7 ms·
Imagine being intelligent life on a super earth 2.5-3x larger than earth but trapped on the planet due to gravitational forces.
by NotACop182 4y ago
Imagine being intelligent life on a super earth 2.5-3x larger than earth but trapped on the planet due to gravitational forces.
- eigenhombre 4y agoBeing already semi-intelligent, and trapped here, also due to gravitational forces, I think I can sort of imagine it.
- NotACop182 4y agoYea but our civilization can still make it to orbit. It would be very very hard for them to leave the planet.
- metamet 4y agoAh, so this is why they haven't visited earth yet.
- rizzom5000 4y agoIt's also why they wouldn't have orbiting satellites which would be incredibly useful for both exploration and communication systems.
- NotACop182 4y agoa rocket on a super-Earth would need to have a mass of about 440,000 tons (400,000 metric tons), due to fuel requirements, the study said. That's on the order of the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Just imagine the effort to get one satellite up. Now this would open the door for them to find new ways to make it to orbit.
- denton-scratch 4y agoLoads of small nukes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...
- rbanffy 4y agoIt would also strongly motivate the inhabitants of the planet to permanently leave it.
- denton-scratch 4y agoYeah, I know! I didn't mean to suggest it was a good idea. But if you want to get The Great Pyramid of Giza into space, that's how you'd have to do it (i.e., it's possible in principle). I think the Orion project people spoke of a spaceship the size of a large hotel; with plenty of lead for screening cosmic rays. They claimed there'd be so much lifting capacity that keeping weight down wouldn't be an issue - you could have a barbershop with real barber's chairs. I don't see much future in this kind of design. But I also don't see much future for human space exploration without truly gigantic spaceships. I suppose the alternative is to assemble the ship in orbit, using hundreds of chemical-powered supply missions.
- NotACop182 4y agoLove to see what a failed liftoff looked like
- hinkley 4y agoNo it’s totally that thing you said at that party when you were drunk. Seriously, how could you?
- stackbutterflow 4y agoDoes it mean they can't use ICBM? That's sound like an advantage to avoid self destruction.
- was_a_dev 4y agoMankind would find, and has found, plenty of ways to self-destruct without ICBMs
- dreamcompiler 4y agoICBMs would still be possible -- but perhaps with more limited range.
- anothernewdude 4y agoI don't think Human civilization ever leaves this solar system. The Fermi Paradox isn't a paradox for me, it's about what I'd expect.
- shagie 4y agoThe rocket equation makes this number fairly calculable. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/14383/how-much-bigger-could-earth-be-before-rockets-wouldnt-work https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/14383/how-much-big... One doesn't have to go too much larger before it is impractical to get off the planet with even the best theoretical chemical rockets.
- elevaet 4y agoSo conversely the best candidate for a space-faring species might be from a very small planet.
- Ekaros 4y agoProbably something between Earth and size of Mars. As getting too light makes holding atmosphere harder.
- lampshades 4y agoKind of like how the best candidates for original sea travel came from small islands.
- koheripbal 4y agoNo, because smaller planets cannot hold an O2/CO2/N2 atmosphere like ours.
- elevaet 4y agoThere must be a sweet spot size of planet that is less massive than ours, but that is still big enough to hold an atmosphere. edit: "That critical size, according to Arnscheidt and the other authors of the study, is 2.7 percent the mass of Earth. They say that any smaller than that, and the planet simply won’t be able to hold onto its atmosphere and water long enough for life to appear." shorturl.at/bdgIK So, a mercury sized planet could hold an atmosphere in theory, and require around 1/3 the velocity to escape (vs. earth)
- 4y ago
- rejor121 4y agoImagine how strong they are coMpared to us. Want to be a gym bro, or do you want to just visit a super earth for a couple years?
- wruza 4y agoHigher gravitation is not only a muscular stress, I believe our internal organs and vessels will suffer or fail relatively quickly because there is not enough growth/strength adaptation designed into them. You’ll be not happy about your digestive tract alone weighing few kilograms more just by default.
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
- njarboe 4y agoWhy would you be trapped? The fact that you would need to build a nuclear rocket to escape might actually speed up space exploration on such a planet.
- midoridensha 4y agoA larger planet doesn't necessarily equal higher gravity at the surface.
- taskforcegemini 4y agomaybe not necessarily, but anything else is probably not very likely
- dreamcompiler 4y agoSure. An extremely advanced civilization could hollow it out and make a "Dyson planet" -- or just build a shell from scratch -- but it ain't gonna form through natural processes. I suppose somewhere in the universe there could be a dust cloud of pure lithium that eventually coalesces into a planet, but that seems extremely unlikely. (Interesting premise for a SF story though.)
- midoridensha 4y ago>An extremely advanced civilization could hollow it out and make a "Dyson planet" -- or just build a shell from scratch Wouldn't this be impossible because of the planet's molten core? Or am I just biased because our planet has a molten core and I'm assuming it's necessary for a life-bearing planet, or at least unavoidable for any planet where its host star hasn't burned out from old age? Finally, even if you could remove the molten (or solid) core of a planet, wouldn't the shell collapse due to gravity and other forces? It seems to me that all these planetary engineering ideas really don't make that much sense. If you have such advanced technology that you can do these things, wouldn't it be faster and easier to build an O'neill cylinder and get exactly the environmental conditions you desire?
- dreamcompiler 4y agoI can't really imagine how hollowing out a planet could work, but I suppose if you figured out a way to do it you could replace the iron core with superheated water or something similarly less dense than iron. That's why I also suggested just building a shell from scratch. It would effectively be a very tiny Dyson sphere.