Super-Earths 'in the Billions'

Originally posted by ManFromEurope
Obviously those planets are only created to fill up all that unused space, as some god created only us.. Or do you beg to differ, religion?

Gods have to live somewhere up there in the heavens. May as well be on Super earths aroudn Red Dwarfs. This is pretty cool finding. Lots of places we may be able to expand humanity to.

reply to post by eriktheawful


Thanks for the information....

So the biggest factor is not the size but the mass.... makes sense.

Out of the 'Billions' of super-earths out there, the chances of some having a habitable mass are fairly good in my opinion... they can't all be dense in mass, can they? and I'm guessing some super-earths are not much bigger than our own i.e. 1.5 or 2 times bigger.

It's funny, I keep getting images of towns and cities full of people crawling around on their bellies, trying to get from A to B, but very slowly.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but it's not necessarily just to do with mass, but also the diameter of the planet.

If a planet had twice the mass of Earth AND twice the diameter, the gravity on the surface would be the same ?

Originally posted by OliArtist
I can't believe we are all still sitting here on this over-crowded and vulnerable rock! The number one priority for humanity should be to colonise other planets, and if there are this many then we are idiots if we don't. As long as we sit here like this we are either going to destroy ourselves or get destroyed.

We are so stupid.

I agree with you, but we are not ready to colonize space.We are to Immature as a species.
We also don't have the necessary Tech yet, and won't have for perhaps a thousand years.

Perhaps it is some kind of natural selection, If a species can't get along with one and other
they destroy themselves, thus they do not reach the necessary technological prowess to be able
to enter the stars.

After all it is just as well. because we are a war like race, that would plunder and kill local
creatures in the name of advancing the species.

Personally I don't think we will make it to the stars the obvious will happen first.

Nice thread though!

Originally posted by Riakennor
Forgive me if I'm wrong but it's not necessarily just to do with mass, but also the diameter of the planet.

If a planet had twice the mass of Earth AND twice the diameter, the gravity on the surface would be the same ?

No. Because gravity exists due to the mass of an object. The more mass it has, the more gravity it has.

Mass is dependent upon an object's density, not volume (size). You can test this yourself right in your own home:

Take a glass and fill it halfway with water.
Now take another glass that is exactly the same as the first, and fill it half way with copper or zinc BB pellets. Left each in a hand. The glass with the metal will be heavier than the one with water, even though you filled it approx. the same size as the water, because copper or zinc is denser then water, so their mass is more.

Rocks and metals have different densities. Some rocks are very dense, some are not so dense. Same goes for metals. If a rocky planet has a lot more material such as very dense rocks and metals, as compared to a planet that is the same size, but has much lighter rocks and metals, then the gravity on that planet will be weaker than on the first planet.

Another good example of this is Saturn: even though it's a LOT bigger than our planet, it's density is light enough that if you could find an ocean big enough, it would float in it. If you had magic shoes that could let you walk on Saturn (you can't because it's a gas giant), you would actually only weigh about 91% of what you do here.
So it's a bigger planet, but you'd actually weigh LESS on Saturn than you do here on Earth.

It can be a hard concept to wrap your brain around, but all you have to remember is: the strength of gravity depends on 2 things: Size and Density. Not just size alone.

reply to post by ManFromEurope

even the pope says that god (the universe) could of created other
humanoid species in our cosmos

Too bad we will never see or reach any of these so called "super earths". Since all we like to do is spend our money on war and other pointless things. I could understand spending money on exploring the oceans since we barely even have the ocean floors mapped but space should at least be our second priority.

Originally posted by eriktheawful

Originally posted by Riakennor
Forgive me if I'm wrong but it's not necessarily just to do with mass, but also the diameter of the planet.

If a planet had twice the mass of Earth AND twice the diameter, the gravity on the surface would be the same ?

No. Because gravity exists due to the mass of an object. The more mass it has, the more gravity it has.

Mass is dependent upon an object's density, not volume (size). You can test this yourself right in your own home:

Take a glass and fill it halfway with water.
Now take another glass that is exactly the same as the first, and fill it half way with copper or zinc BB pellets. Left each in a hand. The glass with the metal will be heavier than the one with water, even though you filled it approx. the same size as the water, because copper or zinc is denser then water, so their mass is more.

Rocks and metals have different densities. Some rocks are very dense, some are not so dense. Same goes for metals. If a rocky planet has a lot more material such as very dense rocks and metals, as compared to a planet that is the same size, but has much lighter rocks and metals, then the gravity on that planet will be weaker than on the first planet.

Another good example of this is Saturn: even though it's a LOT bigger than our planet, it's density is light enough that if you could find an ocean big enough, it would float in it. If you had magic shoes that could let you walk on Saturn (you can't because it's a gas giant), you would actually only weigh about 91% of what you do here.
So it's a bigger planet, but you'd actually weigh LESS on Saturn than you do here on Earth.

It can be a hard concept to wrap your brain around, but all you have to remember is: the strength of gravity depends on 2 things: Size and Density. Not just size alone.

Sorry, but NO. Newton has shown that only mass and distance between the centers of two masses (for example you and your planet) do play a part in this.

For example, a black hole has a near infinite density - now look what would happen if the LHC would REALLY go crazy: Earth would turn into a minuscle black hole. BUT: the satellites would orbit just along, the guys on the ISS would maybe die from a gamma ray, or they would look in shock at a black nothing with a tiny, tiny hole in the center.

Gravity works by mass and distance. If a planet would have twice earths mass and earths diameter, the gravity-pull on its surface would only be HALF of 1G.

reply to post by ManFromEurope



DOH!

You're correct and I mispoke: increasing the planet's size, would have the radius increase and the inverse square law says that if we doubled the earth's size, we'd weigh about 1/4 of what we do now. And even if you doubled it's mass, because of the increase of distance from the core would result in 1/2 earth's gravity at the surface.

As you said, a micro black hole gobbling up the earth, would result in the moon and satellite's still orbiting.

However, you wouldn't want to try and be at it's surface.........

So I was at least Half right then ?

Funny what one does and doesn't consider when contemplating deep-space colonization. I'd always assumed the rare-earth theory was the more logical, though less exiting, theory concerning habitable worlds; in my mind, humanity would one day find worlds of matching mass and density and, though generations of terraforming, create earth-like worlds. With the revelation that planets are so common, the sheer law of odds dictates the presence of worlds which require no terraforming at all; I'd never really considered that we may, one day, simply "move out".
By the time we ever get off this rock and onto another, we'll certainly have made medical and cybernetic advances, so I highly doubt increased or decreased gravity will be an issue. Truthfully, at this juncture, I can only really imagine the risk of viral or bacterial infection halting the spread of civilization; I imagine that if this theoretical planet had a slightly weaker magnetosphere highly evolved life would take a drastically different form. Its easier to think of more advanced, perhaps even highly predatorial, strains of fungi, types of amoeba, etc, than to worry about alien tribals. I suppose it would be wisest to leave a stationary base of operations in orbit to attempt quarantine, if needed, but at this point I'm really reaching.
Point is, I'm glad that scientific progress in regards to exoplanetary research is advancing well. Now, if only we could take a closer look at the planets we know of...

I read somewhere they have a hard time detecting "normal mass" Earth's, so just think how many Earth-like planets there could be that they are missing.

I don't think a Super Earth is really habitable because of the strong gravity, maybe a smaller or less dense one?

reply to post by ManFromEurope


Im confused by this post, are you saying that a "god" created only us and noone else and created the rest of matter to just fill in space?

Or was it some form of terrible sarcasm?

To say we are alone in the universe I believe in absolute nonsense. Billions of stars are in galaxies and there are billions of galaxies in the universe, each star is believed to harbor terrestrial planets and gas giants. Planets have been found orbiting neutron stars, brown dwarfs, etc.... Extremofilies are known to exist in some terrible places, there is no reason life couldnt evolve on other planets.

greybots have got their work

cut out for them!

Originally posted by II HAL II
reply to post by ManFromEurope

 

Not wanting to bring religion into this but yes.... I do beg to differ.

Way too many hot topics on ATS at the moment.

Oh... I've worked out it would only take circa 100,000 years to travel 30 light years using a Photonic Drive.... thats around 1,250ish generations of man. So if we leave now, my great great great x 1,248 grandson would get there and have a choice of 100 super-Earths to choose from. Need to make a light speed craft and get there in 30 years me thinks, I want to see what they look like too.

If we all worked on the current galactic treaty like civilised humans, we may just get there a little quicker
Wouldn't that be brilliant!?!

reply to post by RSF77


Totally agree, these Super Earths are just the easiest to find because of their size... there must also be Billions of not so Super Earths too.... Well I went back to the original article I posted and although they are called 'Super Earths' this covers sizes from 1 to 10 times our own earth.... 1 times our own Earth is the same size.

And although we have lightly touched on the fact it may be hard for humans to exist on these Super Earths due to their gravity... this doesn't mean life doesn't exist there, even if they are 10 times the size of our planet, the article I linked in the OP has the following quote -

"We already have ideas to find traces of life on these planets," commented co-researcher Stephane Udry from Geneva Observatory.

So the Scientists think there may be life and haven't discounted the fact due to it's possible gravity..... the only real question, as far as I'm concerned, is not IF life exists in our universe.... but if INTELIGENT life exists. Of course sometime the same could be said of this planet too.

reply to post by AussieAmandaC


It surely would be brilliant.... but there was a big IF in your post

I could do with a break from this planet.... would love to see what others look like... can you imagine.

reply to post by II HAL II


thing about the name super-earths is it was created by astronomers who were excited by the fact we managed to detect planets of 10 earth mass or less

I guess because we use the base ten number system and entering single digits this was seen as a major achievement so they decided to create a new classification.

Thing is these planets are more likely to be like neptune than earth from what we know so the name "super-earth" is a bit misleading.

at the lower end say 2 earth mass it might get interesting but computer models show planets above 2 earth mass collect too much gas, probably have a cloud deck miles thick, no sunlight reaching the surface etc. but hey who knows.