The Shocking Truth About Life on Mars

In a faraway land, specifically, Africa, lived a peculiar group of creatures called homo sapiens. These early humans had been living in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, chasing gazelles and running away from lions.

However, homo sapiens were different from their predecessors, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo Erectus. They were technologically innovative, highly adaptable, and capable of organizing into complex social structures. About 70,000 years ago, when homo sapiens decided to leave Africa, the species took a significant step that would change the world forever.

In a few thousand years, they managed to explore every corner of the earth, from Siberia's tundra to Australia's arid expanses, from America's grasslands to Asia's valleys.

They made remarkable progress, including learning to fly, building cities, exploring the solar system, harnessing the power of the atom, and inventing the sandwich. However, all their progress came at a cost. Today, humans are arguably in danger of outgrowing their home planet, and there is a need to figure out where to go next.

For several reasons, Mars seems to be the most appealing option for human migration. Firstly, it's one of the closest planets to Earth, with an average distance of about 140 million miles. Secondly, it has a similar length of days to Earth, so adjusting your alarm clock won't be necessary. Lastly, Mars is rich in useful elements like magnesium, silicon, and iron, which could all be mined when humans get there, reducing the amount of luggage needed to be transported.

Finally, and most importantly, Mars lies on the cusp of our solar system’s habitable zone - the area around the sun in which liquid water could exist on an orbiting planet’s surface.

Did you know that water once flowed on Mars and that there is still plenty of quality H20 in its ice caps? If we were able to melt these ice caps, we could create an ocean between 5 and 11 meters deep across most of the planet, which could potentially support life.

However, the bad news is that Mars has a surface air pressure that is about 1% of our own, with an atmosphere that is 95% carbon dioxide. This means that liquid water would boil away in seconds, and it's not safe for humans to step outside without protection.

Mars is a planet with a thin and deadly atmosphere, which is one of the reasons why it is being explored. Unfortunately, Mars lacks a protective shield, making its surface a hazardous environment with high levels of radiation that can cause cancer and acute radiation sickness. Mars also experiences extreme weather conditions, including dust storms with winds up to 250 mph.

The gravity on Mars is only one-third of Earth's, which could have unknown long-term effects on the human body. The planet is also frigidly cold and has toxic soil unsuitable for growing crops. Colonizing Mars would also pose social challenges due to confined spaces and clashing personalities. Elon Musk proposes bombing Mars with 10,000 nukes to make it more habitable by terraforming it.

The plan is to vaporize the large quantities of water and carbon dioxide trapped within the polar ice caps, releasing greenhouse gasses that could warm Mars to Earth-like temperatures.

It seems that the idea of nuking Mars has some major flaws. Firstly, it's not easy for private individuals to get their hands-on nuclear weapons, and secondly, research has shown that nuking Mars could lead to a nuclear winter, where the planet would become even colder due to dust and debris blocking out sunlight.

An alternative approach to melting Mars' ice caps would be to use a giant aluminum mirror in orbit around the planet to concentrate sunlight on the southern ice cap. However, this idea also has its drawbacks.

The mirror would have to be 250 kilometers across, which is about 20% bigger than Denmark. Building such a large object in orbit is not currently possible, as the International Space Station, which is the largest manmade object in space, is only 94 meters across.

So, a more indirect approach might be necessary. One possibility is to use chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were banned on Earth in the late 1980s due to their harmful effects on the ozone layer. However, CFCs are also potent greenhouse gasses that could potentially warm up Mars.

It may even be possible to find the raw materials to produce CFCs on Mars itself.

Alternatively, thousands of spaceships loaded with compressed CFCs could be crashed into Mars to release them into the atmosphere. This could trigger a runaway greenhouse effect, warming up the planet and releasing CO2 stored in the ice caps, further warming the planet.

The planet Mars is becoming warmer and its atmosphere is thickening, which provides better protection from cosmic radiation and solar wind. Scientists have proposed different methods to generate an artificial magnetosphere around the planet, such as building a giant superconducting ring around the equator or installing a magnetic shield between the Sun and Mars.

However, the new Martian atmosphere lacks oxygen, which makes it unbreathable. NASA's Perseverance rover has converted Martian CO2 into oxygen on the surface using MOXIE, but scaling it up to the entire planet might not be feasible.

Another method would be using oxygen-producing microorganisms to slowly increase the O2 levels, similar to what happened on Earth 2. billion years ago. To make Mars breathable, nitrogen needs to be imported on a massive scale as it is scarce on Mars. One way to do that would be to crash nitrogen-rich asteroids into Mars or import nitrogen from Saturn's largest moon, Titan, which has a 95% nitrogen-rich atmosphere. However, terraforming Mars is an extremely difficult task that may take 100,000 years, according to NASA scientist Chris McKay.

It's possible for humans to live on Mars without the need to terraform the planet. Instead, we could construct artificial habitats either on the surface or underground. While this is an ambitious endeavor, it's achievable in the next few decades. Elon Musk has plans to build a fully functional city on Mars that can house up to a million people by 2050. However, such a plan costs around 10 trillion dollars, which is approximately 10% of the world's GDP. So, the question remains: can we migrate to Mars? The answer is yes, but whether or not we will do so before we face extinction from various threats such as pandemics, asteroids, or robots remains uncertain.

Thanks for reading.