If you’re looking for reasons why mankind hasn’t found aliens yet, you can come up with a whole bunch of them. We’ve never left our Solar System, never set foot on another planet, and while our telescope technology allows us to gaze at planets far, far away, we don’t possess the ability to see what’s actually on them. Searching for reasons why aliens haven’t found us, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to answer. A new paper from Michael Hippke, a researcher with the Sonnenberg Observatory in Germany, provides one potential explanation, and it’s likely one that you’ve never considered before.
Hippke proposes that alien “space programs” might struggle with the technology required to send them into space, particularly if they reside on one of the many “Super Earths” that astronomers have located over the past few years. These massive, possibly-Earth-like worlds are up to twice the size of our planet, and that would mean a significant increase in the force of gravity. The result could be intelligent civilizations that just can’t push themselves off their own planet.
Hippke’s argument is that, because of the increased gravity of a planet larger than Earth, building a rocket to carry them into space would be such a monumental task that it would be a deal breaker. If aliens are using technology similar to our own — chemical fuels pushing rockets skyward — gravity is obviously a big consideration, but even on a planet twice the size of Earth it might not be an insurmountable obstacle.- READ MORE
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