Bild: Getty Images
The now retired NASA chief scientist has a plan to make Mars and Venus habitable for humans.
Jim Green has worked for the US space agency NASA for more than forty years, since 1980, the past three years as Chief Scientist. He has now retired at the beginning of this year. Before that, he has a farewell interview with the New York Times given, in which he formulates fantastic ideas for a transformation of Mars and Venus.
Green relies on terraforming the two planets closest to the earth in order to make them habitable. The biggest problem with Mars and Venus is that, unlike Earth, they do not have a magnetic field. Solar winds can tear apart the atmosphere undisturbed. So Green wants to create such a magnetic field artificially.
Electromagnetic ring is supposed to protect
Regarding Venus, Green only says he wants to use a physical shield to block solar radiation to the planet and thus reduce the temperature. With regard to a transformation of Mars, however, he already has a specific concept.
Green is currently working on a scientific essay on the exact implementation, of which a preliminary version is already available accessible is. However, this was not particularly well received in the student council, because his colleagues were not fans of terraforming, according to Green.
Bild: Getty Images
However, Green has found five colleagues who together with him explain how Mars could be equipped with a so-called magnetosphere. The most promising concept here is the placement of a gigantic electromagnetic ring between the sun and Mars.
Mars moons provide the components
This ring would consist of material that would be extracted into space by the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos and then ionized. The electricity to activate this artificial magnetic field would be provided by nuclear fusion reactors – which unfortunately do not yet work in practice. The amount of electricity then required would, however, be lower than the total electricity consumption of the world in 2020, i.e. not completely – in the truest sense of the word – astronomical.
If the whole process is technically possible at some point, it would probably take several centuries, according to the article. Then, however, Mars – protected from the harmful influence of the sun – could rebuild an atmosphere and become much more homely for us humans.