Question about the Martian Atmosphere

[Space_Goose]

I have read that the Martian atmosphere is composed mainly of CO2. So I was wondering if a planet from Earth Would grow on Mars. I realize that there are other factors, such as the fact that Mars is too cold for planets on earth but I mainly concerned with the atmosphere. I know that the atmosphere on Mars is thinner than earth and has less atmosphereic pressure. So I wasn't sure if the Martian Atmosphere would be capable of supporting planet life. Just Curious.

Thanks

 

[MeteorWayne]

I'll assume you meants plants, not planets

Well, there is C02. One problem is, it's not much. Andrew knows the exact number, but it's close to being in space based on the earths atmopsheric density.

Also the sun intensity is lower.

The question is also are there enough of the proper nutrients in the soil; that is still being investigated. (Phoenix collected data that is still being analyzed to help answer that)

Also it's very cold, how many plants do well on earth at minus 40 degrees?

So the answer is maybe, but it would be a challenge.

 

[Fallingstar1971]

Sunlight and heat..........

How can we make sunlight and heat???

UV lamps and ..........here it comes.......nuclear power. (o Im going to get it now)

Radioactive decay IS an efficient form of heat. Added to some UV lamps mounted in a greenhouse, at least to start.

But regardless of what we do, there is still the problem of the missing magnetic field. What point is there to transforming if the Sun is going to undo everything we do?

Nature tried this and failed. The results are located 4th rock out from the Sun. If your serious, the first thing you need to think of is, "Where did nature go wrong?" And, "Can we REALLY do any better?"

Star

 

[origin]

I have read that the Martian atmosphere is composed mainly of CO2. So I was wondering if a planet from Earth Would grow on Mars. I realize that there are other factors, such as the fact that Mars is too cold for planets on earth but I mainly concerned with the atmosphere. I know that the atmosphere on Mars is thinner than earth and has less atmosphereic pressure. So I wasn't sure if the Martian Atmosphere would be capable of supporting planet life. Just Curious.

Thanks

There is not enough atmosphere on mars to support any multicellular life from earth. The atmospheric pressure is less than 10 mbars - which would be considered a pretty good vacuum on earth. If you were to experience a 10 mbar vacuum you would swell up like a baloon and your blood would boil. Your whole day would be ruined.

The atmoshereic pressure at sea level on earth is about 1000 mbar. At 30,000 ft, domestic airliner altitudes, the air pressure is still about 300 mbar.

 

[Space_Goose]

Yes you are right MeteorWayne, I did mean plant.

Thanks Origin, that really answered my question. I was reading a website which was talking about Terraforming Mars and how easy it would be. I didn't quit agree with much of anything on the site. One of its points was that we should just transplant trees from Earth to Mars to produce Oxegen in the Martian Atmosphere. I thought that idea just sounded too easy. I knew that first of all, it was way to cold on Mars. I wasn't sure about the soil content on Mars and whether it contained the appropriate nutrients or not. I also new that the planets would need a water supply so they would have to find someway to transport water from the polar ice cap. I just had no idea if an Earth plant could even survive in the Martian Atmosphere. It sounds like it definitely would not.

Thanks for the replies.

 

[Gravity_Ray]

LOL well let’s not give up so easily. Hold that thought.

If you mean can an Earth tree grow on Mars, well the answer is for sure NO.

But there are plants and there are plants. This is a very large family of living organisms on Earth, and there is what would be considered plants that CAN grow on Mars with some human help. We can genetically modify these plants to make them more resistant to the issue encountered on Mars.

For example, you can make them with very short life cycles, you can reduce their moisture content to practically zero, you can put them in small containers with little generators that produce heat for them... etc...
Plants can also be much more resistant to low pressures (versus say a soft tissue critter like us). The International Society for Horticultural Science has some interesting ideas on plants on Mars on their website. Its dry reading lol but could be fun if your into that kind of thing. Remember also that when plants developed on the early Earth the conditions were rather extreme. Life and environment does a dance were one pulls/pushes the other.

There is also a whole group of planet life called cyanobacteria (OK some may disagree with me about calling a cyanobacteria a planet, but hey take this as a thought experiment) that are tougher than you would expect. We can start with those and do some gene changes to make them even better suited for life on Mars.

This is not a straight forward No; this is a No with an asterisk.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Yes, I would "OK some may disagree with me about calling a cyanobacteria a planet, but hey take this as a thought experiment", A planet must be a hydrodynamically stable large object in a heliocentric orbit (at least in our system).

Now plants are another thing entirely

 

[Gravity_Ray]

Yes, I would "OK some may disagree with me about calling a cyanobacteria a planet, but hey take this as a thought experiment", A planet must be a hydrodynamically stable large object in a heliocentric orbit (at least in our system).

Now plants are another thing entirely

Woopsies I'm blaming that one on Space_Goose

 

[dragon04]

One other thing worth mentioning is that even with a thicker Martian atmosphere, there is no ozone layer to protect biological systems from constant, fatal bombardment by UV radiation, nor is there a protective magnetosphere such as around our Earth to stop more energetic radiation.

 

[Gravity_Ray]

One other thing worth mentioning is that even with a thicker Martian atmosphere, there is no ozone layer to protect biological systems from constant, fatal bombardment by UV radiation, nor is there a protective magnetosphere such as around our Earth to stop more energetic radiation.

Well yes and no.

Terraforming is not for the faint of heart or short term thinkers.

The ozone issue can be resolved with human ingenuity.

This is a good paper on this subject. Margarita Marinova is both smart and good looking, and she owns a cute dog too.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast09feb_1.htm

You also speak of the magnetosphere like you know something others dont. Here is some good reading for you.

http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/ ... /mars_mag/

I suspect you are correct, but this is not a done deal either.

Thank God at least I didnt have to use the word plant again.. MW now has me so paranoid.

 

[neilsox]

The partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the Mars lowlands is about 20 times that of Earth at 18,000 feet, and a few plants grow that high when the temperature is above freezing = zero c. Huge mirrors on the moons of Mars or farther away, can keep Mars warmer than zero c most of the time, so three problems are solved. The mirrors would also add some sunlight for photosynthesis. The Mars plants need some fertilizer and water. A few Earth plants can live without oxygen, but most do need oxygen as well as carbon dioxide. The lack of symbiotic organisums would be the death of some plant varieties. The extremely low humidity would cause excessive water loss for most plants and the soil likely contains chemicals that are toxic to plants. Winter lasts almost twice as long. My guess is most plants will survive the radiation (due to weak magnetic field and no ozone) long enough to produce seeds or spores, so maybe. Clearly plants can grow on Mars inside a green house. Neil

 

[moreandless]

A few years ago,not realizing that Chris McKay was already pounding this drum, I started emailing
some astronomers and nasa engineers suggesting that a good beginning for terraforming mars
could be had by interfering with the orbit of 25 km comet tempel-tuttle ;crashing it into mars in
january 2021,introducing heat and moisture into that impoverished ecosytem. more such efforts
could include bringing phobos down before its appointed time(from its doomed retrograde orbit).
meanwhile the technical challenge of moving a large object out of its orbit may enhance our ability
to protect the earth from dangerous events on down the road. Samples of the responses range
from polite..."we do not currently possess the ability to alter the orbits of large bodies..." to
"why would you suggest terraforming mars even before we have had a chance to study its
geologic and possibly biologic history?" .Since i am not a blogger at heart i try to boil it down to
'we had better learn to consider things in utilitarian terms( I'm sure the chinese will);humanity does
not currently have a trillion dollars to study the mating rituals of martian bacteria. No offence
intended to those considering seeding mars with engineered lichens et al. Mars can live again
if we have the courage and vision to bring it to pass; but first lets spend umpteen trillions
on the arts of WAR..but I digress.Sorry

 

[MeteorWayne]

Can you try that with sentences and paragraphs? Sheesh, that's hard to readinonecontinuousblurblikethat.

Since Tempel-Tuttle doesn't come anywhere near Mars in 2021 (it will be near Uranus' orbit at that time), how do you propose to do that? In fact (I know facts are a real pain) it doesn't come any closer to Mars or the Sun than Saturn's orbit until 2027! No wonder they politely ignored you!!

 

[moreandless]

Its been so many years since I had that conversation I had to look the comet up again.
9P /tempel 1; actually Jan 2022. Did that last come thru without punctuation?
macintosh unit here???

 

[MeteorWayne]

Try again. 9P/Tempel 1 is not particularly close to Mars in 2022. Unless you consider 0.6 AU close...

What is the distance you calculated?

Keep guessing...you'll find one eventually

 

[moreandless]

I beg to differ;such rudeness from a seeming concerned scientist is unseemly
and you missed the point as well ;goodnight

 

[MeteorWayne]

You can beg to differ all you want. Do you consider 0.6 AU close? Venus is closer to earth than that at least once a year.

Yes, I am a concerned scientist, One concerned with facts and truth, not ideas that are based in fallacy.

I'm not being rude, I am just asking if you have bothered to check the facts about what you are asserting. Or if you are just making stuff up.

Show me I'm wrong, and I'll be happy to admit my mistake.

Edit: What was the point?

 

[Gravity_Ray]

I am going to carefully sidestep a couple of posts about slamming things into Mars and go back to the plant issue.

I think that Mars soil is probably as deadly to plant life as Mars atmosphere, but there is Mars like soil on Earth as well, in a place called the Atacama desert. There are places there that if you looked for life, you will find non. To presume that because there is no life in Atacama desert then there is no life on Earth is silly and this same argument holds for Mars.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/a ... /5647/1018

Here is another good link for why MSL is going to enlighten us beyond the MER projects about what really is going on at Mars.

http://astep.arc.nasa.gov/PDF/BadaASTEP.pdf

If this experiment proves that there are no organic compounds beyond some simple stuff, then we should seriously consider loading Mars with engineered bacteria life and allow them to start "fixing" the Mars soil for later terraforming work.

One more thing, so far we have only talked about surface plant life on Mars, there is a whole class of conversations about sub-surface planet life on Mars that is just as interesting.

 

[moreandless]

the subject of terraforming was on the table
again,where do you find better orbital Approximations?

 

[kg]

I think one big limiting nutrient on mars is going to nitrogen. Yes, plants do need CO2 to make carbohydrates and structural sugars (cellulose) but you also need nitrogen to make nucleotides for DNA and amino acids for proteins. Nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere is made available to plants by being converted it into ammonia by bacteria in the soil (Nitrogen Fixation). Seeing that earth's atmosphere is almost 80% nitrogen and Mars’s tenuous atmosphere is less than 3% you’re going to need to bring ALOT of Miracle Gro with you!

 

[neilsox]

Hi moreandless: Except for the name of the comet, and when it will come close to Mars, your proposal is reasonable. Your punctuation appears to be OK, but the number of characters per line conflicted with the number per line for spacedotcom forum.
The Big problem is we have not adjusted the orbit of any comets, moons, or asteroids, and it will take several decades and about a trillion dollars to learn how to adjust orbits. Also there is reasonable doubt, that a mass gain would occur on impact as some Mars mass would be ejected into space from the crater. While we do have some idea of the surface composition of comets, the interior is mostly guesswork. Also the heat gain from the impact, would likely warm Mars less than 0.001 degrees f for the year following impact. Neil

 

[Gravity_Ray]

I think one big limiting nutrient on mars is going to nitrogen. Yes, plants do need CO2 to make carbohydrates and structural sugars (cellulose) but you also need nitrogen to make nucleotides for DNA and amino acids for proteins. Nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere is made available to plants by being converted it into ammonia by bacteria in the soil (Nitrogen Fixation). Seeing that earth's atmosphere is almost 80% nitrogen and Mars’s tenuous atmosphere is less than 3% you’re going to need to bring ALOT of Miracle Gro with you!

Nitrogen is a bit less than 80% of atmosphere on Earth and it’s probably the 7th most abundant element in the universe yet Mars has very little. This lack of nitrogen almost more than anything else makes me believe there is and never was any life on Mars. Yes Kg, Nitrogen is a real problem on Mars. At first you can mine what little there is in Mars atmosphere and later try and make some nitrogen from the sodium on Mars, but unless you are going to get real science fictional and come up with shuttles that can mine it from the Jovian system and bring it to Mars this will be a serious impediment to Mars teraforming, but one step at a time. You don’t need that much of it at first to get going.

 

[3488]

Yes the Nitrogen issue is a deadly serious one concerning terraforming. Also the main point is to thicken up the martian atmosphere. At the Aeroid (the Martian equivalent of sea level) the atmospheric pressure is similar to Earth's atmosphere at approx 32 KM / 20 miles above sea level.

Even in the lowest points in Hellas, it is still the same as some 29 KM / 18 miles above sea level on Earth & at the summit of Olympus Mons, it is very nearly space, only approx 0.6 MB!!!!

The atmosphere will need maintaining, there is no known active volcanism to help maintain it & the magnetosphere is non existent, so the solar wind will erode it.

Mars is the way it is due to natural processes & the physical properties of Mars. I suspect terraforming Mars is nothing more than fantasy & science fiction.

Andrew Brown.

 

[Gravity_Ray]

Andrew from reading many of your posts I respect your opinion and knowledege a lot. With all due respect in this case I disagree with you. On page one on one of my posts there is a link to "global warming" on Mars that speaks about thickening the Mars atmosphere. Also it’s possible to teraform Mars knowing that the surface will always be unfriendly to humans but with enough work, it may be possible to walk around there, like we walk around Antarctica. I know you’re probably going to say, so what, what will that gain us? Well that goes to the reason for teraforming: For me it’s about expanding human presence from one world to multiple worlds, even if that presence is tenuous at best. Never put your eggs in one basket.

Is teraforming beyond our current capabilities? Yes, but before we went to the Moon it was also beyond our "current" capability. Things that challenge us to the limit of our understanding are only science fiction until they are done, and in the process we better ourselves. Earth is also the way it is due to it's natural processes & it's physical properties, but we as a species are sure doing our best to change it.

As I have said before teraforming Mars is a generational process. For many people (I’m not including you here) they want things done like a 1 hour TV show. First comes the problem, then the solution, then a happy ending ( :lol: well not that kind). But teraforming is a problem, followed by a problem, followed by another problem, then we die, then our kids have a problem, then another problem, etc… and then it’s solved, then comes the happy ending.

My wife tells me I'm a dreamer all the time, but I just hate the word "can't". There was a tread here somewhere and the title was "what do you hate to hear" or "what makes you mad" or something like that. For me it’s the word "can’t".

We can.

 

[moreandless]

thanks for that neilsox, yes indeed the challenges would be formidable and like our friends who
are similarly interested in this subject I too wish to see mankinds' footprint enlarged.
questions of our maturity aside, on a very utilitarian level the real estate and the revival
of frontiersmanship would be good. Kim Stanley Robinson comes to mind,an epic effort that.
As for format i'll try to take advantage of the 'preview' mode henceforth.