Could we make artificial global warming (on Mars)?

[Guest]

First off, I want to say that I don't know what subforum this should be in and whether it should maybe in general discussion because it's somewhat tech related. This question's been asked a lot, just not on here (as far as I know) but what if we could warm up mars and create an atmosphere by having a way to flood it with CO2. The strange thing is that Mars has an atmosphere made up pretty much all carbon dioxide, but since it's very thin it doesn't cause the planet to stay very warm. So any thoughts on if this is an interesting idea? Or is it just some bullshit that you'll only see in sci-fi?

[ShredBird]

Well, one thing you would have to do first is get Mars to sustain a magnetic field.  Currently solar wind is blasting Mars's atmosphere off into space.  Earth and other planets maintain an atmosphere because their magnetic fields shield the planet from solar wind.  That's why Mars has such a thin atmosphere.  It likely had a much richer atmosphere in the past and was probably warmer because of it.  It's theorized that Mars's inner core has since cooled and no longer provides a protective magnetic field.  Its atmosphere "evaporated" and thus any liquid water, and life may have perished from the planet with it.

[dalekphalm]

6 hours ago, hiitswilliam said:

First off, I want to say that I don't know what subforum this should be in and whether it should maybe in general discussion because it's somewhat tech related. This question's been asked a lot, just not on here (as far as I know) but what if we could warm up mars and create an atmosphere by having a way to flood it with CO2. The strange thing is that Mars has an atmosphere made up pretty much all carbon dioxide, but since it's very thin it doesn't cause the planet to stay very warm. So any thoughts on if this is an interesting idea? Or is it just some bullshit that you'll only see in sci-fi?

As noted by @ShredBird, you would need to come up with some mechanism to preserve and protect the Atmosphere of Mars.

 

Here on Earth, our Magnetic Field does that for us. Mars used to have one too, but the core of Mars cooled too low, and lost the properties necessary for the Dynamo process to work (This is the process in which circulating currents of electrically charged molted liquid creates a strong magnetic field):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_theory

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars#History

 

This happened some 3.7-4.2 billion years ago.

 

Obviously with current science and technology, it's completely impossible to fix this. Raising the surface temperature would achieve nothing, in the long term, since solar wind would blast away any artificial atmosphere we were able to create.

 

We would need to achieve some mechanism of heating the core of Mars back up enough that it can restart the magnetic field. This is entirely science fiction at this point, but perhaps one day, it might be possible.

 

It could also be possible to create smaller scale localized atmospheres in craters, etc. These would need to be constantly refueled and fed material, and would not be a closed loop.

 

A more practical solution, at least for humans with current 21st century technology, would be to create self sufficient enclosed biodomes with an active atmosphere with recycled air, and a living ecosystem of flora and fauna.

 

And even this is still out of our current reach - though if we threw enough money at it, it's totally doable within 20-50 years.