interstellar Travel: Photonics for Propulsion, Thermal Management and Stability”
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Issue 50 of Principium is now published

- Lead Feature : BOOK REVIEW, The Ross 248 Project.
- Project Hyperion
- Breakthrough Disc
- "Where do you look for ET"
- IAC25
- The Journals
- Interstellar News
.. and more !
Read it here : - i4is.org/principium-50/

Editor: @johninghamdavies.bsky.social

Reduce the radiation load by more than half, increase efficiency by 20% and make ignition easier by using spin-polarization in a fusion rocket, which aligns the DT fuel atoms and make their neutron release directional.
By @gbruhaug.bsky.social:
arxiv.org/pdf/2108.01211

Technosignature Searches Of Interstellar Objects - Astrobiology With the discovery of the third confirmed interstellar object (ISO), 3I/ATLAS, we have entered a new phase in the exploration of these long-predicted objects.

Technosignature Searches Of Interstellar Objects
astrobiology.com/2025/08/tech... #astrobiology #3IATLAS #interstellar #SETI

Congratulations to Space Concordia Rocketry Division on the successful launch of Starsailor, featuring the largest student-built bipropellant rocket engine ever flown (35 kN thrust). The launch occurred approximately 1 hr 16 mins into the livestream linked below.
www.youtube.com/live/610YciE...

We're reading (and hoping for a successful flyby target🤞🤞):
"An Extremely Deep Rubin Survey to Explore the Extended Kuiper Belt and Identify Objects Observable by New Horizons" by @megschwamb.bsky.social
doi.org/10.3847/1538...

Why were we able to see the spiral rocket plume last night, but not during other rocket launches?

The time of day, the Sun’s light, and the direction the rocket heads into space causes this effect…

One of the members of our research group was out watching the Perseids on Tuesday night in Montreal and captured these images of the plume.

A Saturn mass gas giant may be orbiting Alpha Centauri A, based on solid JWST infrared results and exhaustive simulations of its orbit. It's still a candidate rather than a confirmed world, but follow-up work will tell us soon. www.centauri-dreams.org/2025/08/08/a...

Alpha Centauri Might Have a Planet, Webb Telescope Finds Direct images from the James Webb Space Telescope show what could be a Saturn-mass planet around Alpha Centauri.

Direct images from the James Webb Space Telescope show what could be a Saturn-mass planet around Alpha Centauri.
skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...
.
.
#astronomy #exoplanets #planetaryscience #cosmology #alphacentauri #jwst #newplanet

This is not the quality of pseudoscience infotainment to which I have grown accustomed Teasing the public with fraudulent or self-deluded promises of aliens used to mean something. It took work. It meant slapping together…

I have a complaint about Avi Loeb's latest work and I want to speak to management.

medium.com/@steve.desch...

This three-panel image captures NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observational search for a planet around the nearest Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A. The initial image shows the bright glare of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, and the middle panel then shows the system with a coronagraphic mask placed over Alpha Centauri A to block its bright glare. However, the way the light bends around the edges of the coronagraph creates ripples of light in the surrounding space. The telescope’s optics (its mirrors and support structures) cause some light to interfere with itself, producing circular and spoke-like patterns. These complex light patterns, along with light from the nearby Alpha Centauri B, make it incredibly difficult to spot faint planets. In the panel at the right, astronomers have subtracted the known patterns (using reference images and algorithms) to clean up the image and reveal faint sources like the candidate planet.

After years of searching, astronomers have found strong evidence of a planet around Alpha Centauri, a near-twin of our Sun in the nearest neighboring star system.
This would also be the closest exoplanet ever observed directly. 🧪🔭

webbtelescope.org/contents/new...

Astronomers Are Enthralled by This Potential Planet around Alpha Centauri In some of its most ambitious work yet, the James Webb Space Telescope looked to spot a planet in a potentially habitable orbit around Alpha Centauri A, the nearest sunlike star to our solar system

Now on @sciam.bsky.social:

Using JWST, astronomers have spotted what seems to be a gas giant planet in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A, the nearest sunlike star to our solar system. This is *huge* if true. By @meghanbartels.bsky.social.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/jwst...

More Avi and 3I/ATLAS Following up on this and this: Today images from the Hubble Space Telescope were published by Jewitt et al., and they show the coma of 3I/ATLAS very well: Would this be enough to convince Avi that it’...

It gets worse and worse.

If you're interested in the slow-motion train wreck that is Avi's sci-comm on this, here are some of the latest (it's very hard to keep up!)

In which spacecraft can have comae, 3I/ATLAS has a 60% chance of being alien, and new papers validate and adopt his calculations.

🌌 Announcing the Winners of the Project Hyperion Design Competition 🌌 ... hosted by i4iS.

Can we imagine a society that thrives on the journey to the stars?

🏆 Winners

🥇 Chrysalis
🥈 WFP Extreme
🥉 Systema Stellare Proximum
Plus 10 mentions...

Full details are here : www.projecthyperion.org

New paper! Allow me to introduce TARS = Torqued Accelerator using Radiation from the Sun. TARS (yes inspired by Interstellar!) is a rotating light sail that's capable of launching chip sats into interstellar space using only radiation from the Sun, so let's dive into how it works.

A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has discovered a rare object far beyond Neptune, from a class known as trans-Neptunian objects, that is moving in rhythm with the giant planet. This image shows the orbits of all of the objects discovered in the Outer Solar System Origins Survey. The orbit of 2020 VN40 is the thickest one, tilted up and to the left from the orbits of most of the objects. The orbits of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are the white circles. Credit: Rosemary Pike, CfA

Lots of news just came out about strange, rhythmic goings-on in the outer regions of our solar system.

An object called 2020 VN40 moves in sync with Neptune (1 orbit for every 10 of Neptune), suggesting a large population of bodies in similar resonances. 🧪🔭

www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/astrono...

NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Observations of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1) We report on the observation and measurement of astrometry, photometry, morphology, and activity of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, also designated C/2025 N1 (ATLAS), with the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin ...

It's paper day! The first science paper with data from @vrubinobs.bsky.social's survey camera, the mighty LSSTCam, is a VERY quick turnaround of Rubin's observations thus far of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. ☄️
Chandler et al., submitted 🔭
A 🧵

Avi and 3I/ATLAS Avi Loeb has gained a reputation for suggesting and outright claiming things could be alien spacecraft even when there’s little to no objective reason to think so. So when the third interstellar objec...

On Avi and 3I/ATLAS:
sites.psu.edu/astrowright/...
☄️ 🔭

The preview of 'Laser Propulsion in Space' has an excellent introduction:
books.google.co.uk/books?id=9Cf...
It could offers variable 1000-10,000 Isp and good thrust/watt performance, but its strongest advantage is how the heavy generator and spacecraft can be separated by long distances.

The dragon is dead.
breakingdefense.com/2025/06/darp...
The DRACO nuclear thermal rocket program has been terminated by DARPA. Reasons cited:
-SpaceX Starship will deliver so much propellant into orbit that fuel efficiency won't matter
-Future nuclear-electric propulsion could be more promising

Fusion starships from BIS:
indico.esa.int/event/309/at...
There's the classic Daedalus, the Icarus pinning its hopes on Ultra-Dense Deuterium, the mind-boggling Firefly and now the 'Ghost' using a plasma-jet magneti-inertial fusion drive to reach 0.05C then stop at its destination.

Ultimately, the speed of light is not an obstacle to human interstellar travel. As this thread has shown, it is relativity that *enables* journeys between stars within the span of a human lifetime. [9/9]