Terraforming possible? or is it just sci-fi?

[semaphore]

Hey I was just thinking, scientists are spending so much time on trying to find habitable planets and planets with life on them. Are they even working on ways to terraform planets like mars or even the moon.

Conceptual work on terraforming has been done. Not much has been made of it though, because it's not like humanity is at the stage where it can take advantage of a terraformed mars to justify the cost, or united to the point of being able to embark on such a venture, or plans far enough into the future to want to finance it.

Thing is, no one's really spending that much time on looking for planets either. The comparison is kind of like searching for word documents on windows, versus writing a whole new essay. Although writing a new essay is more meaningful in the long run (prior to commercial interstellar travel), it's a lot more effort to get anything done.

[Trotheus]

Depends on the planet / moon. The earth has a magnetic field, which both helps it keep its atmosphere by deflecting the solar wind and protects its life from cosmic rays and other space radiation. The atmosphere it allows the earth to keep protects its life from UV radiation. Life as we know it can't survive without a magnetic field to protect it from a nearby star.

The earth also has a single large moon which keeps its axis relatively stable at about 23 degrees. Without that terraforming faces further challenges because the poles can become the equator at any time.

The idea is most often thrown around with Mars as the candidate, probably due to Total Recall, and terraforming Mars would never work.

[herpecin]

Hey I was just thinking, scientists are spending so much time on trying to find habitable planets and planets with life on them. Are they even working on ways to terraform planets like mars or even the moon. It sounds like sci-fi to me but it would be really cool if it was possible to do, even if just in a small scale as an experiment, is this something scientists are looking into?

Sorry for the english, not my native language.

changing an atmosphere would be difficult and take a long time, but it could be done. adding one where it doesnt exist would be futile.

if a planet has the capabilities to hold an atmosphere it would already be holding one. mars used to have an atmosphere, but then it's core cooled down and it lost it's magnetic shielding, and then the sun ripped it away.

the most practical application for "terraforming" is to increase the size of the habitable zone. if a planet is just a bit too far away to have liquid water, bam we up the greenhouse gasses and warm it up.

[Deleted]

I guess it would be easyer to terraform earth into a more habitable state once it becomes unhabitable (nuclear wars).

[Deleted]

Why is this thread still up. ANYTHING is possible if you have an unlimited amount of energy and time. Given this, terraforming is very much possible, just not in our lifetime, or the next, or the next, or the next. Maybe 500-1000 years from now.

[Pony Soldier]

It's possible but with the technology we have today, hell no. We will never see it happen in our time unfortunately unless if we're lucky and aliens come down and offer us help. You also have to think what is going on in those top secret military bases too like Area 51. There are bases like Area 51 all over the world that are super top secret so who knows, they may be working on something down there that we don't know about. If that's the case then why are they keeping it secret? Or maybe I'm just talking crazy.