Earth v. Mars

what about a vast array of tubes used to pump out the harmfull gasses and pump in remanufactured gasses. if we use the moons for Earth and Mars to manufacture these gasses and deliever them via a wide array of pipelines we could reverse the effects of any damage done to the atmosphere?
 
thecollage said:
what about a vast array of tubes used to pump out the harmfull gasses and pump in remanufactured gasses. if we use the moons for Earth and Mars to manufacture these gasses and deliever them via a wide array of pipelines we could reverse the effects of any damage done to the atmosphere?
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the carbon dioxide...being harmful and all...as well as water...all of these are still part of the ecosystem, removing them would mean creating even more imbalance in the ecosystem
 
I am aware of that. Maybe we should aim for a balancing/filtration system to give us "perfect air". Like an Ionic Breeze for the planets.
 
thecollage said:
I am aware of that. Maybe we should aim for a balancing/filtration system to give us "perfect air". Like an Ionic Breeze for the planets.
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humans would be the impurities. people learn when they mistake...Earth cant take more than 1 mistake...once its gone...there is no other.
 
if you clean the air the plants will come. they will bring water and water will develop life from electricity. this sounds really weird but its true.
 
thecollage said:
In reviewing the surface of Mars it appears that it has been pelted by numerous meteors and small asteroids. My initial question is; is it possible that the atmosphere of Mars at one time ceased to exist thus resulting in many hits of various sizes to the surface of the planet causing this visible damage/extinction? These missiles were unable to be burned up much as they are today on Earth.

On another note, is it now possible that the atmosphere has "re-formed" and explains why there is a relatively thin one today?

It is known that we are slowly destroying Earth's atmosphere, could we be heading in the same direction as fateful Mars?
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I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this, but the thickness of the atmosphere is not the main reason we don't see as many impact craters on earth as we do on Mars, or the moon. Weathering and plate tectonics (recycling of the crust) erases the evidence of impact craters. That is why most of the older impact craters we see on earth are within the areas of continents where the crust has been relatively undisturbed for millions of years. These areas are known loosely as the Cratons of the continents. On Mars, since there is little or no tectonic activity or atmospheric 'weathering' virtually no crustal recycling and minimal erosion occur.
 
I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this, but the thickness of the atmosphere is not the main reason we don't see as many impact craters on earth as we do on Mars, or the moon. Weathering and plate tectonics (recycling of the crust) erases the evidence of impact craters. That is why most of the older impact craters we see on earth are within the areas of continents where the crust has been relatively undisturbed for millions of years. These areas are known loosely as the Cratons of the continents. On Mars, since there is little or no tectonic activity or atmospheric 'weathering' virtually no crustal recycling and minimal erosion occur.
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True but also 70% of earths surface is covered in water... and craters have a verry short lifetime on the surface of a ocean...
 
orcot said:
True but also 70% of earths surface is covered in water... and craters have a verry short lifetime on the surface of a ocean...
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Good point. But even within the 30% we would still see at least 100 times the number of craters if these processes did not occur.
 
I think I read somewhere a while back that you need a planet with at least 25% of Eart's mass in order for it to retain its atmosphere--Mars is a lot less massive than that, and hence lost its atmosphere.
 
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I think I read somewhere a while back that you need a planet with at least 25% of Eart's mass in order for it to retain its atmosphere--Mars is a lot less massive than that, and hence lost its atmosphere.
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___________Earth_______mars______Titan
mass _______5.9E24_____6.4E23____1.3E23
mass%______100________10.7______2.2
atmos%_____100________1_________150

Your proberly not totally wrong... mars atmosphere is at the triple point of water that's proberly important
 
When Mars was first formed, it would have had enough heat (being produced by the decay of radioactive materials) for the geological cycle to start and maintain itself for probably tens of million of years. Eventually, however, the radioactive material would all have decayed to inert (or at least stable)elements. So initially, the volcanic activity would have produced an atmosphere and sustained it for a reasonable length of time. As the heat ran out though (and Mars being a smaller planet than Earth, this would have happened millions of years ago) the atmosphere would not have been replaced as the volcanism died out gradually. With a gravity weaker than Earth, Mars could not hold on to its atmospheric gases as strongly as Earth could. So ultimately the atmosphere, which would have been originally thick enough to maintain liquid water on the surface, leaked away into space. The seas froze, or became a permafrost layer under the soil. Hence Mars as it is today. One way of getting Mars to wake up would be to put a reasonably large moon (at least half the size of Mars) into orbit around Mars, close enough to warm the planet with the tidal effects on the crust. SF presently, but in 200 years time it might be commonplace.
 
most defenitley SF
In my opinion a terraformed planet that looses around 1% atmosphere every 20000 years would be acceptable, it would take around 1 380 000 years before half the atmosphere is gone (considering most of our history took place in the last 5000 years this would only result in a loss of 0,0025% for 5000 years), better scifi methodes would be to create a artificial magnetic field deflecting all the magnetisezed solar particuls that would case the blow off of the atmosphere in the first place, it would take a lot of power but then again you have the advantage of superconductors in space and their proberly avaible before the next milinium
 
Mars is losing it's atmosphere due to it's lack of a magnetic field. Solar wind removes it bit by bit.
 
I think that what happend to Mars is that some kind of solar activity (Possibly a CME hit Mars? We know Earth can be hit. Its possible Mars could be hit too.) that slowly stripped away its magnetic field, leaving it vulnarable to solar wind and radiation. By stripping of the magnetic field, I mean something like a CME bending the magnetic currents and causing gaps. The solar radiation slowly ate away the atmosphere, like what we're doing with the ozone layer.

Or something like that.
 
draqon said:
It is unclear if the martian atmosphere was indeed much thicker, however the main points to remember is that the gravity of the planet is not enough to fully sustain the atmosphere, it is obvious that in past water flowed in abundance on the planet surface due to the presence of numerous of crevices that could not have been formed by just sand.
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Doesn't flowing water imply a much thicker atmosphere? Could liquid water even exist on the surface of mars now?
 
triple point water
fig17-9.jpg

The atmosphere of Mars is now relatively thin. Atmospheric pressure on the surface varies from around 30 Pa (0.03 kPa) on Olympus Mons to over 1155 Pa (1.155 kPa) in the depths of Hellas Planitia, with a mean surface level pressure of 600 Pa (0.6 kPa).
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source wiki

So Mars has a average pressure of 0,6kpa while it takes 0,61kpa to get liquid water, personally I believe why this is the reason Mars has such a small atmosphere and many future exo planets will have abouth the same for the same reason.
Then again the max pressure is 1155kpa witch is well enough but unfortunatly to cold (hellas is in the deep south) if there is any I would suggest somewhere at a sunny side deep in the the Valles Marineris region (on or near the equator) during the hot summers.

There are offcourse always the possibilities of salts and other mixtures that can lower the riple point it all depends, but it's a possible
 
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