**9. Implications**

It is reasonable to believe, based on Hui Chen's and Eve Stenson's laboratory discoveries, that matter/anti-matter propulsion is a viable—possibly the most viable technology for achieving relativistic speeds in space. Instead of being mere science fiction, relativistic speeds are now defensible scientific theory, and they may, within a matter of a few years, become actual scientific and engineering fact.

With matter/anti-matter propulsion, the outer planets of our solar system are likely within our reach, for further scientific exploration. Most importantly, the nearest 15 stars to Earth are four to eleven light-years away [21]. At those distances, sending matter/anti-matter probes to our nearest neighboring stars, and receiving signals back from our probes, will involve a mission of only a few years. Possibly of greatest importance of all, two of the stars that are closest to us are a lot like our Sun. It would be intriguing, and potentially quite important, to find out how similar those two star systems are to our own.
