I presume the gravity on “super earths” would be greater than on Earth.
Given that, in the extremely UNlikely event that we were to ever visit such a planet, I would doubt that existence there would be very comfortable for humans, even if the planets were otherwise much like earth. Every step would be VERY heavy.
Presumably any life there, however, would have evolved to those conditions. They’d be just fine, but we might find it a bit uncomfortable.
We’d be the opposite of Superman
So what you’re saying is, it would be hard to move around so the best thing to do is lie around all day? Sign me up!
The other thing I thought of is this.
If these planets are truly close enough to their stars to where they orbit them in only three days, then they may be tidally locked like the moon.
One side might always be day and the other night.
Talk about messing up the circadian rhythms!
I found an article that discusses the gravity problem on super earths.
It’s not quite as bad as I thought, but you’d still feel quite heavy on most of them.
Good find. At the end of the day, math rules. Example shows how flawed
our initial intuition can be as well.
Name: Mass, Radius, Surface Gravity
Gliese 581g: 2.6, 1.4, 1.33
Gliese 581d: 6.9, 2.2, 1.43
Gliese 667Cc: 4.9, 1.9, 1.36
Kepler 22b: 6.4, 2.1, 1.45
HD40307g: 8.2, 2.4, 1.42
HD85512b: 4.0, 1.7, 1.38
Gliese 163c: 8.0, 2.4, 1.39
Fictional Planet: 8.0, 2.83, 1.00
Guess a follow up question would be how much can the human body compensate
for over time as our muscles develop. 100 lb human would feel like weighing 133 lbs on the most
gravity favorable exoplanet. Be like carrying your toddler around all day, but much better weight distribution.
They might never develop space travel though, since their gravity is to great to allow them to break free. Earth is truly a Goldielocks planet. Large enough that we don’t go flying away, but small enough that we can use rockets to break free.
They might never develop space travel though, since their gravity is to great to allow them to break free. Earth is truly a Goldielocks planet. Large enough that we don’t go flying away, but small enough that we can use rockets to break free.
I went off on a tangent looking into this and it may be more difficult but not impossible to do.
You can build bigger chemical rockets , going vertical to a point; but then there does seem to
be a technical limit at some point. Going “horizontal “ in rocket building, seems to be almost
limitless, but at a point structural issues are presented due to stresses thru a liftoff. At that point
you need to go to spherical design for fuel volume and structural integrity issues it seems, the readings suggested. Of course our rockets are all cylindrical shaped and I don’t even recall ever seeing even a concept drawing of a non cylindrical vehicle. Then again, an alien civilization may be more advanced in materials science, so it’s hard to know what you don’t know. And if you start down that path, you have to consider if they have a better propulsion system than chemical based rockets as well. Space elevator ? But that’s getting into sci-fi stuff.
And then you wonder if alien DNA would maybe be left handed spiral double helix as opposed to
everything on earth being right handed spiral based. All we know about is right handed, and think the nature of cosmic rays favored survival of right handed variant at the expense of left handed spiral. Or would they even be double helix DNA based, or even carbon based at all.
I read a book one time that discussed the possibility that rather than having carbon based (organic) life, there could be a planet with silicon based life, given that that’s the only other element that bonds with as many other elements as carbon.
There are some problems with the possibility of silicon based life. The biggest problem is that silicon generally reacts much more slowly than carbon. Any silicon based life would take A LOT LONGER to evolve than carbon based life, as a result. Such slow evolution might be possible, of course, on a planet orbiting a very long-lived red dwarf star, like the ones mentioned in this article. It could probably not exist on a planet orbiting a star like the Sun…too short of a lifespan!
Problem number two is that silicon, unlike carbon, forms very RIGID bonds, as opposed to flexible ones. As a result, if we ever went to a planet that had silicon based life, we might not realize that what we saw was alive, or even “life.” We might literally mistake it for a lump of crystal, a geological formation, or a pile of rocks. It likely wouldn’t move easily.
Problem number three is that carbon has a very natural and obvious solvent: WATER!!! It’s not clear what the comparable solvent for silicon would be. The net result of this, is that silicon based life could only exist on a very, VERY exceptional type of planet where a liquid bromide, or liquid sulfuric acid type solvent might exist in abundance on the surface. That seems to make the likelihood of finding such life even more remote that the likelihood of finding organic life elsewhere in the universe.
About the only advantage that silicon based life might have is that because there would be no requirement for liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface, silicon based life could exist at much higher temperatures and would have a much larger “goldilocks” zone.
Gotta figure now matter the life form its going to want to eat us…or at the very least try us out. If we’re edible and they have better tech, then we’re dinner for the rest of our existence…best hope a symbiotic human/cattle relationship. It’s the tale of virtually all life form relationships.
You would think with hydrogen being so abundant universe-wise , compounds like
water would be the logical liquid solution for life. But there again, we are both some fact based and
biased based, in what we can even imagine.
Biggest problem is transport and we may be waiting on the next Newton+Einstein hybrid
to be born. Need to check on area-coog51 to see what those pesky aliens are up to that
keep playing hide n seek with us.
What if the alien life forms are vegan?
Just sayin’!
At least we don’t have the female eating the male mate problem. Usually.
Socially, you wonder if aliens would be more like us or more like ants and bees.
Individuals lose themselves for the benefit of the nest or the hive. Star Trek
Borg “collective” stuff 
Do you know what silicon life form did on Star Trek Original Series?
Yikes?
I just read another article that suggests that on an extremely cold planet where an abundance of liquid nitrogen could exist on the surface, it might serve as a type of solvent for certain hybrid organic-silicon compounds similar to carbohydrates.
Again though…that’d be a REALLY exceptional environment.
So while the hypothetical “goldilocks” zone could be broad (from an extreme cold planet to one with extreme heat producing a “magma man,”), the conditions needed to produce silicon based life seem even more improbable than those needed for organic life.
Yeah that’s really cool ( or cold ) too. But we have that built in earth life bias, as our only
reference point, that we have to at least be aware of.