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Scientist Calls Mars a Terraforming Target
Raver32 writes "Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
How best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary face lift of Mars — a technique called "terraforming" — has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Lowell presented his eye-opening Mars manifesto at Flight School, held here June 20-22 at the Aspen Institute, laying out a scientific plan to "experiment on a planet we're not living on.""
These guys obviously haven't seen Total Recall.
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Nope, haven't RTFA, but Kim Stanley Robinson laid out what at least one NASA guy has said was more or less a roadmap to terraforming Mars.
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actually, it'd probably start out with photosynthetic bacteria, or plants that not need to be "planted", so much as just allow their seeds sit on the soil for a while.
Still, the article is written by a physicist, I'd rather see a biologists perspective on this one, involving life and all.
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Jeepers, what is this foreign concept called "terraforming" [that's been discussed for at least 50 years] - I'll try looking for information on this new resource called the Inter-Net and report my findings as soon as possible.
Wish me luck.
I always wondered if terraforming could just be done my massive planting of hardy fauna. A ton of trees (like a rainforest), should drastically change even weather patterns...I always thought that it would be an interesting experiment for a lander to plant - and tend - some cacti or something and see what would happen over time.
I do think that the time span is a bit idealistic, and doesn't account for the Law of Unintended Consequences, but the idea is sound.
Mars doesn't have a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. Mars doesn't have an anything-rich atmosphere. Yes, what atmosphere Mars has is mostly CO2, but what atmosphere Mars has is actually a pretty decent approximation of vacuum; the thickest parts of it are barely 1% of typical atmospheric pressure on earth.
The whole article doesn't actually include any specifics, it's just handwaving of the "and then a miracle occurs" sort:
Right. We'll get right on that. We only have 93 years to go, according to this article.
This is an interesting question for property rights theorists. Many people adhere to some sort of Lockean view that by modifying this untouched land, the terraforming organization then owns all of Mars. But then some would say it's a sort of "common heritage" that can't be so privatized. It's also extremely difficult to just terraform "one part" of Mars. (Imagine keeping one part at 1 atm and the rest at Mars's regular atmospheric pressure.)
Regardless, anyone who goes through the expense of terraforming Mars, even a government, is going to want some assurance that the rest of humanity won't leech off their work.
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First, Mars does not have a magnetosphere. This helps fend off the worst of the cosmic radiation here on Earth. What does he propose to replace it? The article is light on the details. Second, isn't the understanding still that Mars has insufficient gravity to preserve its atmosphere and so the solar wind strips the atoms and molecules right off the top, thus explaining the low pressure we see today? How do you counter that?
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If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
If that's so easy, then I expect they'll be applying the same principles on Earth. No need to worry about global warming at home then?
It is not technology, nor money, he said, the pacing ingredient is marshaled will.
Obviously this "Marshaled will" stuff must be the key ingredient that he's discovered. Just a pinch of that and planets magically become habitable.
So we are hesitant to raise the temperature of our own planet, but its the first thing we want to do to the new one!
Only when the political will to do so is required, say population explosion is causing massive food/energy shortages will something like this possibly be considered.
It costs huge amounts of money to send every kilogram to orbit let alone Mars. If they do get Mars to a colonizable state anytime soon they won't be sending millions of Average Joe's to live there anytime soon.
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Why Mars? Why not Antarctic glaciers, Gobi desert, Kazakh wastelands, Belarus swamps and Alaskan tundra? Hey, the good old Earth has places that model the conditions of pretty much every planet you can imagine [hazardous included], except perhaps gas giants. Now, where do I go to have the illusion of being on the ancient Foth of Avalars...
I was wondering the other day if Mars soil had the nutrients in it to support our plantlife.
Anyone know of any botany research on the subject? I know we analyzed a few samples of Mars soil in the 70s.
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1. a century? maybe 500-1,000 years, even with a massive economic and political commitment and AFTER the miraculous technological breakthroughs
2. why does venus get such short thrift? i'm thinking along the lines of energy investment and simple entropy: in my mind, to precipitate matter out of an atmosphere, and to dissipate heat, seems to be an easier task than accumulating atmospheric mass and stoking atmospheric heat. yes, even with runaway, geometric catalyst-driven processes, i think it is easier to destroy than it is to create. of course, to do this to venus will be excedingly difficult. but why do you think mars would be easier?
but we should terraform mars and venus as soon as we can, regardless
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why don't we "terraform" the Sahara desert, the Gobi desert, Antarctica, and the various dust bowls around the world before trying to tackle Mars.
Right now, we can't even keep existing, fertile land from turning into desert right here on earth, with plenty of water and air around.
Mars will NEVER be habitable.
We'd have to find a way to get its dead core molten and spinning again. Otherwise solar radiation will just flay off any atmosphere we try to put there.
Maybe we could live on Mars in domes or sealed caves but I doubt we'll ever be walking about in the open on its surface.
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trace the evolution of the hudson bay company into modern canada: i don't see the mass of canadian citizens as serfs of a corporation. the colonizaiton of mars under corporate provenance would probably have a similar uncontroversial and mundane development arc. in fact, any such corporate colonization of mars under government oversight would probably consult a historical study of the hudson bay company directly as a model for potential pitfalls to avoid
i'm sorry, but in reailty, the balance between individual rights and corporate provenance isn't so difficult or immobile. there is no massive conflicts, and the hudson bay company still exists today: what was once the corporate master of much of north america is now simply a department store. but of course, you read most science fiction, or talk to a paranoid schizophrenic, or even consult certain lowest common denominator youth subcultures, and you get the impression that corporations are these unstoppable sociopathic vampires out to turn you into an unthinking slave. hardly. reality is just not that interesting, sorry
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
anaerobic bacteria, the kinds of things that are used to living in very hostile environments.
I'm more curious about where they expect to get the water. Sure, there may be a lot of it around, but the vapor pressure is going to be so low it would be very hard for bacteria to keep their water inside and not just instantly dry up.
Pity that Saturn's rings turned out to be dust instead of ice bergs. I keep thinking about that old Isaac Asimov story...
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Terraforming Mars is neither necessary nor desirable. Within perhaps 50 years we could easily have human-level AI and advanced robotics. Such robots could be designed for the Martian environment as it exists now. It will prove much easier to adapt our descendants -- our mind children -- to Mars (and many other environments that are hostile to humans) than it would ever be to adapt Mars to us.
In fact, the more optimistic transhumanists would tend to assume that people alive today may see a time when they can upload or upgrade into an advanced robotic form themselves -- so it wouldn't even necessarily be our remote sort-of-descendants who colonize Mars, it could be us, suitably transformed.
Conventional wisdom is that Mars will be explored by robots, then colonized by humans. I turn that idea on it's head. Humans will explore Mars -- today's robotic probes are too crude and limited, so that a single manned expedition could do scientific work that would take decades, maybe centuries, with robots. The other side of that coin is that 50-100 years from now humans will become obsolete for space travel and colonization. The people who actually live on Mars and build a society there will be synthetic people, not homo sapiens.
The question is why should we mess up Mars, we're just barely starting on the road to fix the damage we've done to our own planet.
Yes, I'd hate to ruin all that prinstine forest over there on the red planet.
I couldn't care less about "ruining" currently lifeless worlds. Even if we found something similar to bacteria I wouldn't care if we went in there and "ruined" it by putting life on the same planet.
Only worlds like Europa where there's a least the potential for some multi-cellular life as we know it would I proceed with caution.
Life is special and we should put it everywhere we can. While potentially we might be messing with some Martian nano-scale bacteria and the like, the risks are far outweighed by the gains.
Oh, and as far as "ruining" Earth goes. We are a product of the Earth. Humans are natural. We're life and evolved from the same process that gave us sharks and walnuts and horses. We're probably Earth's most precious resource because we're the lone form of life that can get to other planets, that can spread out beyond Earth. The Earth is far from ruined, it still supports trillons and trillons of individual life forms. And one form of life, us, is just getting capable of one of the greatest achievements possible. Spreading life out beyond the planet it formed on.
"Scientist Calls Mars a Terrorism Target"
Are you guys kidding me? You talk about terraforming as if it's just another trick we have in our arsenal, which it isn't. But, the technology aside, there are other issues that will trump that. For example, what about the militant lobby of folks who will undoubtedly make this into 'the evil humans rushing out to screw up another planet after they can't even keep a grip on their own?' You think Eco Terrorism is bad now, wait until someone starts moralizing on the idea of just commandeering a whole planet for experimental purposes. I personally think that it's as good of a laboratory as any, but I really think this would make the alarmist triply so. Think about it, what about property rights, mineral rights, and political philosophy, the interaction of religious idiots, and the mass media distortion... It's all just a huge cluster fsck waiting to happen, which is why I think it will never happen. I'd hope it does, but I don't see anything able to surmount those socio-political issues any time in the next couple of centuries, let alone the next 93 years.
Speak for yourself.
We're not even counting the gravity well penalties of getting back and forth that'll be present, at least within the next 100 years.
Personally, I prefer what Parent is suggesting - let's concentrate (for now) on putting large orbital colonies in nearby space within this century, plus a couple on the moon (where the gravity isn't so much of a hassle).
We can explore Mars in the interim, and once we manage to overcome gravity easily enough later, then we can start parking folks there in large numbers.
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I thought one of the reasons Mars' atmosphere is so thin is thought to be due to it having a much weaker magnetosphere than Earth? (People who know better than me, please chime in.) The idea being that a gaseous atmosphere can be somewhat "blown away" by the solar wind without the protection of a planetary magnetic field.
And isn't it also thought that in the past it may have had a stronger magnetosphere that could attribute for it having once had a thicker, more moist atmosphere in the past more like Earth's?
I watch Nova when I'm half asleep, so I may have dreamt all of this...
But assuming anything I just said is right to some degree, how does terraforming take it into account? Would it be all for naught if the solar wind comes and blows it all into space?
... by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the
This is the point at which I stopped reading TFA.
A physicist talking about chemistry and biology, and a retiree talking about how easy/cheap/fast/simple it would be for you young people to do, if you only had the kind of vision we had back in the day.
Sorry, I've known too many physicists. (and too many retirees...)
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I'm all for eventually terraforming Mars once we've determined that there's no existing life there, but to do so before then would be a scientific loss on an unimaginable scale.
Given that we're still discovering new species (microscopic ones by the gazillion, and still finding occasional large ones too) on earth, despite a huge exploratory effort that's been underway for hundreds of years, I think it's a bit early (massive understament) to think we've determined that mars is lacking any life at all
I believe the real problem isn't the climate, or the high carbon dioxide atmosphere; the real problem is that Mars's atmosphere is very low density. The air pressure in Mars (less than 1% of that on Earth according to Wikipedia) won't be sufficient for us earthlings to breathe comfortably if at all.
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What's that old line? Something like "why are we all into terraforming other worlds while we're busy venusforming earth?"
I love the idea of massive engineering projects making useful changes, but also understand that there is going to be a HUGE heap of the law of unintended consequences because these systems are so difficult to model accurately.
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Have these scientists forgot that Mars has almost no magnetic field and atmosphere?
The magnetic field of a planet protects the atmosphere and surface from radiation sent off by the sun. Without this, tremendous amounts of radiation reach the planet's atmosphere and surface. If we were to rebuild the atmosphere, we would find that we just wasted our time, because there is no magnetic field to deflect any incoming radiation. The effects of the sun would essentially knock the new atmosphere off the planet and into space.
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I'm just wondering that if we REDUCE the CO2 in the atmosphere on Mars, how's that going to make the temperature go UP? Isn't CO2 the deadly greenhouse gas we all know and love?
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The magnetosphere is the magnetic field generated by the planet. It essentially creates a shield around the planet that protects it from various kinds of solar radiation and the ill effects caused by said radiation.
Mars is, on a planetary scale,.... dead. There is no longer a mechanism within the planet itself to generate the magnetic field needed to protect the atmosphere (even if we could create one).
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I'm sure that something will develop that we just can't see yet. We've never terraformed a planet before so we're just going off on computer models which are never 100% accurate.
Just say that we send a rocket ship that spews spores or whatever photosynthetic organism. There is a 70% survival rate, they get situated, some martian monsoon rips up a path and sends it up in the upper atmosphere where it rides the current for half a year where it mixes with some native vegetation and grows gangbusters. Density increases within 40 years - not part of the original model.
Mars will never be habitable for us earthlings to live comfortably. Our bone density would suffer too with a year long round trip and 6 month minimum stay, that's 18 months away from Earth's gravity. Not too good for our health but we're smart enough to figure out a solution.
Lets terraform that sucker and see what develops.
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This guy's the limit!
While certain varieties of FLORA may be able to survive in a CO2 atmosphere at near vacuum, the FAUNA would find it a tad more difficult.
Not necessarily. We would just have to make the atmosphere reflect back more heat that bounces off of the surface. Kind of like what we're doing on Earth with greenhouse gases.
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First, the dry ice comments are out past saturn. But if you are going out there, then skip the CO2. Instead, go to ammonia. It is FAR better of a greenhouse gas. In addition, it breaks down to N2; simple nitrogen gas which is our buffer gas. In addition, is is through that the majority of ammonia asteroids contain a fair amount of water. The last thing Mars needs is more CO2.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Water vapor is much better at trapping infrared than CO2 is.
Don't tell the folks making hydrogen fuel cells.
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Its perfect.
Every belch from a power plant or a factory will actually be doing some good.
No pollution controls required.
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Earth: 78% nitrogen
Mars: 3% nitrogen
Whether or not you can change the CO2 for oxygen is irrelevant if you can't magic up a lot of nitrogen. And remember you're talking about replacing most of a planet's atmosphere with a different element altogether. Its not feasible on a century scale.
So what do you do with it? 95% CO2 on mars, you could put some plants there (they don't seem to need the nitrogen, at least for photosynthesis). But that will only get you the O2 and create a sink for water (which is scarce as is). You might be able to mine the nitrogen there and blow it into the atmosphere, but is there enough? I'm very skeptical, you'd need millions of millions of tons.
Honestly the best plan for using mars for living is to plant some crap outside (but trap the O2 it makes) and live in contained environments. Short of either a)mining nitrogen or b)using fission to make it, it is likely that there's not going to be enough to make "air." We need to establish a presence and figure out if the ingredients are there to do the job, not brag that "it can be done soon!" without even having been there.
Well, our bone density would suffer from the perspective of living on Earth, but it would be fine if you never planned to return and just live on Mars permanently.
Mars does not have enough mass to hold an Earth-like atmosphere (Nitrogen and Oxygen mostly) that has enough energy (warm enough) with enough pressure to sustain Earth-like life.
If we took the atmosphere as it is on this planet and actually brought it to Mars, it would have been gone from that planet in the matter of weeks, most of free N and O2 at the molecule speeds that we see on Earth would just jump out of the Mars gravitaty well, and it would happen extremely fast.
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There is likely enough gases trapped internally to Mars to create the atmosphere we would need. Mars no longer has plate techtonic movement like Earth, which on Earth gets the gases we need back out to the atmosphere. To get some action, probably not full plate techtonics, but at least enough to release those gases we already have an example of what is needed by the way the Earth gets its gases, via stress from the moon. We need to farm comets and other mass to impact with Mars moon until we increase its mass enough to disturb Mars internally, releasing those gases. It shouldn't be to difficult to model in the next 50 years directing bodies in to that moon and the model of how much stress would be needed.
... getting high speed internet there. Damn, those packets are sure taking a long time.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I wonder how much this guy gets paid to come up with ideas that are really just a slight improvement on some other guys ideas that were inspired by some other guy who read a book that said there were canals on Mars.
Mars is a dry, cold, ugly gravity well. We live on a wet, warm, beautiful gravity well. I think it is a waste of resources, energy and time to escape our gravity well for a less hospitable gravity well. We are better off learning to live in space, which is probably going to be necessary for any Mars terraforming. We should also start cataloging what is already in space, another thing that might be usefull for the greening of Mars. The next step is to turn those resources not at the bottom of a gravity well into self-supporting machinery.
Once we can do those three things, we will probably realize that we don't need a gravity well to be happy. Then, it's wagon train to the stars time, which we can all agree is a good thing.
Here's a "kids" page, that addresses the magnetic field of Mars (and Venus). As Venus also has very little magnetic field, perhaps I'm wrong about that whole stripping thing. This site seems to be saying that it's a combination of Mars' low gravity and weak magnetic field. Keep in mind that Titan (with its weak gravity) also has an atmosphere. OTOH, Mercury with a very strong magnetic field does not have an atmosphere. Just some rambling thoughts.
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Let's just toss Oprah Winfrey, and Martha Stewart on a one-way ship, and let them terraform the planet. Sure, me may not actually want to live on a planet designed by two self-righteous, kazillionairres. But the only thing we risk to lose are a couple of crappy TV shows.
If they want to send Rosie O'Donnell, and Donald Trump, then we actually are starting to make a positive shift in Earth's environment.
Now, if we could only ship off those ladies from 'the View'...
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There are quite a few posts following yours that mention the pressure and temperature differences..
In reality, I'm sure we'll be theorizing forever, and never just try something.
There are serious considerations to if we really SHOULD terraform another planet. The obvious is, we've done a beautiful job maintaining the one we're on now, should we mess up another?
Mars is quite likely rich with artifacts that we haven't even begun to discover. We've explored what, maybe one square mile. Sure, we have satellite imagery, and can see that there are mountains, maybe old river beds and lakes, but we barely have a clue of what we can see. There are traces of methane, which we haven't really found the source for. Theorized, sure, but not positively identified a source. If we actually manage to terraform the planet, there will be plant material across most of the surface, along with large water masses. These easily accessable areas now would be completely unaccessable.
The idea of terraforming might work. From everything I've read, we're not approaching the idea quite correctly though. We'll introduce quantities of select plant material? We'll put massive greenhouse gas manufacturing facilities. We'll blow a few nukes to stir things up?
The way I see it, it would make a lot of sense to not introduce one or two basic organisms (algae? bacteria?) but to introduce a LOT. Literally have multiple entry vehicles scatter spores and seeds for a whole variety of vegetation across a huge area. We have observed what appears to be water. That may be a good place, but maybe it's not. If we scatter seed for virtually every plant material across the surface, maybe something will grow. If it can grow and thrive, it will spread on it's own. At very least, if it spreads a little on it's own, we can send more.
Plenty of people have mentioned the temperature and pressure consideration. I believe that will come with increasing the density and humidity of the atmosphere. If there is detectable water occasionally on the surface, and moist ground just under the surface, drawing that water to the surface through any sort of root bearing plant would humidify the atmosphere. Humid air is heavier than dry air. Dense air and cloud cover create an insulating blanket to trap heat from the sun.
The atmosphere won't change in a day or even the first year, but it will change. If the plants thrive like they could, it could be less than 10 years before there are notable cloud formations. The key would be finding plants that are willing to accept the extremely different environment. If we drop say seed and spore for every species of plant on the Earth there, what if only 0.01% start growing. That proves something could make it.
With a whole lot of evaluation, the odds could be increased, but I believe there would be a whole lot of surprises in the real environment.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Actually, although terraforming is not really feasable, venus is actually a very attractive place to build a colony. Although the surface of the planet is quite inhospitable, at cloud top level conditions are extremely well suited for earth life. In addition, breathable air is a lifting gas, so your colony naturally floats on the cloudtops and solar energy is very abundant.
e nus/VenusColony_STAIF03.pdf
http://powerweb.grc.nasa.gov/pvsee/publications/v
http://notanumber.net/