Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg back tiny spaceships project

Physicist Stephen Hawking, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Russian internet billionaire Yuri Milner have announced a project that could send microscopic spaceships to hunt for extraterrestrial life in the far reaches of space.

The $100m project, known as Breakthrough Starshot, will examine the possibility of sending a host of tiny spacecraft far beyond the boundaries of our solar system to our nearest neighbour, the Alpha Centauri star system.