Could People Turn Mars into Another Earth?
{Turn Mars into Another Earth – There’s some good stuff on The Conversation website. This is pure fantasy, but it demonstrates just how precious is our world. You know the one. The one we don’t look after. Its more likely we are going to turn Earth into another Mars – Earth and Leaf editorial}
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Could people turn Mars into another Earth?
A partial checklist: Food, water, shelter, air
After the Moon, the next logical place for humans to live beyond Earth is Mars.
But is it possible to terraform Mars – that is, transform it to resemble the Earth and support life? Or is that just the musings of science fiction?
To live on Mars, humans will need liquid water, food, shelter and an atmosphere with enough oxygen to breathe and thick enough to retain heat and protect against radiation from the Sun.
But the Martian atmosphere is almost all carbon dioxide, with virtually no oxygen. And it’s very thin – only about 1% as dense as the Earth’s.
The less dense an atmosphere, the less heat it can hold on to. Earth’s atmosphere is thick enough to retain enough heat to sustain life by what’s known as the greenhouse effect.
But on Mars, the atmosphere is so slight that the nighttime temperature drops routinely to 150 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-101 degrees Celsius).
So what’s the best way to give Mars an atmosphere?
Although Mars has no active volcanoes now – at least as far as we know – scientists could trigger volcanic eruptions via nuclear explosions. The gases trapped deep in a volcano would be released and then drift into the atmosphere. But that scheme is a bit harebrained, because the explosions would also introduce deadly radioactive material into the air.
A better idea: Redirecting water-rich comets and asteroids to crash into Mars. That too would release gases from below the planet’s surface into the atmosphere while also releasing the water found in the comets. NASA has already demonstrated that it is possible to redirect asteroids – but relatively large ones, and lots of them, are needed to make a difference.
{Should we take this proposal to turn Mars into another Earth seriously, No!}