At least 49 couples would be needed to travel to the next exoplanet – World News –

Two French researchers calculated that it was a prerequisite for a genetically healthy population to fly over the 6,300-year-old journey to the next known exoplanet, Proxima Centauri B.

The crew should live several generations in the spaceship

To populate, the crew should live for many generations in the spacecraft and spread there. For this, the journey of 98 people must begin, write Frederic Marin of the University of Strasbourg and Camille Beluffi of the cabinet of studies CASC4DE in the "Journal of the British Interplanetary Society".

Number of births to be determined

For the selection of the crew Therefore, some questions need to be clarified: the number of women and men, the age and the l & # 39; life expectancy, fecundity rates and maximum capacity of the spacecraft. In addition, strict rules for life on board are necessary. In addition, the number of births must be fixed each year. In their computer simulation, the authors allowed incest and allowed reproduction only at the age of 32 to 40 years.

Even Calculated Catastrophe

In their calculations, Marin and Beluffi even calculated a catastrophe after 2500 years, accounting for 30% of the crew. the costs of living. However, there are still uncertainties – such as how cosmic rays affect the crew.

Proxima Centauri b revolves around the star of Proxima Centauri, which lies about 4.2 light-years from Earth. A light year is the distance traveled by light in one year and equals 9.5 trillion kilometers. The discovery was announced by researchers in August 2016. Before such a mission, however, it is necessary to specify if the planet is habitable at all, emphasize the authors.