What if we nuked mars?
I know it seems like a question from far out of left field, but Elon Musk, head of Tesla
as well as SpaceX, said in 2015 that nuking mars with thermonuclear weapons would be a
great way to heat up the planet so humans could live on it.
But would this actually work?
And what are the implications?
Hello and welcome back to lifes biggest questions, I’m charlotte dobre, don’t forget to like
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Humans are likely going to set foot on mars in our life time, but the average temperature
on the planet is equivalent to antartica in the winter.
That is cold as hell.
Have you been to antartica in the wintertime?
My guess is probably not.
Well just so you know, antartica experiences an average temperature of -49 degrees Celsius
or – 56.2 Farenheit in the winter.
So living on mars would be extremely difficult.
Every time you went outside, it would be a mission.
That being said, humans are probably going to destroy earth in one way or another, so
maybe at some point we ARE going to have to pack our bags and make mars our home.
So what’s the solution?
Well…you could always warm mars up by a process called terraforming.
That’s according to Brian Toon, professor of atmospheric and ocean sciences at the university
of Colorado.
He co-wrote a paper in 1991 on how to make mars habitable.
One of those ways is, using thermonuclear weapons.
If we nuked mars with thermonuclear weapons, it would basically cause climate change.
But if we wanted to nuke mars, we cant just nuke the surface, that would drastically affect
the terrain on the red planet.
What Elon musk proposes is that you could nuke the sky over the poles of the planet,
every couple of seconds with fusion bombs.
What this would do, is somewhat create two makeshift blinking suns over the two coldest
parts of mars.
Our sun is basically one gigantic fusion explosion.
What this would do is inevitably warm up mars.
Any frozen carbon dioxide on in the poles would be unlocked and would convert into a
gas.
You probably know this already because our own planet has a CO2 problem, but CO2 is a
greenhouse gas that traps heat.
If theres enough CO2 in the atmosphere, that would trap the heat on the surface of mars,
causing it to warm up.
In addition to that, any locked up water on mars would end up In the atmosphere as well.
Right now, the polar ice caps on mars contain equal parts carbon dioxide and water.
Once the atmosphere becomes thick enough, the greenhouse effect would occur.
For a refresher, the greenhouse effect works like this.
Energy from the su is absorbed by the planet, and is then released as infrared radiation.
That radiation becomes trapped because of the thick atmosphere.
Gradually, the planet would warm up, eventually so that liquid water could exit.
Where theres liquid water, there can be microorganisms.
It is a possibility that there are already microorganizms on mars that could begin to
reproduce once mars warms up.
It would also take a while for plants to be able to grow on mars since theres a lot of
carbon dioxide.
Plants would have to flourish on the surface to create the oxygen needed for animals.
So you’re probably thinking, come on, nuking a planet?
There has to be some downsides to that.
Well, modern thermonuclear weapons are designed to have very little fallout.
If we were to nuke mars’s poles, we would have to do it for decades upon decades.
By the time the greenhouse effect kicks in, you’re looking at centuries later.
Like ten centuries.
The nuclear fallout probably wouldn’t remain.
There are however other downsides.
For example.
Dropping nuclear bombs on mars could backfire.
If clouds began to form on mars, it could actually cool down the planet, and make it
more damp.
They could end up hitting the surface and destroy mars’ terrain, and again, create
radiation that could kill any martian life that could already exist there.
Even if its just bacteria, imagine destroying the only life form that exists out there in
the universe.
In addition, In order to nuke mars, you would need a lot of weapons that are way more powerful
than the most powerful nuclear weapon we have, the tsar bomba with a yield of 25 megatons
of tnt.
Even if we did nuke mars, its unlikely it would warm up to be as warm and habitable
as earth.
Maybe something would happen that scientists haven’t thought of.
I mean…its not like anyones ever nuked the poles of a planet before, how could we predict
what would happen?
Even computer simulations have difficulty predicting what would happen.
In case you are wondering, Nasa had a response to musks idea, they said in a statement that
they were commited to promoting exploration of the solar system in a way that protects
explored environments as they exist in their natural state.
So it seems like nuking mars would be pretty much out of the question…for now.
I’m charlotte dobre, and you’ve been watching lifes biggest questions.
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