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Even if there was enough carbon dioxide, is seems likely that solar wind would erode away any terraformed atmosphere as some believe happened in the past[1] due

Even if there was enough carbon dioxide, is seems likely that solar wind would erode away any terraformed atmosphere as some believe happened in the past[1] due to the lack of shielding from a global magnetic field. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars#History

jessriedel 8y ago
Many of the terraforming plans include creating a magnetic field, e.g., a fully artificial one situated at L1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars#Magnetic_shield_on_L1_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars#Magnetic_...
ryanmercer 8y ago
>Even if there was enough carbon dioxide, is seems likely that solar wind would erode away any terraformed atmosphere as some believe happened in the past It will. Over MILLIONS of years. That happened on a geological time scale. People clutch to this claiming 'the solar wind will blow it away' but fail to realize how long this process takes.
- dperfect 8y ago
  Thanks. That's true, though to be fair, the kind of changes needed to terraform Mars also normally happen on geological time scales. That's not to say it can't be done faster, but as others have mentioned, plans to terraform the planet are incomplete if they don't address the issue of solar wind.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    >the kind of changes needed to terraform Mars also normally happen on geological time scales. Not when humans are involved. All you need to do is raise the average temperature 5C to create a runaway greenhouse effect on Mars. While that's more than we've done on Earth, what we've done here was entirely on accident. With an actual effort... we could probably do that in a few decades with technology not much more advanced than what we have now. Just doing something like the Russian Znamya project (orbital mirrors), and a little bit of seeding the polar regions with carbon to help absorb sunlight, we could bathe the caps in sunlight 24:37 687 days a year. That combined with creation of 'designer' artificial greenhouse gasses could get you to the runaway process quicker than the natural human lifespan and if you kept generating your own greenhouse gasses/reflecting light to the surface/importing smaller comets (smaller so you're burning the bulk up in the slowly thickening atmosphere instead of impacting and throwing up dust), you could get it there in a few centuries and have the process largely, if not entirely, automated.
sp332 8y ago
Mars lost its atmosphere over a very long timescale. The current rate is something like a quarter pound per second. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/space/mars-atmosphere-stripped-away-by-solar-storms-nasa-says.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/space/mars-atmosp...
- kazinator 8y ago
  That's slower than the rate at which one busy urban corridor pollutes our atmosphere during rush hour.
  - sp332 8y ago
    So we just needed to pipe our pollution up to Mars. Solve global warming on earth and terraform another planet at the same time!

jessriedel 8y ago

Many of the terraforming plans include creating a magnetic field, e.g., a fully artificial one situated at L1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars#Magnetic_shield_on_L1_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars#Magnetic_...

ryanmercer 8y ago

>Even if there was enough carbon dioxide, is seems likely that solar wind would erode away any terraformed atmosphere as some believe happened in the past It will. Over MILLIONS of years. That happened on a geological time scale. People clutch to this claiming 'the solar wind will blow it away' but fail to realize how long this process takes.

dperfect 8y ago
Thanks. That's true, though to be fair, the kind of changes needed to terraform Mars also normally happen on geological time scales. That's not to say it can't be done faster, but as others have mentioned, plans to terraform the planet are incomplete if they don't address the issue of solar wind.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >the kind of changes needed to terraform Mars also normally happen on geological time scales. Not when humans are involved. All you need to do is raise the average temperature 5C to create a runaway greenhouse effect on Mars. While that's more than we've done on Earth, what we've done here was entirely on accident. With an actual effort... we could probably do that in a few decades with technology not much more advanced than what we have now. Just doing something like the Russian Znamya project (orbital mirrors), and a little bit of seeding the polar regions with carbon to help absorb sunlight, we could bathe the caps in sunlight 24:37 687 days a year. That combined with creation of 'designer' artificial greenhouse gasses could get you to the runaway process quicker than the natural human lifespan and if you kept generating your own greenhouse gasses/reflecting light to the surface/importing smaller comets (smaller so you're burning the bulk up in the slowly thickening atmosphere instead of impacting and throwing up dust), you could get it there in a few centuries and have the process largely, if not entirely, automated.

sp332 8y ago

Mars lost its atmosphere over a very long timescale. The current rate is something like a quarter pound per second. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/space/mars-atmosphere-stripped-away-by-solar-storms-nasa-says.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/space/mars-atmosp...

kazinator 8y ago
That's slower than the rate at which one busy urban corridor pollutes our atmosphere during rush hour.
- sp332 8y ago
  So we just needed to pipe our pollution up to Mars. Solve global warming on earth and terraform another planet at the same time!