According to a report from Space.com, research has shown that super-Earths — also known as bigger versions of Earth — are more likely to host life than similar-sized planets due to their greater gravitational pulls.

Super-Earths have also been spotted in habitable zones where temperatures could theoretically support water and similar life as Earth's.

Specifically, space travel from these super-Earths is much more challenging due to their higher surface gravity, since fuel mass would have to be that much greater as well.

"Civilizations from super-Earths are much less likely to explore the stars," Michael Hippke, study author and independent researcher affiliated with the Sonneberg Observatory in Germany, explains to Space.com.

"Instead, they would be to some extent arrested on their home planet and, for example, make more use of lasers or radio telescopes for interstellar communication instead of sending probes or spaceships."

A report on NBC News by Seth Shostak, a SETI Institute senior astronomer, acknowledges the greater challenge it would take to leave a super-Earth, but says it's not as insurmountable as Hippke's study makes it seem.

Shostak also points out that the bigger mass of a super-Earth offers some advantages, including a thicker atmosphere that could make aviation development faster as well as a greater potential in natural resources and animal diversity.