Global Warming Could Make Mars a Second Home
Injecting synthetic greenhouse gases into atmosphere proposed to make planet hospitable
February 4, 2005
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Greenhouse gases may be a problem on Earth, but injecting them into the Martian atmosphere could make Mars a second home.
A team of researchers has proposed injecting synthetic "super" greenhouse gases into the planet's atmosphere to raise its temperature and melt its polar ice caps to provide conditions suitable for biological life.
While the researchers aren't the first to propose the use of greenhouse gases in terraforming Mars, they developed a detailed approach that could be initiated by human visitors to the Red Planet.
"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, the study's lead author. "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."
Fluorine thawing
The approach developed by Marinova and colleagues involves artificially created greenhouse gases nearly 10,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide.
Using a computer model of the Martian atmosphere, the researchers analyzed four of the best candidate gases individually and in combination.
Focusing on fluorine-based gases, which are composed of elements readily available on the Martian surface, the found that a compound called octafluoropropane produced the greatest warming alone and even more warming in combination with several similar gases.
Adding about 300 parts per million of the gas mixture in the current Martian atmosphere, the researchers say, could spark a runaway greenhouse effect that causes the evaporation of carbon dioxide on the Martian surface. This in turn would lead to further melting, temperature increases, enhanced atmospheric pressure and a thicker atmosphere.
While it could take centuries or even millennia before Mars became hospitable to life, astronauts could create the fluorine gases on a manned mission to the planet because the raw materials exist on Mars. This makes the proposal the most feasible yet for raising temperatures and increasing atmospheric pressure on the planet, the researchers conclude.
SOURCE: Better Humans