Eventually the clouds will dissipate and the atmosphere will be a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide, similar to Earth’s.
Mars is a dry and barren wasteland, with an atmosphere too thin to breathe and a high risk of cancer. But with the right technology, it could be transformed into a green new world. To terraform Mars quickly, we need to melt its surface with powerful lasers, creating oceans of lava and releasing oxygen and carbon dioxide from the rocks. This would create storms and an eerie red glow on the surface, and the clouds created would wash out the nastier gases from the atmosphere. Eventually, Mars would have an atmosphere of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide, similar to Earth’s, and enough water to create a very shallow ocean. Terraforming Mars is possible, but it’s complicated and requires a lot of energy. If animals eat too much vegetation, the plants can’t keep up and the balance is lost.
After about 50 years of continuous lasering, the atmosphere on Mars would be nearly 100% oxygen and 0.2 bar. To make it more similar to Earth and safer, nitrogen needs to be added, which can be imported from Titan, a large moon of Saturn, covered in a thick atmosphere that is almost entirely nitrogen. To process this much atmosphere, giant automated factories need to be constructed on Titan’s surface and powered by lasers to suck in the atmosphere and compress it into a liquid. This gets pumped into bullet-shaped tanks and shot to Mars, where they explode and mix with the oxygen.
In order to form shallow oceans, saltier than on Earth, extra clean-up might be needed and some landmark features like Mons Olympus and Valles Marineris can be spared.
Biosphere installation is very difficult and unexpected interactions between species or sudden diseases can destabilise it to the point of collapse. To begin, phytoplankton is seeded into the oceans, followed by tiny zooplankton and then fish. To create nutrient-filled ground for plants, the surface needs to be ground down into finer sands, which can be done manually or with a big laser. Fungi and nitrogen-fixing bacteria are mixed into the mud and the first plants are native to volcanic islands on Earth. Eventually, the enriched mud becomes the foundation for grasslands and forests. The new biosphere needs to be maintained to prevent it from falling out of balance. If key species die out, we could see populations collapse faster than they could recover. On Earth, other species would move in to fill the void, but our Martian biosphere is not as flexible. It takes hundreds if not thousands of years before Mars becomes a stable environment. But eventually the planet will have the potential to sustain large human colonies. With air, water and food available, we can finally call Mars – black, blue and green – our home. A giant, volcanic island in space.
Will it last though? There is a problem we haven’t addressed: Mars’ core does not produce a magnetic field, so it does not have enough protection from solar radiation or cosmic rays. This becomes dangerous for the long term health of Martian populations. So as a final step, we need an artificial magnetic field. It doesn’t have to be huge like Earth’s. It just needs to deflect the solar wind enough so that it doesn’t touch Mars. The easiest way is to construct a magnetic umbrella far ahead of Mars that splashes the solar wind to the sides. A big, superconducting ring powered by nuclear facilities is all it takes. It would orbit at the Mars-Sun L1 point, keeping it constantly in between the Sun and Mars and protect the new atmosphere.
And that’s it! Terraforming Mars would take some work, hefty resources and probably a century or ten but it would be the first time we’ve lived in a home designed and shaped solely by us and for us. A first step towards our future among the stars. The first step we can already take down on Earth is learning more about the physics and biology needed for such a project. To help you with that, we’ve created a series of lessons to build your fundamental understanding of these topics. Made in collaboration with our friends at Brilliant.org, these lessons give you a deeper understanding of the topics from our most popular videos, from supervolcanoes to black holes to climate science.
Brilliant is an interactive learning tool that makes math, science, and computer science accessible with a hands-on approach. Because we know that to really learn something, you’ve got to do it. Think of each lesson as a one-on-one tutoring version of a Kurzgesagt video. In our latest lesson, you’ll learn more about how Mars lost its atmosphere and how we might protect a terraformed Mars from suffering the same fate. Brilliant has thousands of lessons to explore—from math-based topics like algebra and probability to the concepts behind algorithms and machine learning. And with new lessons added each month, including ones from Kurzgesagt, you’ll always find something fascinating to learn.
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