The tallest people on that planet
Jokes on us: Because of the gravity issue, alien life on such planets jumps right to stargate technology.
“They spent almost a thousand years fooling around with rockets!”
Uhh, one stargate doesn’t go anywhere.
You can accelerate it into space at g forces which would liquify living beings, perhaps?
I’d say they stand a whelks chance in a supernova of that succeeding.
Actually I’m a marine astrobiologist and that chance is really really high
Using what?
(Remember the premise of this subthread is that they’re doing this instead of rockets.)
Bah, Stargates are just propaganda from the rocket first civs.
There is no need to send a gate in advance, just use your favorite teleportation mechanic.
Just frisbee those things in random directions until one works.
Waddayamean a « ro-ket »? You guys don’t use the three seashells system for liftoff?
Imagine all the room for activities! (Trench warfare)
reminded me of Ad Astra and its soul crushing revelation that the scientists haven’t found alien life despite all the fancy tech.
We make a mistake by assuming that life forms would likely be at the same scale as us. Larger planets would likely develop life forms appropriate for those planets instead of appropriate for ours.
Uh… being smaller or larger does not really change the laws of physics… if the gravity is too high, no fuel has enough energy density to escape the gravity of the celestial body.
If you need 150kg of fuel to get 100kg worth of matter to escape velocity it does not matter how much fuel you have. It will not ever be enough to leave.
I love how Earthlings assume that all of the variables on other planets would be exactly the same as they are on Earth, leading them to believe they have any idea about what other species might be dealing with on other planets.
It’s cute.
You do know that they couldn’t even estimate the functionality of the heat shield of the spacecraft that just splashed down on our own planet? That they had to literally increase the angle of entry because they couldn’t accurately predict the behavior of a craft on a planet that they’ve been studying for all of recorded time?
Are the laws of physics actually a thing? Clearly. But here’s the thing: The kinds of organisms that might exist on such an object could be absolutely massive compared to us. And for us to assume that we would have an understanding of the laws of physics that would be anywhere near as great as animals that might have brains exponentially larger than ours? And hell, the energy that might be available in such environments? We don’t know what’s in space around these objects, or whether there are any kinds of characteristics which would make unconventional (to us) means feasible to get off of the planet.
For all we know, they could be scientifically a billion years ahead of us and might be able to manipulate time or matter in ways we couldn’t conceive. It hasn’t even been 100 years since humanity learned to harness nuclear power.
No, there are too many variables. Life on such planets could evolve in countless different ways, and the different characteristics of the environment, and the resources on and around the planet provide too many options for us to be wrong.
And before you respond that I am arguing against science, no, it’s actually your opinion that is arguing against science. History is filled with organisms finding unusual solutions for problems that were long deemed impossible to solve. And when people said “Well, I don’t think we have enough knowledge to make such a firm claim,” history is also full of people like you who insisted that there was no way. And history is full of people who walked into the room, picked up the rules as they wrre known to that point, and basically flipped over the game board.
You are literally the person arguing that a scientific process is impossible given environmental variables because they don’t match the laws of physics.
But you don’t understand that you are arguing not for the infallibility of those laws, but for the infallibility of our understanding:
-
of the laws as we understand them
-
of the chemical makeup and geography and resources of the planet
And all of that is not even to mention that the estimates of whether the planet itself was capable of supporting life have literally changed relatively recently because humanity developed a better understanding of science.
If I had a nickel for every time someone proudly claimed something to be impossible because it hadn’t scientifically been done yet I would be richer than Elon Musk.
Unlikely? Well, look. I’m not willing to make statements about humans’ accuracy when studying objects that far away. I will acknowledge that it’s not something that would be easy for us to accomplish given our current knowledge, but my humility can acknowledge that that seems to say more about US on this planet than it says about any kind of organism that may have developed on such a planet.
You’re treating scientific uncertainty as if it means “anything is possible.” It doesn’t.
We don’t assume variables on other planets match Earth. Astrobiology, planetary science, and exoplanet studies are built on the opposite assumption: that most planets don’t resemble Earth. When scientists estimate what life or civilizations could be like elsewhere, they work from measurable constraints (gravity, density, stellar flux, atmospheric composition), not wishful thinking. For example, we know that: A planet with 3× Earth’s gravity constrains organism size, structural strength, locomotion, and escape velocity. A planet with a dense hydrogen atmosphere changes chemistry and energy availability. A star’s light spectrum dictates photosynthetic possibilities. These aren’t guesses. They follow from basic physics and chemistry, which apply everywhere.
“They misestimated a heat shield” ≠ “we don’t understand planetary physics.” Engineering uncertainty in a single atmospheric re-entry doesn’t invalidate the underlying physics. Weather variation, material tolerance margins, and modeling limits don’t erase Newtonian mechanics or thermodynamics. If your argument were valid, airplanes would disprove gravity because turbulence is hard to predict. Scientific uncertainty does not mean lawlessness.
An organism the size of a mountain on a 10g world can’t simply evolve because “maybe their brains are bigger.” Biology cannot override: stress limits of matter metabolic scaling laws biomechanics gravity energy density limits An advanced species might innovate, but it doesn’t get to ignore basic constraints. A billion-year-old civilization would know more than we do, but they still can’t accelerate to escape velocity without energy, or support infinite mass with finite-strength materials. Knowledge does not nullify physics.
For all we know, they could be scientifically a billion years ahead of us and might be able to manipulate time or matter in ways we couldn’t conceive
This is pretty much just “We can’t rule out magic, therefore you’re wrong. Science can only operate on what’s known to be possible or what follows from tested theories. Speculating about physics-breaking abilities isn’t meaningful without evidence; it’s equivalent to saying “you can’t disprove dragons.”
When scientists say “a civilization on a super-Earth would struggle to reach orbit,” they base it on: the planet’s mass and radius → calculates escape velocity atmospheric density gravitational load on structures realistic energy sources We don’t need to know the exact geology to know that a planet of a given mass requires a minimum amount of energy to launch mass into space. That’s just conservation of energy.
Saying “we don’t know everything” is true. Saying “therefore any extreme scenario is viable” is not.
You’re treating scientific uncertainty as if it means “anything is possible.” It doesn’t.
Except I’m not.
I am treating things as if we are a species who barely has enough knowledge to send a small group of individuals off of the planet, and I am stating that while humanity seems to have a fairly okay ability to do that(and barely get to the next rock over), we probably shouldn’t be speaking with the confidence as if we wrote our masters thesis on interstellar travel. The moment humans stop having tons of massive scientific discoveries about space travel every year, that’s the point that we might have a good argument that it’s impossible for someone to escape a particular planet.
At this point, we can’t even confidently say that we know what that planet is like. Hell, up until recently, they believed that planet couldn’t even support life.
I am not questioning the laws of physics.
I am questioning that humans’ understanding of them is complete.
But you go on with your bad self, with your complete assurance that nothing will ever get off of that planet. The good news is that both of us will be dead before anyone even gets to know that it’s been tried.
You can question whether we know everything, that’s always fair. but saying “maybe something will escape a high-gravity planet because we don’t know everything” is like saying “Maybe we’ll find out 2+2 isn’t always 4 because math isn’t complete.” Possible? In a philosophical sense, yes. Useful? Not really.
Most “revolutionary” discoveries refine our understanding, not overturn the foundation. Relativity didn’t make Newtonian mechanics wrong. It expanded the domain. Quantum mechanics didn’t nullify classical physics. It explained small scales. Dark matter didn’t erase gravity. It suggests additional components.
When you argue, “We’re still making discoveries, therefore our predictions about what is possible are worthless,” you’re ignoring that the discoveries rarely contradict established, experimentally validated constraints.
You aren’t offering any reason to believe our current models are wrong, only that they could be wrong because science is incomplete. By that logic, any claim can be doubted indefinitely, and no amount of evidence ever matters.
But i truly like your child like enthusiasm for space. You throw intresting ideas around, but so far they have been only wishfull thinking. Difference between science, fantasy and religion is, that when something new is proven in science, people accept it, but it needs proof first.
In fantasy people throw crazy ideas and have fun, knowing they are not real.
Religion is when you have “faith” that something is true.
You are living in somewhere between fantasy and religion with your ideas. There is nothing wrong with it, but it makes discussions meaninless, because while i try to argue based on science you dont have any limitations and can just say. “We dont know, maybe they can manipulate time”. Its really convinient isint it.
Sure thing, Lord Kelvin.
-
Damn. As if the atmosphere wasn’t enough of a hurdle already, they gots dumpys too
That’s what the martians said about Earth
No rockets maybe, but what about a space elevator?
Those would be harder too though. Right now we humans don’t have a material strong enough and the higher the gravity the stronger the material you would need.
You would need to get into orbit first to start the process of making it. It could make it easier to get into orbit once you have it but it doesn’t eliminate the burden of needing to get into orbit at least once before it’s set up. Likely more than once since failed attempts will require you to start over.
I mean, that’s probably what’s keeping US down. The aliens out there are probably from worlds with low enough gravity to make a proper space elevator. And they never come to visit us because our world is just too damn big, you’d need some kind of controlled explosion to get back up from a gravity well that deep.
still, they could be detectable, radio signals and stuff like that, afaik we have sent radio signals (not just inadvertently) from the ground
Or it’s likely a mini-Neptune type planet with more atmosphere than ground and therefore likely won’t have complex life at all. Or complex life able to try and do that.
A while back I read an article that stated earth was about as high G as you could get and still be able to get to orbit with chemical rockets (barring huge leaps in tech). I could be remembering that badly though, so take it with a grain of salt
You call Kepler I call it heaven, because if you think of it heaven is either fictional or a real existing place and I chose that planet as my impossible to reach place.
