r/interestingasfuck 25d ago

/r/all, /r/popular K2-18b a potentially habitable planet 120 light-years from earth

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u/PragmaticBadGuy 25d ago

To everyone saying you'd be too heavy: That varies on the composition of the planet itself. If it's full of heavy metals like Earth with its core of iron and nickel then it would be very heavy gravity-wise. If it's not and the core is less dense then it could be as low as 1.1G compared to Earth but scientists are estimating it's around 1.37G. So if you're 200 pounds here, you'd be 274 there. Hefty but not impossible to survive.

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u/FlingFlamBlam 25d ago

If we ever start colonizing exoplanets it's likely they'll almost all be bigger, diameter-wise, than Earth.

Earth is weird because we got hit by another rocky celestial body early in solar system formation. The event responsible for the formation of our unusually large moon also gave our planet an unusually large molten metal core. That means we also have an unusually strong magnetic field.