Stephen Hawking is backing a project to send tiny spacecraft to another star system within a generation. They would travel trillions of miles; far further than any previous craft. A $100m (£70m) research programme to develop the computer chip-sized "starships" was launched by the billionaire Yuri Milner, supported by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Interstellar travel has long been a dream for many, but significant technological hurdles remain. But Prof Hawking told BBC News that fantasy could be realised sooner than we might think. Media captionThe spacecraft would be propelled from earth by a giant laser, as Pallab Ghosh reports "If...