Science fiction authors have dreamed for decades of terraforming Mars for human habitation. Previous studies have suggested that it would take enormous effort and centuries to accomplish this. New studies suggest that just a few specks of particles added to Mars’s atmosphere would heat it by over fifty degrees Fahrenheit in months. This would potentially make it hospitable for liquid water.
This new terraforming method relies on resources easily procurable from Mars. The basic concept is to manufacture small rod-like particles using Martian dust which is a material rich in a lot of iron and aluminum. Such artificial particles could trap the escaping heat of the Sun and scatter some of the light back to the surface. This would boost the weak greenhouse effect of Mars. The result would be to warm the planet to an extent far greater than previous proposals that would either require shipping gases from Earth or mining rare minerals on Mars.
Colin McInnes is a space engineer at the University of Glasgow who was not involved in the study. He said, “It’s not that often you get some quite new, innovative idea for terraforming. The gap between Mars’s current state and its habitability may be much less of a chasm than we usually envision.”
This research team from the University of Chicago and the University of Central Florida created particles approximately the size of commercially available glitter that can trap heat much better than the dust on the surface of Mars. These engineered nanoparticles in very small amounts could bring with them optical effects that are far beyond any conventional expectations.
Edwin Kite is a planetary scientist at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the study. He said, “You would still need millions of tons to warm the planet, but that’s five thousand times less than you would need with previous proposals to globally warm Mars. Calculations suggest that pumping these particles continuously at 30 liters per second could warm Mars by as much as more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit with discernible effects within months. The warming would also be reversible, stopping within a few years if the particle release was stopped.”
The researchers caution that much work remains. It’s still not clear how quickly the engineered dust would fall out of Mars’ atmosphere. As the planet heats up, water could begin to condense on the particles. It would drop back to the surface as rain, another layer in the already complex climate.
Kite said, “Climate feedbacks are hard to model.” A great deal more data would be required both from Mars and from Earth if impacts were to work as expected. Any actual implementation would need to proceed slowly and reversibly.
This method represents a huge step forward in research on turning the desert planet into a potential abode as the Earth’s sister. The study under discussion concerns warming Mars to temperatures at which microbial life could survive and perhaps even sustain the raising of food crops. Kite concluded, “This research opens new avenues for exploration and potentially brings us one step closer to the long-held dream of establishing a sustainable human presence on Mars”.
The study is titled “Feasibility of making Mars habitable with artificially created global warming using only current technology.” It utilized Northwestern’s high-performance Quest computing facility as well as the University of Chicago Research Computing Center. Other co-authors of the study include Ramses Ramirez of the University of Central Florida and Liam Steele, formerly a postdoctoral researcher at UChicago, now with the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.