In Search for a new home
Well, we all know that we only have one planet to live that is our earth. But we cannot stay here forever, we are explorers and we our destined to leave this planet. We have done this previously, we went from the bottom of Africa and colonized the whole planet. This is in our blood. We also have potential unpreventable threats hovering above us such as an asteroid hitting us or a giant super volcanic eruption or a giant tsunami or a huge earthquake, or a large gamma ray burst, that can make the entire human population extinct. Going to another planet will reduce our chances of extinction to nearly zero!
Well by now this is obvious that we need another planet to live on, but almost every planet that we have discovered yet cannot host life. So how do we do it, we need to terraform (make the planet earth like) the planet according to our needs. That includes adjusting the atmospheric pressure, the temperature, making water available, cultivating food. So, we have hundreds of planets to choose from to be our new home Right? We just go to another planet and terraform it and then live on it happily ever after? Well, it may sound easy but it’s not, to colonize a planet we need to take huge amounts of cargo to it. Most off the planet that are colonizable are out of our solar system and taking any cargo to them or even reaching them is almost impossible looking at today’s technology for interplanetary transport. We are not even capable of reaching our nearest solar system which is around 4.7 light-years away in a human lifetime. So we cannot think of colonizing planets beyond our solar system. So we are left with choosing one of the eight planet or their moons.
The last 4 planets are what we know as the gas giants and as the name clearly indicates, they are nothing but a dense collection of gas with a small rocky core. They are also too far from our sun to have liquid water. Because of the above conditions, we cannot live on them. Now from there, we are left with only three of the eight planets. Mercury is too close to the sun to support life. Now when we talk about Venus, things become interesting as it is often referred to as earth’s sister planet, as its mass is almost equal that of earth, so the Gravity is also almost the same. But unlike earth’s atmosphere the atmosphere of Venus is mainly composed of co2, which as we know is a greenhouse gas, and due to its short distance from the sun, the temperatures of Venus rose to about 400 Celsius, enough to melt lead. It rains sulphuric acid there and the atmosphere is around 90times thicker than that of the earth. Venus once had the conditions to support life, but now living there would be like living in hell So, it’s clearly not for us humans to live.
Now coming to mars which is often referred to as the red planet, Mars is the planet that has most of the stuff to support life in our solar system, for example, it has water frozen beneath its surface, food can be grown on its surface, it has 24 1/2 hour day similar to our earth, landmass equal to that of earth. Mars is the planet which fascinated ancient astronomers, they always hoped to find Martians and thought that mars iscapable of hosting life, but when VIKING I first landed on Mars in 1976, we found out that the planet was barren like a huge desert. But now, we have evidence that Mars once had oceans on its surface and o2 in its atmosphere billions of years ago. But what made this wet beautiful planet into a barren desert. The answer lies in its magnetosphere, the sun emits harmful radiations and huge burst of energy in the form of solar flares. Magnetosphere protects these from ripping the planets atmosphere. But for a magnetosphere to there, the planets core must be burning, the earths core is still burning and because of it we have a magnetosphere, but in case of mars the core cooled down about a billion years ago and mars lost its protective shield of magnetosphere. Then it became prone to the suns harmful radiations which ripped its atmosphere. Because of the lack of an atmosphere the planet cooled down leading to the freezing of water in soil.
Now as you can see from above, Mars has the most favorable conditions to live on in our solar system and is well within our reach. So it really could be the second earth, but in order to terraform it, we need to manage a few things, which are- water, atmosphere(oxygen), fuel, temperature, and food and protection against radioactive rays from the sun.
Now see, the whole problem can be solved just by increasing the temperature of the planet, after increasing the temperature, the polar ice caps containing water and solid co2 will melt. This will create oceans of water and produce high amounts of co2 in the atmosphere. Co2 a greenhouse gas will trap more heat, leading to a higher increase in temperature. Now the solidified o2 and water in the surface will melt. This all will create huge oceans and increase the atmosphere. To fight radiations the astronauts can live in underground cities. Solar energy will be the major source of energy on the red planet.
there are many ways to increase the temperature, by dropping nukes on the poles, directing asteroids on its surface, placing a giant mirror in planets orbit, which would reflect suns heat on poles.
This whole process may take around 1000 years but once the entire cycle is completed mars will truly become earth 2.0!
Private companies like SpaceX, blue origin, Boeing, are collaborating with NASA and other government organizations to achieve transforming mars and making colonies on it where humans would live one day! It would be the greatest adventure for humans in the history of humankind. We are hoping to have manned missions on the red planet by SpaceX as soon as 2025. which will further research the surface and climate of the planet and make it ready for future generations to come to the planet in year to come. SpaceX has plans to set cities on the planet that would hold millions of people in it by the end of the century.
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