Solar Sails
Illustration courtesy NASA
In his 1865 science fiction classic, From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne speculated about light-propelled spacecraft. Today, the technology has a name: solar sails, one of which is pictured here in an artist's concept for NASA's orbiting NanoSail-D. (See "Solar Sail Hybrid Launches Today From Japan.")Today, Verne is widely regarded as a prophetic writer who imagined many modern technologies decades before their times.
"He predicted a lot of things that have happened, but that's because he was reading a lot and talking with people and he knew what was going on in the world around him, so why should we be surprised?" MIT's Williams said.
"It wasn't magic. He was just paying attention to things."
Published February 8, 2011
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