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NASA Proposes Warming Mars
hotsauce writes "The Guardian reports a NASA scientist has proposed releasing a gas on Mars to start a global warming of the planet in order to make it more hospitable for life. No word on how much traction this has amongst geophysicists. I wonder how much simulation and testing you need before we feel safe about affecting an entire planet."
Shouldn't be that hard considering how good us humans are at causing global warming!
Ohh, just a few more decades and we'll have a viable test bed right here on earth.
BTW, Edgar Rice Burroughs would approve as the author of the John Carter of Mars series of books which talked about life on the Red Planet.
It's been speculated for many years to reproduce gas emissions on Mars as we do on this planet. The atmosphere was thicker on Mars then it is now; yet you have to go back to the problem that caused the atmosphere to thin in the first place. As it turns out, the core of the planet slowed down or event stop spinning causing the magnetic field to disappear.
Unless the core spins to shield the planet from the solar winds then anything done will only be temporary. The sun will simply blow off any thick atmosphere. Alas a pipe dream to teraform the whole planet unless you take some ideas from the movie Space Balls.
Maybe we could ship all of them to Mars? Well worth the cost if you ask me.
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With all that methane being generated, it should warm the place up quickly
We can't seem to get our outdated shuttles off the ground safely, or keep a permanent space staion running effectively. Is now a good time to tinker with another planet's atmosphere?
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
Its likely already a dead planet... we can use it to test these new processes. What's the worst that can happen? It gets deader? Can't prove any method that complex without actual trials, I would think.
Apparently none, since we are modifying the earth in bad ways every day. Having another planet we can live on sounds like a great idea to me, since this one is becoming less habitable every day.
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I guess NASA's scienticians have determined there is no life on Mars then? I can't see them killing Martian bacteria just for a little elbow room.
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Where the hell are we supposed to get that much of ANY gas?
How are we supposed to get it to stay there on Mars? If Mars could successfully hold an atmosphere, wouldn't it still have one? I was under the impression that Mars' low gravity and weak magnetic field allowed radiation to strip away any gases on Mars' surface.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~marscase/cfm/terrabib.ht ml contains references to nearly 100 books, articles, papers, etc., on terraforming.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Unless the core spins to shield the planet from the solar winds then anything done will only be temporary. The sun will simply blow off any thick atmosphere.
If you're willing to wait a few million years, sure.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Right, because we absolutely cannot risk damaging the delicate ecosystem on Mars, thereby rendering the planet inhospitable for human life!
Virgin soil = rock dust. Assuming there to be no life on Mars, I don't get what the problem is with altering it. Now naturally if there is life that's a whole can of worms in itself, but if not, then what damn difference does it make?
Why is NASA so gung-ho about going to mars so quickly? Why not return to the moon so we can learn how to sustain our peeps closer to home?
I sure hope Khan doesn't find out about this plan. Although, maybe if he does, we can send the dead scripts from Enterprise to the budding planet and resurrect a franchise ...
A Kim Stanley Robinson (SF writer) short story which he later expanded into 3 novels (Red/Green/Blue Mars).
Covers this is a believeable and seemingly plausible way...
One of my all-time favorite SF series, right next to the Gap Cycle by Stephen R. Donaldson and the original Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov.
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Get your Ass to Mars!
Well, you do not know if there's life unless and until you do research. What if you jump the gun and change Mars before you complete all research?
Furthermore, there is research that could reveal the genesis of our solar system, planet, or universe up there on Mars. We should preserve it until we are sure that we need the planet populated or that we have exhausted all scientific exploration of Mars.
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When Mankind can prove it can live in equilibrium oni Earth, then it can spread elsewhere.
Huh? That's suicidal. How about: until we prove we can live in equilibrium on a planet, we must spread elsewhere.
By the way, living on a planet for geolocially long periods of time will require geologic action, not misguided, pristine inaction.
Explain to me how STUDIES are irresponsible? It's not like they are on their way right now with their greenhouse gas factories.
What is irresponsible is not to think about it until it's too late.
I wonder how much simulation and testing you need before we feel safe about affecting an entire planet.
Yeah, because if we screw it up, we might turns mars into an inhospitable desert!
Oh wait.
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This exact debate was played out in the Red Mars Trilogy of books. One faction wanted to leave Mars in its "pristine" state, while another wanted to make it habitable by humans. An interesting read, to say the least.
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
I wonder how much simulation and testing you need before we feel safe about affecting an entire planet
It's funny how they're talking about radically changing another world but thing that astonished me the most was the proper use of "affected" instead of "effected" in a Slashdot post.
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This comment sounds very "insightful", but so does alot of philosophy. Real life progress is never as cut and dry, and if this thinking had its way, we'd never get anything done.
It ignores that fact there is no equilibrium on earth. It is constantly changing, and we are changing with it. It also assumes a tremendous value on "virgin soil" as if this one fact makes it better. And what is the value in waiting till we have mastered the earth to start looking at a completely different type of planet... this assumes the Earth data is going to apply to Mars somehow.
This reminds me of the people that say that humans changing the earth aren't natural, therefore it's bad. I always have to wonder what about humans aren't natural, because we are exactly like every other creature on the planet. We have absolutely no choice but to act in our nature. Somewhere along the lines someone decided that if it changes the environment too much, then it's not "natural". This argument isn't sound, or I'd argue that beavers building huge dams and creating gigantic ponds/lakes/starting small ecosystems themsleves aren't "natural".
Don't tell me now that beavers are ok because they look pretty natural doing it, but we as humans don't. Or, is it just us and the beavers now, screwing up the Earth for the whales?
I wonder what point in human evolution we became "unnatural"; Was it the whole opposable thumb thing? Tools? Fire? The wheel? The premiere of "American Idol"? The fact is, all of it is natural, just not "woodsy" like wildlife lovers would like you to believe everything should be.
But back to Mars; Sure, there might be something we could do with the soil on Mars that we can't get back if we make it habitable. On the flip side of that, what good is it if we really can't get to it for any meaningful amount of time?
There's a balance between preserving samples so that they can be observed, and entering the environment and effecting it so that one can utilize the resources.
Fact is there's going to be a balance... we're going to try things, and we'll not always be right, but we'll make progress and learn, and the "naturalist" will tell you it's never time to move forward. The guys at NASA aren't stupid, there will be alot of baby steps and testing before they decide to try anything.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
A much more difficult task than terraforming Mars, conceptually, is terraforming Venus.
Sci-fi authors have often implemented plot devices such as impacting ice-laden comets or moons into Venus to cool it, supply water, and spin it up; however this is fundamentally flawed, as the problem the amount of CO2. Furthermore, impacting a comet or moon will impart more energy than it would soak up. Now, perhaps with a large enough impact you could blast away part of Venus's atmosphere; however, this would need to be a very significant impact. Hypothetically, a large near-impacting body that skims Venus's atmosphere repeatedly might be able to take some atmosphere with it on each pass; however, it seems unlikely that you could ablate enough atmosphere in this manner while using a body small enough to control.
Sagan proposed the use of microbes in the atmosphere to absorb the CO2 and precipitate it out, but this suffers from one big fundamental problem: life as we know it requires CHONP, and there's no significant quantities of phosphorus in Venus's atmosphere. Perhaps a simpler form of "life" or nanomachine - even if not self-replicating, but simply mass produced on Earth - could use solar energy to convert CO2 to solid compounds.
In theory, if Venus could be driven into a very elliptical orbit (causing close passes to the sun), the sun would blow off most of its atmosphere. Or, if Venus could be given an extremely fast rate of rotation, the atmosphere could be made to expand to the point where the solar wind can blow it off easily. However, apart from the length of time for the sun to remove the atmosphere, both of these require imparting incredible amounts of energy to the planet.
Another concept has been to use gigantic sunshades to block sunlight approaching the planet; however, planet-sized shades seem a bit far-fetched to build. An alternative that I've seen would be to use gigantic mirrors to focus solar energy on a small part of the upper atmosphere and use the light pressure to encourage particles to reach escape velocity; whether or not this is realistic, I don't know.
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Insightful?
Terraforming Mars at the most optimistic will take centuries. During those centuries we'll have plenty of time to study Mars before there is any noticeable change. I submit that creating an ecosystem on a sterile planet, or one that harbours no multi-cellular life, as seems probable, is not polluting. In this case, the greenhouse would be literal: creating a warm hospitable environment to encourage life.
Uh, and the risk would be what? That Mars would become uninhabitable?
This should be a raving success. I mean, look at how successful we are at warming up the Earth!
Troll? Hell yeah!
If we mess up, then we'll have learned a lesson which can be used next time. There's no way to learn how to go about messing with a planet's atmosphere without... messing with the atmosphere! Think ahead: If we can't live there when we need it, we can always mine it for resources.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
"It's a virgin soil and it has to remain so : we have to much to learn about it instead of polluting it : When Mankind can prove it can live in equilibrium oni Earth, then it can spread elsewhere."
Who's to say that (evolution --or-- our maker, depending on your beliefs) didn't intend for us to do exactly that? I mean, think about it: While we're stuck on Earth, we are one nuclear war or asteroidal impact away from extinction. How do we know that we weren't (made --or-- evolved) for the purpose of having the intelligence we needed to eventually spread our civilization out to other planets? I mean, if we lived in equilibrium, why would we ever leave the planet? If we leave the planet, we could spread our influence out in a few directions, and possibly even exist to the end of time.
You've gotta think about the bigger picture, here. You cannot assume we have an infinite time available on Earth to do our basic living.
"Derp de derp."
There is no life-ending catastrophe even on the most distant horizon.
Well that's clearly false, for a start. What about the death of the sun? Or of the universe?
More importantly, what about the uncertainties? Like nuclear war? Worldwide plague? Asteroid strike?
The fact is, Earth is a single point of failure for the human race, and we can't predict when it will fail or what will cause the failure. The only safe solution is redundancy. Terraforming Mars is the only remotely feasible option in the near future.
Of course this is going to raise the pro- vs. anti-development arguments to try to claim we should do such-and-such for the good of mankind and animals and plants and life, or not do it.
But, like genetic engineering, it is inevitable: humans will become increasingly engineered on the genetic level, that the living space of man will expand to every corner of the earth and beyond..this is our destiny.
But politics will control WHICH humans will do it, who will be the perfect beings, who will conquer Mars, and at what point will a war with Earth break out?
Being anti-genetic engineering or anti-Mars-colonization is like being anti-gun or anti-drug: forces bound to lose because of the great advantages that a sole user of the technology will have, and their power as a group will be unstoppable, whether they are an organized force or not.
I'd really like to expound on this and probably correct some of my wording, but Slashdot isn't generally a place for well-though-out arguments.
I'd settle for replacement by a species that can draft coherent sentences.
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As seems to be increasingly the case, I already submitted (rejected) variants of this story twice over the past week. I've pasted one of those variants below, which has links to sources far more information than the freakin' Guardian:
Greenhouse gases could breathe life into Mars
MSNBC, New Scientist and PhysOrg report on research by Margarita Marinova and others on using synthetic greenhouse gases to warm the Martian atmosphere and create the conditions for life to thrive. The study focused on fluorine-based gases (dubbed "super-greenhouse gases"), which would be non-toxic, nearly 10,000 times as effective at capturing heat as CO2, and could be made from Martian resources. The research concluded that adding 300 parts per million of these gases would lead to a feedback effect by unfreezing CO2 and water on the surface. According to Marinova, 'Since warming Mars effectively reverts it to its past, more habitable state, this would give any possibly dormant life on Mars the chance to be revived and develop further.' The feasibility and consequences of such terraforming have been debated in the past.
Also, note that contrary to the accepted submission's title, NASA hasn't done any sort of proposal of actually doing this. This is simply cool research exploring a very interesting "What-if".
At a given temperature, a gas has a certain pressure and root mean speed (norm of velocity from its kinetic energy). (A bit of calculation can show it to be (3kT/m)^(1/2), where k is Boltzmann's constant, T is temp in Kelvin, and m the gas molecule's mass.)
If the root mean square of the gas is comparable to the escape velocity (2GM/R)^(1/2), the the majority of the gas will only stick around for a few days (if v_{esc} / v_{rms} is around 1), or maybe a few years. In fact, for the majority of the gas to be retained by the planet for several billion years, we need v_{esc} / v_{rms} around 10 or more.
It turns out that v_{esc} / v_{rms} for Mars for most gases is too low. Water, ammonia, and methane, as well as helium and hydrogen are too light to be retained for long. (Although it turns out that water is just a bit too light, so it might stick around for thousands or millions or years.) However, it does appear oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide might be just heavy enough to be retained.
This means that if there had ever been a significant amount of liquid water on Mars, it would not have stuck around long. CO2, and O2, on the other hand, have a shot. (So I guess we could design a breathable atmosphere, but water would be a problem.)
Interestingly enough, these figures change (for the worse) if temperature increases on Mars (increases the kinetic energy of the gases), so making Mars more hospitable, temperature-wise, may make it less long-term hospitable, desirable molecule-wise.
I got a lot of this info from my undergrad astronomy/astrophysics text: Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics, 4th ed, by Zeilik and Gregory. -- Paul
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We can make Mars like Earth when we're done making Earth like Venus.
Let's try to focus here, people.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Did you at least read the article? The slashdot writeup was sensationally misleading, as usual. Actually, here's some more info on the project, more than is in the Guardian link.
Basically, it is NOT a proposal to warm Mars, it's a study exploring various ways that Mars COULD be heated, and how long such methods would take (conducted by an undergrad student at U. Mass). And they even acknowledge in that link that it would be significantly well into the future before any decision would every be implemented to try warming Mars, and at that point the method of using PFC's would probably be archaic compared to future technology.
So keep your pantyhose on, NASA isn't trying to warm Mars, it's just a study. And in all likelihood it was an offshoot of various studies of global warming on Earth, in which case doing more planetary models of effects of PFCs, among others, would be a good thing!
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In other news, shares of automakers flew through the roof today as speculators pointed to the need for tens of millions of automobiles that will need to be left idling for a week to trigger this. Contruction on the 6-lane highway that the cars will be parked on has begun this week, complete with toll booths and signs for Jersey City exits.
Scientists are positive that the past 100 years of atmospheric modeling on US roads has produced the most effective greenhouse booster possible.
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We, humans, are the first species on Earth capable of spreading our biosphere into space. It is not alarmist to say that continent and planet cleansing events happen on a periodic basis. The recent tsunami and asteroid 2004MN's ever-changing error ellipse are evidence of dynamic, destructive processes that affect both humanity and the larger biosphere. It is our duty, as the first space-goers, to create bio-redundancy, to explore and develop.
A project as large as terraforming Mars (or an asteroid) by it's very nature will require massive biological systems for completion. I predict that living creatures will be adapted both to vaccuum and various atmospheres, if we don't find life already there - giant tree cities on comets, kelp ponds in Mars craters, post-human cyborgs, etc.
Creating new biospheres and offworld industries will greatly improve both standards of living and our ecological footprint on Earth. Enough colonization will mean the ability to protect the home world better. Making Mars bloom is our duty and destiny.
Support private spaceflight, it's the only way this can happen. And fire up the florine pumps. 8)
Josh
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