Humans one step closer to living on Mars as new theory aims to make planet habitable

Elon Musk has big ambitions to colonize Mars by 2050. A new scientific discovery could make that dream a reality.

A team of scientists has proposed an ‘innovative’ way to warm the Red Planet by more than 18 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few months, a figure they believe is enough to sustain human life.

They proposed injecting large amounts of Martian dust into the atmosphere, so that the atmosphere could better trap heat, much as water vapor and carbon dioxide do on Earth.

If about 10 liters of dust, consisting of iron and aluminum, are emitted per second for at least ten years, the Earth could warm from -85°F to 86°F.

Elon Musk dreams of building a city on Mars that can support a million people by 2050.

Musk himself has said that he plans to use the natural resources on Mars to “terraform” the existing atmosphere and make the planet warmer, wetter and generally more Earth-like.

This study suggests he may be right.

“It’s not often you get a really new, innovative idea for terraforming,” said Colin McInnes, a space engineer at the University of Glasgow who was not involved in the work. Scientific journal.

“The difference between the current location of Mars and the potential habitability of Mars is smaller than we think,” he added.

The researchers’ approach is in fact based on the same atmospheric mechanism that causes climate change on Earth: the greenhouse effect.

Currently, Mars’ atmosphere is so thin that heat from the Sun can easily escape through the planet’s surface.

The microscopic size and spherical shape of Martian dust means it does not allow for good absorption of radiation or reflection of heat back to the surface.

However, the research team thinks they can use the iron and aluminum in the dust to make rods nine micrometers long.

That’s about twice the size of a dust particle on Mars, but smaller than a speck of glitter.

Currently, the surface of Mars is a freezing, barren desert. But scientists have come up with a simple way to warm up the Red Planet.

By terraforming the atmosphere of Mars, we are one step closer to establishing a human colony on the Red Planet.

When the researchers tested how their particles would absorb thermal radiation and reflect it back to the planet’s surface, they found “unexpectedly large effects,” Samaneh Ansari, a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University and lead author of the study, told Science Magazine.

This approach requires about two million tons of particles per year, but producing them is relatively simple because the ingredients are on Mars.

This new approach thus differs from previous plans to globally warm the Red Planet.

For comparison, this method would be about 5,000 times more efficient, the researchers claimed.

This strategy would take decades to implement, but seems logistically simpler than any of the other ideas proposed so far.

Warming Mars would be an important first step in making this planet suitable as a habitat for humans, or any other life form.

This would release the little water frozen in the polar ice caps beneath the planet’s surface, making Mars a more suitable place for agriculture and our own bodies.

The Martian atmosphere is too thin to trap heat on the surface, so scientists want to inject it with engineered dust to make it more insulating.

This is all great news for Musk. But warming Mars is just one step on a long road ahead before he can colonize the Red Planet.

Even with this new atmosphere, humans still wouldn’t be able to breathe the air on Mars because there isn’t enough oxygen.

In addition, the air pressure on Mars is 150 times higher than on Earth, which would make human blood boil.

Musk will have to solve these problems and more before he builds a bustling metropolis on Mars. But this new research brings him a little closer to realizing his dream.