It’s the next incredible thing for Jim Green of the NSA as he bids farewell after 40 years of service to the NSA, 12 of them as director of the planetary science division and 3 (the last) as chief scientist.
Jim Green likes the light and he took advantage of it to release his scoop and the New York Times made its front page, it refers to Green’s “plans” to terraform Mars and make it a habitable planet for humans.
His great project is known: he has already published the first extracts last November. It is essentially based on the heating and thickening of the atmosphere of Mars a giant magnetic shield between the red planet and the sun. This sounds like science fiction to me, but I don’t have enough expertise to refute it.
In any case, the terraforming system of the Red Planet would bring the temperature and pressure levels above the point where humans could walk on the surface without a spacesuit. And most importantly, without seeing blood boil in their bodies.
“It’s doable,” Green told the Times. “The planet lends itself to it 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?
Jim Green mentions his plan to terraform Mars could allow humans to start growing plants on Mars and have the opportunity to live long-term away from Earth. He has a passion for finding life on other planets and has proven it on several occasions.
Anyway, it will be a complicated mission to make the earthlings adhere to this project, on the other hand, not everybody is so flexible with ideas on how to terraform (read also: “manipulate”) whole planets. The doubts, however, were not born yesterday and are legitimate.
Earlier in 2018 Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium, argued that we could turn the surface of Mars into an ecological nightmare, given our proven ability to create problems on Earth as well.
It is clear that Walkowicz was not even convinced that terraforming Mars was physically possible. “Despite terraforming’s hold on the popular imagination, it remains firmly in the realm of fiction. Mars seems to lack even the minimal reserves of carbon dioxide needed to pump out its atmosphere and heat it.”
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