One of the popular themes of science fiction is the concept of converting hostile planetary environments into places where human beings could live. This process is referred to as "terraforming." Many different technologies and schemes have been suggest in fiction and non-fiction publications. Until we find a practical way to travel to other stars, we are limited on considering the terraforming of planets in our own solar system. The best candidate for the process would be the planet Mars. There have been scientific papers published with detailed plans for improving the conditions on the surface of Mars.
Recently, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, was being interviewed on a TV show. He suggested that perhaps we could convert the Martian surface into a more benign environment by exploding a bunch of hydrogen bombs on the north pole of Mars. At first hearing, it sounds insane but there is actually science behind the idea.
"[Mars] is a fixer-upper of a planet, so first you're going to have to live in transparent domes, but eventually you can transform Mars into an Earth-like planet," Musk told the interviewer. "You'd warm it up. There's the fast way and the slow way. The fast way to drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles." Musk mentioned that you could warm Mars slowly with greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide but there is already so much carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere that it would be poisonous.
Nuking the poles of Mars would melt the water ice buried there. The water vapor injected into the atmosphere would provide greenhouse heating without the need for more carbon dioxide. However, scientists question whether hydrogen bombs would be powerful enough to provide the heat necessary to melt enough ice to make a difference. The biggest nuclear bomb ever made was a Soviet bomb called the Tsar. It had the equivalent power of twenty five million tons of TNT. Even if you detonated a series of bombs that powerful, it would take centuries to warm the atmosphere of Mars significantly.
There is also the question of radioactive fallout. Exploding a series of powerful nuclear bombs would throw up a tremendous amount of dust, sand and water vapor laden with radioactive particles. With the powerful wind storms that rage over the surface of Mars, the radioactive particles from the bombs would be spread all over the surface. It is true that if we were talking about centuries and some of the radioactive isotopes would decay but there would still be plenty left to threaten plants, animals and people.
Other scientists complain that we have gone to great lengths to insure that the probes we land on Mars are sterile because we are hoping to find evidence of life that evolved on Mars. The evolution of life separate from that of Earth would have huge scientific importance in our understanding of life in the universe. If we try to terraform Mars with nuclear bombs, we can probably forget about finding evidence of life that evolved there.
Elon Musk is a brilliant inventor and businessman. He has been very successful at pushing the limits of technology in the field of transportation. And he is involved in the privatization of space but perhaps his idea of nuking Mars is pushing things a little too far. Hopefully we can find a better way to render Mars more habitable if it is something that the human race decides is important.
