Would it be possible to terraform mars by planting a forest on the surface and supply it with soil and fresh water? The atmosphere isn't much different from ours, is it? AND Mars is supposed to have had a wider atmosphere in the past. Are solar winds and l

Question

Would it be possible to terraform mars by planting a forest on the surface and supply it with soil and fresh water? The atmosphere isn't much different from ours, is it? AND Mars is supposed to have had a wider atmosphere in the past. Are solar winds and lack of magnetosphere the reason for Mars's deplenished atmosphere? Is it possible in time and with great energy to create a planetary magnetic field?

Conditions on the surface of Mars would not support any terran life, and certainly nothing like trees, which even on Earth are restricted to climates that are relatively warm and wet. The atmosphere on Mars is very different from that on Earth. Our atmosphere is made primarily of nitrogen and oxygen, while the atmosphere on Mars is almost pure carbon dioxide. Also, the atmosphere of Mars is very thin, with less than 1% the pressure we have on Earth. Temperatures are so low on the surface that liquid water is unusual and doesn't persist for long. And because the martian atmosphere is largely transparent to ultraviolet light, the surface is bathed in levels of solar ultraviolet that would be lethal to trees and to most terran organisms. The reasons that Mars has such a thin atmosphere and inhospitable surface are primarily its greater distance from the Sun and its smaller mass compared to Earth. The small mass (low surface gravity) has allowed the atmosphere to gradually be lost to space. Magnetic fields are only a minor issue. No one has any idea how we could create a magnetic field, nor can I think of any reason we would want to.

David Morrison
Astrobiology Senior Scientist
March 28, 2012

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