Greenhouse effect could make Mars livable

The new research suggests that forcing global warming by injecting greenhouse gases may be the best way to terraform, should governments decide to do so. The conditions warming Earth could be harnessed to transform Mars, the scientists determined.

Jump-starting global warming in a planet-sized laboratory would be a boon to science in some respects.

"Bringing life to Mars and studying its growth would contribute to our understanding of evolution, and the ability of life to adapt and proliferate on other worlds," says Margarita Marinova at NASA's Ames Research Center, where the study was done. "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."

www.msnbc.msn.com...

Well, I guess it's not too long before we can deplete another planets resources. Forget about trying to fix our enegery problems, lets just scrap earth and move onto the next rock.

Originally posted by mpeake



Well, I guess it's not too long before we can deplete another planets resources. Forget about trying to fix our enegery problems, lets just scrap earth and move onto the next rock.

There is no way we could pick up and move everyone to Mars. Mars is much smaller than earth.

[edit on 4-2-2005 by SpittinCobra]

How about we do the relatively much easier task of sorting out the damage done to the earth before we move elsewhere and start on somewhere else, hmm?

I'm all for the terraforming of Mars, but we should at least get a human person there first!

Good luck to the scientists who want to take this on, but they wont see mars terraformed in their life time, and neither will we.

Originally posted by mpeake
Well, I guess it's not too long before we can deplete another planets resources. Forget about trying to fix our enegery problems, lets just scrap earth and move onto the next rock.

Only problem is that terraforming Mars would take few thousand years.
So Earth would "expire" much before that.

There is a lot of ideas and ways on how to terraform mars. THo i think getting people there first and locating some underground aquifers would be a good start.

Secondstep would be building large mirrors to increase the energy in the atmosphere.

Then possibly sending comets into atmosphere with a disintargrating entry to increase the density

also, isn't carbon dioxide (not monoxide) poisinous to humans at a certain point?

[edit on 4-2-2005 by Jehosephat]

Couldnt we just get it an atmosphere at extremely quick speeds, add water brought from Earth and put tons of plants all over, to make it livable quicker.

no if we brought water to mars it would probibly freeze (cause i think the temperature on mars is lower then 0) and even if it wasnt the chemicals in the air would probibly contaminate the water anyways

Well if we develop greenhouse gasses 10000 times more potent then CO2 then we could make it livable in far shorter time then thousands of years. I do not know how long it would take as I am not an Atmospheric Chemist.

Interesting theory, I guess if it everything works out, MARS would be good for supporting life.

Even Earth was full of mostly Co2 and very little o2, before life came along and increased o2.

Surf

The only problem is... If Mars already harbors life even in microb form, do
we have the right to terraform and destroy any life that already exists there.
Before we even consider terraforming, we must determine if Mars is a desert
planet or not.

TheHorseChestNut
If its larger the size of a bug or larger, I'd think we'd not terraform Mars, however if its only microbial life, than I see no reason not to, as long as we collect a large amount of samples first.
trust_no_one,
I meant bringing the water after the greenouse gases had heated the planet up.

Originally posted by sardion2000
Well if we develop greenhouse gasses 10000 times more potent then CO2 then we could make it livable in far shorter time then thousands of years. I do not know how long it would take as I am not an Atmospheric Chemist.

Member magazine of astronomical association which I belong had article about this few years ago.
Best method for making it faster would be "shooting" Mars with ammonia rich asteroid/comet.
(or actually it would require them every couple decade, look that link below)


And there's much more problems than just low oxygen content of atmosphere
spot.colorado.edu...

I think its a rather bad idea to take gasses and water from earth to mars.
Our planet is a fragile balance, we already unballanced it quite severely by poluting it.

Water and gasses can be taken from outer space.
You know that every single day ice meteors slam into earths atmosphere and increase the volume of water on earth, last time I heard, in rather impressive quantity's?

We would be better to use all that water floating around in space to inject into mars. And use other resources we can find in space too.

Btw, instead of using CO2 to speed up greenhousing, wouldn't it be better to use real greanhouse gasses, the ones that are banned from use on earth these days? The stuff that used to be in spraycans and fridges?

What would be nice if some affordable way could be devised to tranports CO2 from the overpressured Venus atmosphere into the underpressured Martian atmosphere, this would revive two birds with one stone.

I was thinking of solar sails as the very slow but affordable tugboats, some clanking or nanoreplication mechanism would have to be setup to automanufacture millions of launch mechanisms on Venus and interplanetary tugboats to work in parallel to make it work in a decent timeframe.

Naturally, it woulldn't matter WHAT KIND or HOW INEFFICIENT the launch mechanisms or transport devises would be , as long as long as they can autoreplicate and outnumber / brute force any optimalized non replicating concept.

Actually Brad Guth (who is widely known on the net as a notorious flamethrowing Venus-Reptillian idea pusher) has been bombarding us with what I think is a pretty nice idea for powergeneration on venus:

www.geocities.com...

I surely hope the soon to be erected giant solartower in Australia will prove the viabillity of this concept.

I think this could deliver the power needed to further transport the CO2 in some form.shape to lower orbits to be captured by tugboats...

We would want to have other concepts, like greenhouse gasses and asteroid impacts on martian icecaps at work as well to make it happen in a lifetime rather than a thousand years.


[edit on 5-2-2005 by Countermeasures]

Are there any method we can use to increase Mar's atmospheric pressure to be as great as Earth's so Earthlings can actually move over? Surely we cannot direct that great amount of comets into a collision course with mars in a few centuries...

Can Earth's plants live in such an environment(low atmospheric pressure, less sunlight) or even be modified to do so? Then, the problem with oxygen may be solved by planting large amount of forest with a complex irrigation system that feeds the plants with water, oxygen and vital minerals during the initial stage.

Erm...that's only my (infeasible) idea.

Btw, I'm new here. This is a GREAT site!

[edit on 5-2-2005 by KingXealoV]

What about solar radiation ? Does Mars have an iron core or a magnetic field at all ? Being cooked by that would put a bit of a dent into any terraforming activity.