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What if you could live on Mars and not wear a spacesuit. Welcome to the world of terraforming!
Hey spacefarers, it's Trace! Thanks for watching DNews. Terraforming is the combination of
the latin terra -- or earth, and forming. Which… you probably know what forming means.
It describes the process of converting an alien planet to be more Earth-like. The idea
would be to make a planet able to support human life without a spacesuit. To actually
PERFORM the process could take decades or even centuries, assuming it would even be
possible.
Mars is the golden boy for terraformation. It's a good size, not too far from the sun,
and has a minor atmosphere, if a thin one. If you were to stand on Mars as you're dressed
now, at the equator, at midday, in the Martian summer -- it would be a warm 80 degrees (27
C), but that's about it for the win. In the winter, it can get to almost minus 200 (-128C)
at night. Not to mention, Mars has no atmospheric pressure to speak of, so your blood would
boil, your organs would rupture, and there's no oxygen so you wouldn't be able to breathe.
No bueno. Its near-vacuum atmosphere is mostly CO2 with a tiny bit of nitrogen. By contrast,
Earth is mainly nitrogen, a tiny bit of of CO2 and 20 percent oxygen. But all that aside,
let's assume terraforming is possible.
Getting down to brass tacks, what exactly do we need to do to terraform the Red Planet?
We need to cut UV, raise the temperature and pressure, introduce water and fix the atmosphere
to make it Earth-like.
There are three major theories on how to do this. Theory One: use orbiting mirrors the
size of Lake Michigan to reflect sunlight and heat the surface. Point these impossibly
large mirrors at the polar ice caps to melt them, releasing CO2 trapped in the ice. Thicker
atmosphere will hold in more heat from the sun. Then we just have to find some oxygen
and nitrogen, maybe by breaking up the H2O? Theory Two: use greenhouse-gas producing factories
to build an atmosphere. (Kid Trace thought of this too) We're already accidentally doing
it to Earth, so we know the technology exists! More greenhouse gas equals warmer planet,
polar ice caps melt, from there it's the same as One. Theory Three: smash icy comets into
Mars.
The last one is my favorite for two reasons, Theory One requires 200,000 pound mirrors
to be built in space. Nope. Theory Two requires us to build factories on Mars, which is ludicrously
expensive and WILL contaminate the Martian environment with human bacteria. It is ALL
OVER US ALL THE TIME. Once infected the bacteria could mutate and really screw up our planet
baby.
If you saw my recent video called, "Why Is There Air," you might remember that Earth
was hit by a bunch of icy comets, distributing water and minerals on our infant planet. The
impacts thickened the atmosphere and heated us up. If we can do this for Mars too, then
we can create a terraformed Mars without introducing potentially invasive bacteria onto the surface.
I love that. According to HowStuffWorks, one fantastically large asteroid impact could
raise the temperature on Mars by 3 Celsius. This would melt a trillion gallons of water,
thicken the atmosphere and have the added bonus of introducing oxygen too.
Of course, any atmospheric modifications we made to Mars would slowly spin off into space
thanks to the solar wind's erosion and low gravity. If done properly, metallic asteroids
could be mixed with our thrown comets… A 2008 study from University of Toronto theorizes
that's how the Martian core got a magnetosphere in the first place, it might be we just need
to restart it.
So, let's say we're able to travel to the asteroid belt, grab some giant space rocks,
fix little nuclear engines on them which propel them on a collision course with Mars. Then
what?
Then we introduce genetically engineered soil bacteria, algae, plants and other oxygen and
carbon dioxide cycle generating life to try to make the biosphere habitable, and eventually…
like centuries or millennia later -- we'd have a blue Mars. Assume we didn't screw it
up somehow, because there are no second chances.
In the end, if it worked, humans on Mars could stand outside and breathe the air, they'd
have less gravity to content with, so they'd have to figure that one out -- human bodies
don't do well with low gravity, and hopefully they'd have figured out how to avoid the GLOBAL
STORMS that come up sometimes during the Martian year. But hey, shrug, this is the future we're
talking about, maybe they'll be able to do anything?
Do you want to know more about terraforming? I know this was a big episode, so let me know
if you've still got questions and I'll do a follow up.
Thanks for watching DNews, fill up the comments section with your thoughts on terraforming
and controlling a whole planet. In the meantime, for more manageable control, why not just
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