![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The new Google Street View on the iPhone Maps application is pretty neat. Now if only it were also tied to GPS so that the picture moved along with me as I moved...
Nov. 21st, 2008
I Knew There Were Oceans On Mars!
Nov. 21st, 2008 11:58 amhttp://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16097-vast-stores-of-water-ice-surround-martian-equator.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
They're calling them "glaciers hundreds of meters deep" but this affirms my belief that a larger survey will show that Mars is basically just a planet covered with frozen ocean, with a layer of dust covering the ocean.
So, with this in mind, how would one go about "rebooting" Mars as an Earth-like planet with a liquid ocean? Is Mars too far away from the sun to sustain life? What if we shot a bunch of greenhouse gases into Mars's atmosphere, would enough heat be retained to thaw the oceans? Could we send some big lenses out there and put them in orbit between Mars and the Sun, and use them like giant magnifying glasses to heat the planet up? I wonder how much heat energy will be needed to keep most of the water above freezing?
(I'm not really interested in discussing the "ethics" behind terraforming another planet, or otherwise decrying humanity for wanting to "despoil" another planet. Let's have those arguments after we get all the eggs out of one basket, m'kay?)
They're calling them "glaciers hundreds of meters deep" but this affirms my belief that a larger survey will show that Mars is basically just a planet covered with frozen ocean, with a layer of dust covering the ocean.
So, with this in mind, how would one go about "rebooting" Mars as an Earth-like planet with a liquid ocean? Is Mars too far away from the sun to sustain life? What if we shot a bunch of greenhouse gases into Mars's atmosphere, would enough heat be retained to thaw the oceans? Could we send some big lenses out there and put them in orbit between Mars and the Sun, and use them like giant magnifying glasses to heat the planet up? I wonder how much heat energy will be needed to keep most of the water above freezing?
(I'm not really interested in discussing the "ethics" behind terraforming another planet, or otherwise decrying humanity for wanting to "despoil" another planet. Let's have those arguments after we get all the eggs out of one basket, m'kay?)