The One Problem With Terraforming and Colonizing a Super-Earth

Many people are excited with the idea of super-Earths--rocky, habitable exoplanets greater in mass, density and diameter (because I'd prefer to go the whole way than stop at the halfway point) than our Earth--being also more habitable than our Earth. That would make sense climatically, geologically and magnetically speaking.

But gravitationally speaking, I'm sorry, but I don't buy the excitement.

Anyone would know that the bigger a body, the greater the gravity, and therefore the likelier we'd end up getting crushed upon contact with either the atmosphere or the surface. You won't be seeing any spine as mighty as the Andes, the Himalayas or even the Mid-Atlantic Ridge anywhere anytime soon. On a similar note, the ocean floor will be just one uniform abyssal plain.

But somehow, somehow, one eager terraformer was not aware of any of this, and he decided to colonize this microbe-exclusive, no-oxygen super-Earth with plant, fungus and animal colonists from our Earth, colonists who had not evolved to live under either a crushing atmosphere or a crushing sea-level surface. We've tried and tried, even after we've turned blue, to reason with him, but he wouldn't listen. He insisted that he'd come up with a way to counter the gravity issue. Would such a solution exist without resorting to destructively shrinking the planet's size?

posted about 4 years ago

JohnWDailey‭

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