Mars’ greenhouse effect is currently very weak, but scientists are exploring the possibility of making it more habitable by thickening its atmosphere. New images of Mars’ surface provide the first direct evidence that the climate of Mars has changed during the last 100,000 years, much earlier than previous estimates. Mars does have some atmospheric carbon dioxide, but almost no atmosphere, as the existing atmosphere is so thin that it cannot retain energy from the sun. The researchers suggest that regions of the Martian surface could be made habitable with a material — silica aerogel — that mimics Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect.
Data-model comparison shows that changes over time in the distribution of Mars paleo-rivers in space are consistent with the expectation that Mars’s greenhouse effect waned. For a CO 2-dominated atmosphere as on early Mars, H 2 has a stronger greenhouse effect (from CO 2 – H 2 collision-induced absorptions) than CH 4, in contrast to a N 2-dominated atmosphere as on Venus.
Mars emits less heat than Earth and is colder due to its greater distance from the Sun and weak greenhouse effect. The atmosphere is composed mainly of carbon dioxide, but there is so little carbon dioxide overall that the greenhouse effect is essentially negligible. On Mars, which is too cold, long-lived Super Greenhouse Gases (SGG) are considered an economic and desirable way to warm the planet. The atmosphere of Mars is more than 96 carbon dioxide, but the planet is cold because its atmosphere is extremely thin.
📹 Elon Musk: Greenhouse on Mars
Elon Musk discusses his past plans for acquiring more appropriations for NASA by sending a greenhouse to Mars. Elon Musk: …
What is the most effective greenhouse effect?
The most potent greenhouse gas is trichlorofluoromethane, which stays in the atmosphere for 3, 200 years. It is used as a coolant in refrigerators and foam in liquid fire extinguishers, causing global climate damage by producing chlorine molecules that deplete the ozone layer. Perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA), used in the electronics industry for over 50 years, has recently been identified as a potentially harmful greenhouse gas, with a low concentration in the atmosphere but a long-lasting presence for over 500 years.
Is there a greenhouse effect on Mars?
Mars’ climate is significantly different from Earth’s due to its thin atmosphere, mainly composed of carbon dioxide, and its distance from the sun. This results in a negligible greenhouse effect, resulting in a lower temperature. Venus, on the other hand, has a 100x denser atmosphere and 96 of its atmosphere is carbon dioxide, creating an enormous greenhouse effect that increases its temperature by approximately 462°C. This is hot enough to melt lead.
The greenhouse effect on Venus doubles the absolute temperature from what it would be without an atmosphere. Despite having similar atmospheres, interiors, surfaces, and greenhouse gases, the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere significantly change the planets’ temperatures. Carbon dioxide dominates the greenhouse gases in these planets, but the warming on them varies significantly.
Can Mars turn green?
Mars’s oxygen atoms, initially part of carbon dioxide molecules, lose energy and combine as they drift to the night side, emitting an eerie light. This green luminescence, similar to the northern lights on Earth, occurs when Earth’s magnetic field affects charged particles from the sun. Astronomers have long suspected that luminescence occurs on Mars but have never observed it. In 2020, the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) picked up dayglow in the visible light spectrum, marking the first time anyone has observed nightglow on Mars. The scattered solar light from Earth hinders such measurements, and no space-borne instrument has previously observed the Mars visible nightglow.
Why does Venus have a stronger greenhouse effect than Mars?
Table 1 lists atmospheric factors influencing planetary differences, including distance from the Sun, greenhouse gases, and atmospheric density. Venus has a dense atmosphere with a surface pressure more than 90 times Earth’s, while Mars has a thin atmosphere with a surface pressure less than 1/100th of Earth’s. The chemical compositions of these atmospheres are crucial for determining suitability for life. Major greenhouse gases (GHG) and their percentages are listed in Table 2.
Earth’s atmosphere always has some water vapor, but the average amount is around 1. Scientists often refer to Earth’s dry atmosphere, which includes nitrogen and oxygen, making up almost 99 of the gases. The remaining trace gases make up less than 1 of Earth’s dry atmosphere. The totals for each planet in Table 1 do not add up to exactly 100 because not all trace gases have been listed.
Which has the strongest greenhouse effect?
The chart shows that six greenhouse gases, including sulfur hexafluoride (SF 6), tetrafluoromethane (PFC-14), nitrogen oxide (N₂O), methane, and HFC-152a, contribute significantly to global warming. SF 6 causes 23, 500 times more warming than carbon dioxide, while PFC-14, used in electronics and refrigeration, causes 6, 630 times more. Nitrous oxide causes 265 times more warming, while methane causes 28 times more. HFC-152a, used in aerosol sprays, causes 128 times more warming. Carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas, is crucial for human, animal, and plant respiration to maintain proper breathing.
Is colonizing Venus better than Mars?
Venus has a thicker atmosphere than Mars, providing better protection from radiation and meteorites. It also has a massive carbon dioxide buildup, potentially used for oxygen extraction. Venus’s gravity is 0. 9 times stronger than Earth’s, causing serious physical health consequences for humans. Exercise is necessary to prevent bone and muscle loss. Despite these advantages, colonizing Venus may have drawbacks, such as increased risk of disease, lack of resources, and potential for exploitation. Ultimately, the choice between Venus and Mars depends on the planet’s unique characteristics and the potential for long-term sustainability.
Can plants grow in greenhouse on Mars?
The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is sponsoring a research project aimed at designing life on Mars. The project, which is expected to be realized within a decade or more, aims to enable plants to survive on Mars by adding features from microscopic organisms called extremophiles that live in the most inhospitable environments on Earth. The team uses gene splicing techniques to remove useful genes from extremophiles and add them to plants.
The current NIAC funding pays for “proof of concept” work that demonstrates the feasibility of the team’s idea and identifies the technical challenges that must be overcome for Martian plants to become a reality. To prove their concept, the team took a gene from “Pyrococcus furiosus”, a microbe that lives in the scalding water issuing from deep sea vents, and inserted it into tobacco cells. The gene, “superoxide reductase”, removes toxic oxygen atoms and molecules generated in organisms under stress. The gene was successfully incorporated into the tobacco cells and functioned without harming them.
The team plans to transform plants with genes for cold tolerance as the next step in their research. They also used their NIAC concept as an educational experience, giving undergraduate students at North Carolina State the challenge of selecting features from existing organisms that would be useful for Martian plants and designing ecosystems for Martian greenhouses. The features they are incorporating in Martian plants, like cold and drought tolerance, will also help crops bear severe weather on Earth, so this work has practical application.
NIAC was created in 1998 to solicit revolutionary concepts from people and organizations outside NASA. The Universities Space Research Association operates NIAC for NASA. This type of long-term research, with an uncertain path to success, is only possible with an organization like NIAC that doesn’t mind taking a chance for the possibility of an incredible breakthrough.
Which planet has a stronger greenhouse effect?
Venus, similar to Earth in size and mass, has a surface temperature of 460°C, hot enough to melt lead. Its atmosphere is primarily composed of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Man-made emissions have increased carbon dioxide concentrations in Venus by about 30 percent since pre-industrial times. ESA’s Venus Express mission, set to launch in 2005, aims to understand the reasons for the high carbon dioxide concentration in Venus’ atmosphere and its unique evolution from Earth, helping us understand extreme greenhouse effects.
What is the strongest greenhouse?
SF6 is the most potent greenhouse gas in existence, with a global warming potential of 23, 900 times the baseline of CO2. This means that one tonne of SF6 in the atmosphere equals 23, 900 tonnes of CO2. Greenhouse gases create the greenhouse effect by trapping heat in the atmosphere and increasing Earth’s temperature. Small variations in atmospheric concentration lead to significant changes in temperature, making the difference between ice ages when mammoths roamed Earth and the heat in which dinosaurs dominated the planet.
Greenhouse gases are typically characterized using two main indicators: Global Warming Potential (GWP) and atmospheric lifetime (TW). SF6 is stronger than CO2 in terms of global warming potential, with a global warming potential of 23, 900 times the baseline.
Which planet has a very hot greenhouse effect?
Venus’s thick atmosphere traps heat, creating a greenhouse effect that makes it the hottest planet in our solar system. The surface temperatures are hot enough to melt lead, resulting in a temperature of roughly 700°F (390°C).
Does Mars have climate change?
Mars’s Ismenius Lacus quadrangle is believed to contain significant amounts of ice, primarily due to climatic changes and large changes in the planet’s rotational axis. When the tilt of Mars reaches 45 degrees from its current 25 degrees, ice becomes unstable at the poles and stores of solid carbon dioxide sublimate, increasing atmospheric pressure. This pressure allows more dust to be held in the atmosphere, which will fall as snow or ice frozen onto dust grains.
This material will concentrate in the mid-latitudes. General circulation models predict accumulations of ice-rich dust in the same areas where ice-rich features are found. When the tilt returns to lower values, the ice sublimates and leaves behind a lag of dust, which caps the underlying material. This lag deposit caps the underlying material, leaving some ice-rich mantle behind with each cycle of high tilt levels. The smooth surface mantle layer likely represents only relative recent material, and layering suggests the mantle was deposited multiple times.
📹 Terraforming Mars Using a Weird Greenhouse Gas – Sulfur Hexafluoride
Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about Mars colonization and terraforming Mars using an …
Creating a planet-wide atmosphere is a huge task.probably requiring many lifetimes even with such a potentially useful gas. But imagine establishing a sulphur hexafluoride factory in the depths of Valles Marineris, or otherwise releasing a large quantity of the gas there. Because of its weight the gas would mostly remain within the valley, pooling at the places of lowest elevation. These places already have the highest atmospheric pressure of anywhere on Mars, and the heavy gas would increase it further. The very localized greenhouse gas would also cause a very localized increase in temperature. This combination of factors would allow the liquid surface water which exists there occasionally to become a permanent feature. The clouds which are occasionally seen within the valley would also occur more frequently and be denser. Imagine a huge canyon, five times longer and five times deeper than the Grand Canyon, with lakes of liquid water, and clouds, and rain. This would be like a home from home for the settlers, even though they would still need special suits and breathing equipment to venture outdoors. The lakes could be seeded with algae, providing a source of food and beginning the task of oxygenating the Martian atmosphere. there might even be higher organisms such as fish that could thrive in the lakes once they are sufficiently oxygenated by the algae. it would be a long time before the settler population would be big enough to need more than Valles Marineris, so why not settle for that initially?
Interesting concept! In the long run, though, Mars will need its lost nitrogen replaced. The magnetosphere issue is not that pressing. The thicker the reconstituted atmosphere, the more resistant it becomes to solar wind erosion. The technology of the near future will certainly resolve that, in any case. The challenge is to get the ball rolling as soon as possible. Until the surface conditions allow for flowing water, plant life and human activities without spacesuits, Mars will largely remain a series of outposts, not a thriving colonial world.
Love Anton’s articles! Anton, just for the fun of it, can you please make one article where you edit out all occurrences of: 1. ACTUALLY 2. A little bit 3. Kind of I am not asking to stop using these words in general but when I play these articles with my friends they get super distracted. I know, I know, I should get better friends. But. Can you pretty please make one great article like that and I bet I can get a hundred more people signed up within a year. Thank you for your consideration.
Hellas Impact Crater would be a good place to test an encapsulated volume. Speaking of – it would also be possible to fill a void with this gas, then float a thin layer of foil atop the gas, designed to increase the greenhouse effect. Perhaps this method could also be used in (solar exposed) lunar craters to rapidly raise the surface temperature to evaporate water. The foil needn’t be one large surface but could be made up of many floating interlocking rafts. Our first “dome” on Mars could be a crater with a floating cover!
Magnetosphere is only important on the scale of millions of years. If the atmosphere is thick enough it will leak away but if we can change the atmosphere on the scale of decades to centuries, then we should be able to maintain it on the scale of millenia. A thick atmosphere will also mitigate much of the radiation problems, especially with some ozone in the mix.
i work in the high voltage electricity industry and we use Sulfur Hexafluoride also known as SF6 as an arc suppressant in pressurized high voltage switch gear. If the gas is oxidized in my case via a high voltage failure the SF6 converts into a toxic white powder that has been proven to cause cancer. i imagine that some oxidization would be inevitable in the Mars example and would highly recommend some more research before pushing this idea any further.
Thanks for a great article. My favorite idea is to make large low mass solar sail/mirrors on the Moon and launch them by mass driver and into Mars orbit by solar sailing. Once there, they would increase insolation {to the poles as much as possible at first}.There’s plenty of aluminum on the Moon and more solar energy plus proximity to Earth eases maintenance issues for manufacture as opposed to Mars. Could be launching sulfur hex at the same time and speed things up.
We could build a magnetosphere via a large closed loop solenoid placed at the Mars L1 LaGrange point. Now, please resume being wonderful people by not criticizing him for not solving that problem (in this particular article) while ignoring how smart his solution is to the atmospheric terraforming problem is 🙂
How essential is an ozone layer on mars? If the fluoride is easy enough to acquire we could get rid of those pesky perchlorates by polluting the atmosphere with chlorofluorocarbons (which I assume would break back down as a global rain of percolates due to solar radation. Is there anything safe we can do with all that chlorine? :/
How are we going to restart the magnetosphere? Might have to crash asteroids into it, to reheat the core. Also, this could add water. We are also going to need a moon, to create stability in the rotation. More asteroids I suppose. If the surface turns molten, it could take a billion years to cool it down enough.
I find it so interesting that air is mostly made up of nitrogen. In school, I heard so much about H2O and while you learn that air has hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, I didn’t really learn about those other elements being part of air. Did Mars lost its’ atmosphere in the past due to pollution? I’m just wondering if a species lived there a long time ago and polluted it so much that they destroyed themselves and their planet?
Bad idea, you would get layers in the atmosphere; with sulfur hexofluoride on the bottom, carbon-dioxide on top and the potential oxygen on top of those two layers. Because Mars doesn’t have a magnetosphere, the solar wind will blow off that oxygen layer first and then the carbon-dioxide layer, hence Mars will be left with just a sulfur hexofluoride atmosphere.
Wouldn’t it be easier to tow a large asteroid to hit mars one that could create a blank over the planets slowly warming it, Could also be an Ice asteroid with a Iron- nickle rich core the Water vapor from the ice forms in the atmosphere while the iron-nickle core hits the surface. Just seems like would be more effienct from a fuel and rocket point of view, as for the magnetosphere I haven’t got a clue…maybe that film The Core might help with its wacky Sci-fi ideas.
The total mass of CO2 om Mars will not provide a thick atmosphere. You need to bring volatiles from the outer solar system, from sources that do not require a lot of delta-V. Using slingshot manouvers past Neptune, the “scattered disc” component of transneptunian objects provide a nearly infinite reservoir for minor delta-v.
Anton…. Nike has stopped using SF6 for more than 20 years now and replaced it with nitrogen. You should have shown a real Nike Air and not one without Air 😂And btw: This gas was used for pumping up tires as well. Nice idea using it for terraforming though… imagine: Anton-Yutani building better Worlds!
I won’t say not to do it, but! Think of this. What happens if you terraforme Mars & some goes horribly wrong ?,Or if a life form is created & it is a danger to human kind? Another words what if a dangerous creature is created and earth becomes in danger of invasion of it? I know it sounds like science fiction but it could happen.
You didn’t mention water, which is also a greenhouse gas and which exists on Mars as large deposits of subsurface ice. That would be released if the temperature were to be raised by other means. Also, there is some mystery source of methane on Mars detected by one of the rovers (I think) and which might increase in quantity with higher temperatures and methane is also a very good greenhouse gas.
I feel like any effort in terraforming Mars is in vain because of the planets low mass. I would like to see more people thinking about how to safely increase Mars’s mass. It seems like there is a lot of useable asteroids to do so right next door. Then we may get mars to have its own magnetic field. Just a thought
There was a reason the civilization before us abandoned terraforming mars, the planetary gravitational wave transference synchronization would throw off the rotation of the rest of the system unless you placed a counter weight in the exact right spot with the exact right weight with the exact balance of elements that would not interfere with the rest of the systems composition
Before you can terraform Mars you have to find a way to increase the gravity. Most likely this would involve reactivating the core of Mars. As we know Maurice at one point was a highly volcanic climate and that has since died away. We would need to find a way to heat the core and add metal to it possibly plutonium also to sustain the reaction. This would increase gravity and the Magneto sphere. Without doing this I don’t see how any terraforming what’s the last very long because the gas would Escape to Space. Terraforming Mars would require the increase of the density of the atmosphere. Any attempt to increase the density of the atmosphere without a corresponding increase and the gravity or the Magneto sphere, would result in any additional atmosphere escaping before it has any real effect.
Colonizing mars isn’t going to happen. Anyone with basic scientific knowledge knows this. I don’t understand why so many people are so excited about it and why respected organizations keep talking about it. Something like a research station could be possible, but there are much better ways to spend our time, money and energy, such as learning to gather resources and energy from the solar system.
transforming mars is a complete waste of resources. At the current state of mars makes mining for resources extremely easy. A colony right now can simply mine ice in the soil. However if you warm the planet up then you would lose this advantage. All that ice would melt and evaporate into the atmosphere immediately due to low pressure. This would then be lost to solar wind and low gravity. So you wouldn’t be able to use the released water. It would be lost to space. Transforming mars will simply waste all the valuable resources on mars. It’s far better to build a colony and adapt to the current cold environment. You don’t want to warm the planet up. To many very valuable resources would be lost in a warm condition.
Please Anton, don’t ever talk again about terraforming or geoengineering like it’s a good thing. It is a terrible thing! And we should never try it anywhere! To deliberately trying to change the composition of the atmosphere of a planet is a vary bad idea. It’s wrong! I hate Musk after I read about his proposal to let explode several thermonuclear devices over the Mars poles. A normal, sane person would never propose anything like that! We are guests on planet Earth, we don’t own it! It doesn’t belong to us! Nature gave us the oportunity to share it in harmony with millions of other species! So lets behave like a guest. Lets be grateful that we can breath this air.