Philip Lubin

A handful of coins accelerates to one-fifth the speed of light. That's what Coracle interstellar probes will be like — tiny spacecraft weighing just a few grams, each with an ultrathin sail film. A powerful laser beam pushes them forward: light presses on the sail like wind fills a yacht's sails, except instead of air, it's a stream of photons.

Boiling milk develops a trembling skin. By watching its movements, you can guess the strength of the fire beneath the pot and the fat content of the milk. In a similar way, astrophysicists peer into the ancient microwave radiation — the oldest light that has reached us from an era when the universe was only 380,000 years old.