by Harry Pettit January 30, 2019 (thesun.co.uk)
• German scientist Dr Michael Hippke theorizes that the gravity on alien worlds may be so strong that rockets can’t power through their atmospheres. Therefore, if an advanced alien civilization wanted contact another world, i.e.: the Earth, then they would probably fire lasers at us.
• Working with the Sonneberg Observatory in Germany, Dr Hippke has explored the difficulty of spaceflight for inhabitants of distant planets called Super Earths. Scientists have spotted dozens of them outside of our solar system, and many believe they offer our best chance of finding alien life. But the huge planets’ gravitational pull is far stronger than ours, meaning they’d need a lot more fuel to escape them than we do here on Earth. “This makes space-flight on these worlds very challenging,” said Hippke. “On more massive planets, spaceflight would be exponentially more expensive.”
• “Civilizations from Super Earths are much less likely to explore the stars,” Dr Hippke said. Instead, they would use “lasers or radio telescopes for interstellar communication.”
• The research was published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.
Aliens looking to contact Earth will probably fire lasers at us rather than lugging their spacecraft all the way across the galaxy.
That’s according to German scientist Dr Michael Hippke, who says the gravity on alien worlds may be so strong that rockets can’t power through their atmospheres.
Working with the Sonneberg Observatory in Germany, he explored the difficulty of spaceflight for inhabitants of distant planets called Super Earths.
Scientists have spotted dozens of them outside of our solar system, and many believe they offer our best chance of finding alien life.
Many of them are significantly bigger than Earth, and this could cause problems for any extraterrestrial rocket scientists living there, Dr Hippke said.
Each planet’s gravitational pull is far stronger than ours, meaning you’d need a lot more fuel to escape them than you do on Earth.
Dr Hippke’s calculated the forces needed for a rocket to escape the atmosphere of a Super Earth 70% wider and 10 times heavier than our planet.
He showed a rocket on a Super Earth would need to weigh around 444,000 tons due to fuel requirements – about the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
“Many rocky exoplanets are heavier and larger than the Earth, and have higher surface gravity,” Dr Hippke told Space.com.
“This makes space-flight on these worlds very challenging. On more massive planets, spaceflight would be exponentially more expensive.”
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
