If there is anything we have learned from observing the universe, it’s that Earth is incredibly unique. Of course, we could find out soon enough how utterly ordinary we are should we discover Earth-like planets bearing life beyond our Solar System, but until, we seem to be pretty special.
Nasa’s Kepler Mission has discovered tens of thousands of planets orbiting distant stars, and given the trillions of stars in the galaxy, we are bound to discover a host of new worlds that could support life now or in the future.
Until that day, our hopes of finding a new world within flying distance are pretty slim. Unfortunately, it looks like we are all stuck here on Earth with no hope of ever living on another planet…or perhaps not.
Terraforming: The What & The Why
As of now, we have not found a planet that could support human life in it’s current state, but what if we were able to give the planet a makeover, so that it could one day be called home to humans? This is the fundamental question behind terraforming.
Terraforming is the process of making a planet more Earth-like, usually in the hopes of that planet supporting “Earthlings.” The subject has been written about in science fiction for more than a century, but terraforming has been discussed outside the realm of fiction in recent years.
Terraforming On Mars
In 1973, Carl Sagan published an article entitled Planetary Engineering On Mars, which suggested two different ways of making the red planet a world that could support human life (this was a “sequel” to his article on how to terraform Venus, published in 1961). Both theories involved melting the polar ice caps of Mars to cool the planet and ultimately make it more habitable.
In 1976, shortly after Sagan’s article, NASA published a study called “On The Habitability of Mars: An Approach to Planetary Ecosynthesis.” In addition to Sagan’s suggestion of melting the polar ice caps, NASA suggested that the introduction of greenhouse gases could both revive the planet’s atmosphere and warm the planet to livable temperatures.
Currently, NASA is hoping to get a manned mission to Mars within the 2030’s, which means we may be seeing the events of Hollywood’s recent hit, The Martian, play out in reality.
However, the day when astronauts can remove their helmets and weighty space gear is likely far off, especially in light of recent news.
The Snag(s) In An Already Daring Plot
If changing the livability of an entire planet did not seem daunting enough, recent research of Mars suggests that making the planet inhabitable may be even harder than expected. Until recently, scientists suspected that a large portion of the CO2 that previously occupied Mars’ atmosphere was absorbed by rocks on the surface. However, recent MAVEN data suggests that once the magnetic field of the Red Planet disappeared some 4.2 billion years ago, solar winds stripped Mars’ atmosphere of most of its CO2, hurling the gases into space never to return.
With little to no CO2 to harvest from the crust of Mars, we would have to explore other ways of getting that much gas into the atmosphere. Science aside, putting astronauts in space is expensive enough, let alone sending them to Mars. It’s questionable whether all the money in the world could purchase the resources necessary to rebuild a planet.
Fear not would-be colonists. Although terraforming is difficult, it is not impossible. The human population has already influenced Earth’s atmosphere to a certain extent, so we know that terraforming is possible in some capacity. Because terraforming Mars has turned out to be trickier than previously thought, others have advocated for seeking other options for our next planetary home, namely Venus. While Venus does show some promise, such as a pre-existing atmosphere and a closer gravitational force to our own, the planet does present its own set of challenges.
Conclusion
While terraforming seems almost as difficult as finding an inhabitable planet, the field does show promise. Although we may not be the generation to leave our world to inhabit another, terraforming, at the very least, is being discussed seriously in the scientific community, and perhaps one day, those discussions will lead to mankind leaving this world for another.
For further reading, check out The Definitive Guide To Terraforming. A lot of the information and inspiration for this post was derived from this article.
Featured image courtesy of Pics About Space. Artist credit: Daein Ballard, CC BY-SA
humans to Mars. For the next couple of years, scientists will study Kelly’s body and how it reacts to readjusting to Earth’s gravitational force and atmosphere. What makes this study even more interesting, however, is the fact that Kelly has a twin brother who spent the past year living on Earth. This adds a new dimension to this study as there is someone with very similar genes and characteristics to
