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Evolution has produced a wondrously diverse variety of lifeforms here on Earth. It just so happens that talking primates with opposable thumbs rose to the top and are building a spacefaring civilization. And we're land-dwellers. But what about other planets? If the dominant species on an ocean world builds a technological civilization of some sort, would they be able to escape their ocean home and explore space?
A new article in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society examines the idea of civilizations on other worlds and the factors that govern their ability to explore their solar systems. Its title is "Introducing the Exoplanet Escape Factor and the Fishbowl Worlds (Two conceptual tools for the search of extra-terrestrial civilizations)." The sole author is Elio Quiroga, a professor at the Universidad del Atlántico Medio in Spain.
We have no way of knowing if other Extraterrestrial Intelligences (ETIs) exist or not. There's at least some possibility that other civilizations exist, and we're certainly in no position to say for sure that they don't. The Drake Equation is one of the tools we use to talk about the existence of ETIs. It's a kind of structured thought experiment in the form of an equation that allows us to estimate the existence of other active, communicative ETIs. Some of the variables in the Drake Equation (DE) are the star formation rate, the number of planets around those stars, and the fraction of planets that could form life and on which life could evolve to become an ETI.
In his new research article, Quiroga comes up with two new concepts that feed into the DE: the Exoplanet Escape Factor and Fishbowl worlds.
[...] Quiroga's Exoplanet Escape Factor (Fex) can help us imagine what kinds of worlds could host ETIs. It can help us anticipate the factors that prevent or at least inhibit space travel, and it brings more complexity into the Drake Equation. It leads us to the idea of Fishbowl Worlds, inescapable planets that could keep a civilization planet-bound forever.
Without the ability to ever escape their planet and explore their solar systems, and without the ability to communicate beyond their worlds, could entire civilizations rise and fall without ever knowing the Universe they were a part of? Could it happen right under our noses, so to speak, and we'd never know ?
[Source]: Universe Today
[Also Covered By]: Phys.Org
An interesting conjecture worth pondering about !!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday March 02 2024, @09:24AM (11 children)
This is for someone who designs rockets...
How much more gravity could we have before no known rocket fuel we know of would have sufficient energy to leave Earth's gravity well?
About what is the current ratio of total rocket ( rocket+fuel+payload, as it sits on the pad ) to payload delivered to leave our solar system ( like Voyager )?
Voyager's numbers would be fine. I am not that familiar with practical rocketry, but someone here might know that right off the top of their head.
I get the idea that if the earth had maybe 20% more mass, it may be impossible for us to escape our gravity well with any known fuel.
Launching satellites would still be a pipe dream?
To get to synchronous orbit? LEO?
- ignorant but curious - knowing I am surrounded here by a wealth of knowledge.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2024, @01:09PM (1 child)
There's no real answer to that, just more stages. It's all really about Delta V. We need 7km/s to get to low orbit.
We got about 3km/s per stage with 1950s/60s tech. Really pushing the limits I think we can get about 5 km/s now. But that's a pretty big stage, with a small payload. And each stage is the payload of the previous stage. It gets very big, very quickly.
Regarding the actual rockets, it's all about Isp.* The best chemical rockets we have get an Isp of about 420. NERVA got 700 and was projected to eventually get 1200, maybe even 2000.
Personal opinion is that if you had a big slow rotation planet with an orbital delta V of 12 km/s they might get some small satellites up if they are intelligent and far-seeing enough to see the benefits, but that would be the end of it unless they go nuclear.
*Isp is basically how many seconds of 1 pound of thrust you get burning 1 pound of fuel. More is better. :)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2024, @10:09PM
Thinking about this, there probably is a limit. The cube/square law means you can't just scale rockets up. At some point no material can handle the stress involved. That gives an upper limit on the size of the first stage. I guess you could go smaller on the other end, but on a 15 km/s planet you'd be launching a Saturn V to put a cubesat in orbit.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 02 2024, @01:37PM (7 children)
Larry Niven (and friends') Man Kzin Wars series repeatedly mentioned this concept of, basically, how large a race's home world was vs how developed they were as a society before spreading into the galaxy. Simple relationship: heavier planet, higher escape velocity, more developed society required to get off the rock and into space. The more warlike races, therefore, came from smaller/lighter homeworlds. Lots of assumption and extrapolation packed in there, and of course there would be exceptions, but the general concept should fit pretty well to real-galaxy data.
What everyone is missing is: differing exploration and development pathways in the physics of our (local corner of the?) universe. Does a civilization make progress first in chemistry, electromagnetism, nuclear reactions? We know the pathway we took, and we pack a lot of assumptions in there about how it was all interdependent and each step "required" progress in all the other areas to move forward, but certainly our path, which has completely missed flurgenspurtz so far, is not the only path of discovery possible. Other civilizations which discovered flurgenspurtz before developing nuclear fission energy release may have abandoned the whole messy radiation hazard pathway because they have something so far superior in terms of safe, clean controlled energy release.
Our recent interest in developing hydrogen as a natural resource is a great example - what if hydrogen and electricity had taken over hydrocarbon exploitation 40 years ago as the primary energy source for Earth civilization?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mhajicek on Saturday March 02 2024, @06:34PM (1 child)
There is also the fact that much of our technological development has been due to how warlike we are. We didn't find the Apollo project for the purpose of going to the moon; we funded it to develop the technologies necessary to build ICBMs.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday March 02 2024, @06:36PM
*fund the Apollo project.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday March 12 2024, @03:10AM (4 children)
I'd say it's the other way around. The more warlike, the more motivated.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 12 2024, @02:01PM (3 children)
Warlike does motivate, but warlike with rocks and spears doesn't reach orbit anywhere.
To reach orbit you at least need to have a stable rear area. Even if your society isn't warlike, but is advanced and can recognize credible interplanetary/interstellar threats, that's plenty of motivation to build effective defenses.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Tuesday March 12 2024, @02:47PM (2 children)
And warlike doesn't get very far without a stable rear area either. The number I've heard is five support personnel for every body on the front lines, and that doesn't begin to count civic and industry.
Niven thought herbivore equaled peaceful and purely defensive. Needs an intro to a dairy bull. :)
(Acquainted with Larry in meatspace. Great guy, but not a fan of his writing.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 12 2024, @03:21PM (1 child)
I found Ringworld in my High School library, was my first access to any science fiction novel - young and impressionable, makes a difference.
The Man-Kzin Wars series was publishing while I was in college, so I did read just about all of them - and they were authored by a lot of different people "writing in the Ringworld universe."
Around about that time I also read "the Integral Trees" which I thought was trying just a bit too hard... not that such places don't exist in the Universe, just that you might have to survey several Milky Way sized galaxies before finding one...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday March 13 2024, @01:27AM
I had about 30 years of SF saturation before I ever read any Niven. By that point I was less interested in hardware and more in characters, which is, shall we say, the opposite of Niven's expertise. What I might have loved 20 years before... at that point in my reading career just bored me.
And now I write my own to suit myself. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2024, @04:19AM
The gravity we have now kept us grounded until the 50s. With more gravity it might have taken longer, or we could have been smarter and gotten into space sooner