Friday, February 04, 2005
Making Mars Habitable
We know that Mars has huge amounts of ice trapped under its polar caps. We also know that Mars was once considerably warmer and wetter than it is today. Several science fiction writers have spent considerable time and energy making life on mars seem plausible. Is it possible for real though? Robert Roy Britt briefs us on some new research to be published this February in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets.
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. Jumpstarting 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 the NASA Ames Research Center when 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."
The new research modeled how manmade greenhouse gases would affect Martian temperature and melt water ice and carbon dioxide ice at the poles. Artificially created gases could be 10,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide in warming up the Red Planet, the study determined. The gases that would work the best are flourines and could be made from elements readily available on Mars, Marinova and her colleagues found. Adding 300 parts per million of the gas mixture into the Martian air would trigger a runaway greenhouse effect, according to the models. The polar ice sheets that would slowly evaporate. The newly released carbon dioxide would cause further warming and melting. Atmospheric pressure would rise.
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. Jumpstarting 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 the NASA Ames Research Center when 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."
The new research modeled how manmade greenhouse gases would affect Martian temperature and melt water ice and carbon dioxide ice at the poles. Artificially created gases could be 10,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide in warming up the Red Planet, the study determined. The gases that would work the best are flourines and could be made from elements readily available on Mars, Marinova and her colleagues found. Adding 300 parts per million of the gas mixture into the Martian air would trigger a runaway greenhouse effect, according to the models. The polar ice sheets that would slowly evaporate. The newly released carbon dioxide would cause further warming and melting. Atmospheric pressure would rise.
