Is terraforming Mars impossible?
It looks like humanities hope of turning Mars may never translate into reality thanks in part to the red planet鈥檚 lack of a magnetic field.
Scientists have discovered that our Sun鈥檚 solar radiation may thwart all attempts at increasing the atmospheric pressure of the crimson world, which means we may never get the chance of witnessing , let alone a blue one.
() Scientists have identified a sort of double-whammy solar super wave that is responsible for blowing away air from Mars and keeping its atmosphere thin, frigid and downright inhospitable for any possible future travelers.
The waves happen when one stream of solar wind is overrun and amped up by another, faster gale of solar particles. That creates a flying traffic jam of particles that slam into Mars as one large pulse. [...]
When Edberg and his colleagues compared these events at Mars to the flow of heavier atoms blowing past Mars Express, they discovered that fully a third of Martian air loss happens during the 15 percent of the time when doubled-up solar wind pulses hit the planet.
Although this means that Mars may never become a second eden (unless we can create a ), it does not mean that humanity will never settle the planet en mass.
Future colonists will have to adapt to living within (with to protect them from radiation), although doing so is probably much cheaper than terraforming the entire planet.
(via and )
Darnell Clayton blogs at
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