Eli5 how solar sails work?
In: 5
It seems weird because it’s completely alien to our lived experience, but light can push things.
It’s a phenomenon called “radiation pressure” and it happens because light, despite being massless, still has some momentum that it can transfer to other things.
This amount is very very small, but if there is nothing else pushing against your sail, you can use the ambient light of a nearby star to push you.
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