hey there would you like to live on Mars
that’s a garbage idea and if you try to
go out there right now you would
simultaneously freeze and choke to death
I’m Brendan Mullin an emerging Explorer
with National Geographic and an
astrobiologist I’m here to tell you to
wait Mars is almost one and a half times
as far away from the Sun as Earth is and
its atmosphere is about a hundred times
less dense than our own the average
surface temperature on Mars is something
like minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit but as
humans if we’re good at one thing it’s
drastically changing our environment so
what if we can make Mars more like Earth
there’s an idea that’s been around for a
hundred years or so in science fiction
it’s called terraforming it basically
means we want to take whatever planet
and turn it into Earth to think about
terraforming well imagine Mars is a
glass bowl like this we want to take
this Mars terrarium and thicken up its
atmosphere a little bit there’s a couple
of options we could take asteroids and
comets and send them hurtling into the
Martian atmosphere and have them smash
into the polar ice caps when you throw
these asteroids and comets into these
poles they’ll cause them to sublimate
turn directly from solid into a gas
hopefully that will pump enough carbon
dioxide gas into the atmosphere or you
could take giant space mirrors that will
focus the sun’s rays onto the polar ice
caps causing basically the same effect
[Music]
I’ve got to keep your space bears clean
or and this is a fun option too you can
build a whole bunch of giant factories
on the surface of the planet that
produce a lot of CFCs
chlorofluorocarbons you know the things
that we outlawed in the 80s because of
all the hairspray were using so now
we’ve got a thicker warmer atmosphere so
we’ve got a lid for our Mars jar here
but it’s still basically an atmosphere
of poison no matter if there’s anything
that will magically turn carbon dioxide
into something like oxygen for us to
breathe plants now we have plants all we
need is time this plants on their own
will take carbon dioxide from the air
and turn that into oxygen that we can
breathe mission accomplished we
terraform Mars right kind of Amin
there’s a couple of big things we need
to think about first one is it’s gonna
be really expensive and it’s gonna take
a long time
and another problem which is probably
the worst is that Mars doesn’t have a
magnetosphere a protective magnetic
shield like the earth does solar wind
the charged particles that come off of
the Sun slam into that atmosphere and
will strip away atoms and molecules fins
over a long enough period of time we’re
gonna have to start this terraforming
process all over again let’s say we
could solve all those problems and
terraform Mars anyway we made it so that
the next generation of astronauts could
live there no problem would you want to
go Mars was warmer and wetter and even
had an ocean that covered the entire
northern hemisphere so where did that
ocean go
that’s a garbage idea and if you try to
go out there right now you would
simultaneously freeze and choke to death
I’m Brendan Mullin an emerging Explorer
with National Geographic and an
astrobiologist I’m here to tell you to
wait Mars is almost one and a half times
as far away from the Sun as Earth is and
its atmosphere is about a hundred times
less dense than our own the average
surface temperature on Mars is something
like minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit but as
humans if we’re good at one thing it’s
drastically changing our environment so
what if we can make Mars more like Earth
there’s an idea that’s been around for a
hundred years or so in science fiction
it’s called terraforming it basically
means we want to take whatever planet
and turn it into Earth to think about
terraforming well imagine Mars is a
glass bowl like this we want to take
this Mars terrarium and thicken up its
atmosphere a little bit there’s a couple
of options we could take asteroids and
comets and send them hurtling into the
Martian atmosphere and have them smash
into the polar ice caps when you throw
these asteroids and comets into these
poles they’ll cause them to sublimate
turn directly from solid into a gas
hopefully that will pump enough carbon
dioxide gas into the atmosphere or you
could take giant space mirrors that will
focus the sun’s rays onto the polar ice
caps causing basically the same effect
[Music]
I’ve got to keep your space bears clean
or and this is a fun option too you can
build a whole bunch of giant factories
on the surface of the planet that
produce a lot of CFCs
chlorofluorocarbons you know the things
that we outlawed in the 80s because of
all the hairspray were using so now
we’ve got a thicker warmer atmosphere so
we’ve got a lid for our Mars jar here
but it’s still basically an atmosphere
of poison no matter if there’s anything
that will magically turn carbon dioxide
into something like oxygen for us to
breathe plants now we have plants all we
need is time this plants on their own
will take carbon dioxide from the air
and turn that into oxygen that we can
breathe mission accomplished we
terraform Mars right kind of Amin
there’s a couple of big things we need
to think about first one is it’s gonna
be really expensive and it’s gonna take
a long time
and another problem which is probably
the worst is that Mars doesn’t have a
magnetosphere a protective magnetic
shield like the earth does solar wind
the charged particles that come off of
the Sun slam into that atmosphere and
will strip away atoms and molecules fins
over a long enough period of time we’re
gonna have to start this terraforming
process all over again let’s say we
could solve all those problems and
terraform Mars anyway we made it so that
the next generation of astronauts could
live there no problem would you want to
go Mars was warmer and wetter and even
had an ocean that covered the entire
northern hemisphere so where did that
ocean go
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