Link to the science paper
Three main approaches are explored. First, special greenhouse-like membranes placed on Mars' surface could trap heat locally, helping with water collection and food growing near human bases. Second, giant mirrors in orbit could reflect more sunlight onto specific spots on Mars. Third, scientists could try releasing specially engineered particles into Mars' atmosphere to trap heat, similar to how greenhouse gases work on Earth.
Each method comes with real unknowns and risks that experiments — many doable on Earth first — would need to address. The biggest outside factor is whether rocket launch costs keep dropping, which would make sending materials to Mars much more affordable. The paper argues that even a modest investment in this research could keep open the possibility of one day expanding human life beyond Earth.
by Busy_Yesterday9455
31 Comments
It’s a cool concept! Definitely something to look at AFTER we cool Earth
Never gonna happen
Easier method. Mimic what happened on Earth:
Identify solid ice asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Strap some thrust vectoring rocket engines on a couple of hundreds of them.
Put them on a DIRECT collision path with Mars.
Mimic a “heavy bombardment” event on Mars.
It will be violent, with a lot of heat released in the process, a lot of water added in one go, an atmosphere created on the spot.
Practically after some decades or a century of non stop heavy bombardment, you will have a real Earth 2.0.
“Et voila” … you have a “working” planet with a warm atmosphere, plenty of liquid water and conditions similar to Earth’s environment, in “no time”.
The atmosphere of mars is 95% carbon dioxide, warming the planet is far from the only obstacle.
Marian regolith is also extremely sharp because the planet has not had oceans to grind down and smooth the stones and sand.
Scientists could always try seeding the planet with algae and cockroaches to terraform it
Mars doesn’t have a magnetosphere. Would any of this actually be feasible? Any atmosphere created would constantly be stripped away by solar winds, and inhabitants on the surface would experience far more solar energetic particles than on earth.
I know there’s some ideas around how to solve the magnetosphere problem, but they all seem much more advanced than the atmosphere issue.
I think we just need to accept we’re all going to die on this god forsaken planet and be done with it.
It’s a dead core… no dynamo, no life.
No magnetosphere. It’s not happening.
I heard we’re good at heating up planets
RED BLUE GREEN
Until and unless you can regenerate a magnetosphere, or some workable facsimile, then every bit of work you put into it will be promptly blasted into space by solar wind.
Let’s just fix Earth first. Everything else is just scifi so far.
oh yea i played that game, UFO:Afterlight, great story
Spoiler: its impossible
Start the reactor
Oh look! Hubris
Is Mars gravity strong enough to hold on to an atmosphere as thick as Earth’s?
You cannot terraform mars. It has no atmosphere because it has no magnetic field, because it has no magneto. The core stopped spinning a billion years ago.
No one and i mean no one is trying to terraform mars. It is impossible – unequivocally impossible
Maybe we figure out how to take care of our own planet before fucking up a second one.Â
This is cool and all, but mars doesn’t have an atmosphere. Why? Because mars doesn’t have a magnetic field. Why? Because mars’ core cooled down, and solidified, effectively killing the planet’s geological processes, killing the magnetic field that protects a planet from the sun.
What does this mean? Anything we try to bring there, or create there, will never stick. It will get continually blasted by the Sun and particle by particle, leeched away. Mars will never, and I do mean never, look like the photo on the right. There is no technology available neither current nor our wildest dreams capable of restarting the planet’s geological life. I kinda wish people would stop posting pictures like the one shown here, because it’s a fantasy. One that I’m confident will never become reality. Not in my lifetime, or my kids’ or many generations beyond.
I am all for dreaming, aiming big, accomplishing the impossible, humankind’s advancement technologically, culturally, etc. But what I’m not a fan of is giving people a false hope, false idea that what is shown in that picture could one day be possible, because it isn’t. Call me whatever you like, but I read the paper and it says a 250km2 sized reflector could warm the area of a city, but that the lack of atmosphere wouldn’t be able to convect that warmth. It may be possible to one day live in a biosphere there, but what is shown in the picture will never exist.
How about preserving earth first before “warming Mars”?
Leave Mars alone, it is like that “naturally” (depending what you believe in.
-Worry more about the planet we are on before the next one.
Don’t know how you are going to reheat the interior of the planet to make the martian mantle molten again to sustain a magnetic field necessary to protect the atmosphere from eroding away but okay.
Rotate this pic 180, will be a short timeline.
I think we already have a good reference of what will happen if humans make Mars a place to live and it’s not good (Total Recall 😛)
Bro we cant even fix our own planet…
Find an ice reactor inside a Cydonian mountain pyramid, turn it on, wait 15 minutes.
In all seriousness, if Mars does get terraformed resulting in what looks like a Pangaea-like land mass covering at least 50% of the planet’s surface, wouldn’t that result in a massive desert with just the coastal areas being green?
Mars cannot maintain an atmosphere because it lacks a magnetic field.
Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it’s cold as hell
Venus is a better candidate for terraforming. It can actually hold on to it’s atmosphere and has a molten core producing a magnetic field.