As the new year arrives, Jim Green says goodbye to NASA. He is retiring after 40 years, 12 of which as director of the planetary science division and 3 (the last) as chief scientist.
And like a real star, he comes out with the spotlight on him, firing a pretty good missile. Il New York Times in fact it refers to Green's â € œplansâ € for terraforming Mars and making it a habitable planet for humans.
Terraform Mars? â € œIt is feasibleâ €
Green's idea is not a mystery: he published the first excerpts already last November. It is essentially based on the warming and thickening of Mars' atmosphere a giant magnetic shield between the Red Planet and the Sun. Sounds like science fiction to me, but I don't have enough skills to disprove it.
Either way, the system for terraforming the red planet would bring temperature and pressure levels above the point where humans could walk the surface without spacesuits. And above all without seeing the blood boil in the body.
“It's doable,” Green told the Times. “The planet lends itself in every way. When the pressure rises, the temperature rises." Need we reiterate that this is a pretty strong position for a senior NASA official?
Possibilities and obstacles
Green says his plan to terraform Mars could allow humans to start growing plants on Mars and have the possibility of long-term life away from Earth. He's obsessed with finding life on other planets. and has proved it several times.
It will not be easy to convince other terrestrials, however: and on the other hand not everyone is so flexible with ideas on how to terraform (read also: â € œmanipulateâ €) entire planets. The doubts, however, were not born yesterday and are legitimate. In 2018 Lucianne Walkowicz, astronomer at the Adler Planetarium, has supported that we could turn the surface of Mars into an ecological nightmare, given our proven ability to cause trouble on Earth as well.
To be honest, Walkowicz wasn't even convinced that terraforming Mars was physically possible. “Despite her terraforming hold on the popular imagination, she remains firmly in the realm of fiction. Mars appears to lack even the minimal reserves necessary for carbon dioxide to pump its atmosphere and heat it.”
