There has been a lot of speculation about aliens in certain circles recently.

I mean, the government says there is evidence that they have been here, but from what I’ve seen, they haven’t exactly been forthcoming on the details.

Some astrophysicists think that even if we’ve seen communication devices from aliens, the aliens themselves might be in a conundrum like our own.

Maybe everyone is trapped on their own planets by the frustrating laws of physics and space-time.

Astrophysicist Frank Drake formed the Drake equation in 1961, in which he stated that there could be a number of factors as to why we haven’t encountered another civilization.

Some of those factors were the number of stars that have orbiting planets, the rate of star formation, and the fraction of planets that are able to sustain life.

Now, astrophysicist Elio Quiroga Rodriguez, of the Universidad del Atlántico Medio in Spain says that Drake probably didn’t take his line of thinking quite far enough.

He thinks that, in addition to all of that, we have to consider whether or not these aliens could be trapped due to the physical limitations of leaving.

Like, what if they live in liquid?

There are two additional possibilities to add to Drake’s list, according to Rodriguez.

First, if a planet was much longer than Earth, the aliens would need to be able to achieve super high velocities to escape their own gravity.

“If it’s too high, extraterrestrials would not be able to leave the planet using any conceivable amount of fuel, nor would a viable rocket structure withstand the pressures involved in the process, at least with the materials we know.”

Next, Rodriguez ponders “fishbowl worlds.”

“For such an underwater species, communication between individuals could be feasible without the need for communication devices. Such a civilization would not be ‘communicative’ and would not be contemplated in the Drake equation.”

The bottom line is that Rodriguez says to really consider why aliens haven’t reached out, we have to be able to take the limits off our imaginations.

There’s no reason to assume they’re anything like humans, or that they live on a planet anything on Earth.

So we have to try really hard to imagine their troubles, too.

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