Terraforming

[YetAnotherBob]

I don't know if anyone already said this, but we could restore Mars's atmosphere by making a few factories and releasing enough CO2 to keep heat in. Then we can terraform Mars.

The problem for Mars is that it already has as much atmosphere as it can hold in the presence of solar wind and solar UV radiation, both of which strip away atmosphere, taking the lightest components first.
Yes, there are substantial carbonate deposits on Mars, though not enough to provide significant atmosphere. But release it and it will be lost to space, probably as rapidly as you can produce it.
It isn't just a problem for Mars either. The dinosaurs had a thicker atmosphere than we do today. Twice as early, the coal forests grew in an atmosphere that is estimated to have been thirty percent thicker than ours. Earth is also losing atmosphere, slowly.
These are the reasons that we presently believe that a Martian Civilization will be essentially an indoor civilization.
But then, so is New York, or any other quite large city essentially.
That's the bad news. The good Anews is tat it can be done, using technology we have today, or even what we had thirty or forty years ago. Life would be hard at first, but after a while it could be quite comfortable. Food, clothing, air, water and food can be produced and in abundance if given time and effort. The people who are wiling to live with the problems in order to eventually have the benefits are called Pioneers. Pioneers are the people who built the USA.
However, Mars won't be the end product of civilization. On this thread, there have been some advocating building totally artificial habitats in space. Jeff Bezos is on record as being in this camp.
If we tried Mars now, as Robert Zubrin and Elon Musk want us to, there are a great many things we don't know that might just kill us (or them. I'm probably too old to be considered.)
But going to the Moon first, along with building some large orbital facilities to prepare the way and in the meantime, starting large industry off planet would not only pay for all the effort we as a species have put into space flight, it will also point out to us as a species what is important there.
Some folks want us to just send colonies directly to the asteroids. Such folks commonly refer to planets as 'Gravity Holes". Instead of holes they sometimes say wells or traps.
Personally, I think we will do all three. First off should be establishing economically self sufficient bases on the Moon. It's just closer. This moon group will import the things it needs that it can't make itself from Earth. That amount imported needs to be as small as possible because it's very expensive to import things from Earth. Recycling will be draconian even when compared to Greenpeace proposals. When it costs thousands of dollars per kilogram for food or anything else, you don't waste anything. What's true for food is also true for clothing and tools.
What is important for the Moon is vital for Mars. On the Moon you are a week away from emergency resupply. On Mars, it's up to three years away. That's a long time to have to hold your breath.
When we can comfortably live on the Moon, then we can successfully tackle Mars. Then we will know what the issues actually are. As it is, we are only guessing. Not knowing what we don't know or not even suspecting where the holes are in our understanding of what is needed is not a place I want to be.
So yes, colonize Mars, but first colonize tbuilding bases and towns in HEO (High Earth Orbit) along with it will make the asteroid miners of SF an achievable reality along with it.
It's not pick one of the three options as the only thing we can do, it's doing all three as we are able.

 

[YetAnotherBob]

I don't know if anyone already said this, but we could restore Mars's atmosphere by making a few factories and releasing enough CO2 to keep heat in. Then we can terraform Mars.

CO2 is a terrible Greenhouse gas. It's popular politically here on Earth because that's the one we can measure and perhaps regulate. Water vapor is many times stronger than CO

Catastrophe and YetAnotherBob,

First to YetAnotherBob, Earth's Magnetic Field's power at its surface is about 25 to 65 microteslas, so we can just do some calculations and make it sure that the Artificial Magnetosphere is powerful enough to be in that range but not less than that and that does not disturbs satellites orbiting the Earth. And, then use the rest of the electricity to power up space colonies, space centres and other things.

And now answering to both of you, sirs. We will first mine C type asteroids for carbon. And then select a small patch of 15 square km on the near side of the moon, cover it up by a huge dome. And then mix carbon with the Moon's soil within that area. And then vaporize it by 100 m 10 times up to 1 km deep and make huge amounts of oxygen and the part that could not be converted to air can be used for different purposes like making machines etc. And then bring 500 m deep soil from Earth and put it on the vaporized space. And then plant plants and also give Nitrogen that was mined from asteroids to the small atmosphere within the dome and create a whole city after that.

Earth's magnetosphere doesn't hold much gas in. What it does is deflect the solar wind. To hold the gas in requires a much stronger field. Mars doesn't have that shielding effect, so much more gas is stripped off of the weaker gravitational field.
As a side note, the magnetic field for the overall earth is 1 Tesla. It's how the unit is defined. The field strength at any given point is much weaker, but that's the strength of the overall field. Not that this makes any difference to your point. Within the limits of what you said, it is valid.
Mars has almost no magnetic field. It also has a weaker gravitational field.
Gas is stripped from a planet by two things.
First is the Solar Wind. This is a stream of plasma that moves outward from the sun and can impact and move gas off of a planet. As the solar wind is a plasma, it can be deflected by a magnetic field. Earth does this for us. The result is the Van Allen Radiation Belts. All that solar wind is pushed aside. Spacecraft have to go through it to get to the Moon or anywhere else. Geosynchronous satellites are right in the middle of that, and so have to be designed to operate in a radiation environment. A near Earth strength magnet would result in a Van Allen type radiation field around the moon, which would allow for some atmospheric build up there.
The second type is the kick that solar light radiation gives to gas molecules. If they get enough of a kick, they can escape the planets orbit altogether. Hydrogen and helium do get this much of a kick in out stratosphere. Oxygen and nitrogen do not. So e.arth loses hydrogen slowly, and helium is rare here.
The Moon has only around a sixth the gravity of Earth, so things six times heavier can be knocked off by solar UV. This happens fairly slowly, but over a couple of centuries, the moon would be stripped of oxygen and nitrogen even without any solar wind.
Gasses in the higher atmosphere are commonly in a plasma state however. Plasma can be influenced by a magnetic field. The strength though needs to be many times stronger.
But a very powerful magnetic field is needed to actualy confine a plasma against a vacuum. Still, it has been done for small surface areas with a quite strong magnetic field. Doing this is what I thought you were proposing, hence the impossibly strong field strengths. They are possible, but not with any currently existing technology.
Problems like that are why all our current proposals involve building structures to contain the air, water and so forth. It's easier to move the light than to confine the gasses.
but you are on a good track there. Keep trying. Solve the problems one at a time as you find out about them. That's what the Pro's do.

 

[Catastrophe]

I think we need to consider carefully why we need to leave Planet Earth and where we need to go. There are advantages to the Lagrangian Points for some purposes. I was a bit disappointed when I had this idea, especially L1 which has constant sunlight but, of course, when I did a search I found Wiki Lagrange point colonization with some considerations I had not thought of.

Have we not, as a species, the common sense to limit our population? I have been saying for years that if we don't do it, Nature will do it for us. I am not just thinking of coronavirus, but there may be worse for future generations to face.

So, I don't want to get off topic, but Lagrangian colonization is closely related. Perhaps it is not worth a title of its own and just this brief mention will suffice.

Is this constant drive to colonise the Universe (terraforming or just limited environments) based on increasing new markets in our sales-driven world? Probably not - just naturally filling environmental niches. No - it is beyond that too because we have 'progressed' to creating new environments, not just filling them.

Do you think that we need to separate Lagrangian colonisation from terraforming?

Cat

 

[YetAnotherBob]

I think we need to consider carefully ...i Lagrange point colonization ...

Cat

The best reason just now is to move heavy (high polluting) industry off earth to someplace where such pollution won't matter. The Moon is one such place. The Moon is desirable because there is a quarter million miles of isolation, plus, while the cost to get anything there is literally Astronomical, the cost to ship it back to earth is pennies per kilogram using electronic catapults. True, you need to be careful where you aim your cargo shipments, but that we can already do.
The Lagrange Points are desirable because anything placed in there stays in there. It's not however a point, it's a region. That's why it is identified as a good place for manufactured cities. It's Lagrange Points 4 and 5 that have that properties. The other three are unstable. Keeping anything there requires constant minor adjustments.
As for the other places often mentioned, there are different reasons for different places.
Asteroids are for mining, as is much of the Moon. Like past mine settlements, the asteroids will be booming until they are mined out, then they will be abandoned.
Mars is suggested because it has everything needed for life to be supported, with enough technological support. For Mars, from Ray Bradbury to Werner von Braun to Robert Zubrin to Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk, the reason for going is to provide an island of humanity that could survive a catastrophe on earth and continue humanity and civilization.
Mars also makes a good stopping off point for trips to the asteroid belt and the gas giant planets too.
This comes from the sorts that feel that there are really only two choices for us as a people. Stay at home and die, or expand and live. It's what the Human Race has done for thousands or even tens of thousands of years.
I don't like the dying option.

 

[Catastrophe]

Y A Bob,

"Stay at home and die, or expand and live."
This depends on time scales.

I agree stay at home and overpopulate and die - either voluntarily by suicidal overcrowding, as in expand and die, or involuntarily like (very topical) disease or other effects such as starvation, or severe mental illness (inc war).

On a longer time scale including (but not exclusively) there is expansion of the Sun on a 3 - 5 billion year time scale (if we lasted that long).

So, stay at home and do not overpopulate and live - or expand and die - in the shorter term through overpopulation OR
Stay at home and die, expand and live - on the longer time scale.

What I do disagree with is uninhibited overpopulation nolens volens

My policy would be to limit overpopulation (or possibly let disease or circumstance do it for us though planning is preferable) but be aware that longer term dangers exist and need planning for.

To conclude with my favourite subject (reflected in my moniker) - asteroids. I believe that the main danger is in the past (the Late Heavy Bombardment) however, a wild star or large oumuamua type could still dislodge many or the odd one fatal object(s) from the outer Solar System. This would, I agree, be cause for early consideration. Our ability to cope with a rogue asteroid depends 100% on its size. Some will be too large to 'nudge' and some (already have) blindsided us - particularly those coming out of the Sun.

I hope you will consider this a fair response but, as always, I am open to discussion.

Cat

 

[Moni999]

But if we did settle on mars, and put a bit more on the atmosphere, it could trap enough heat. This means the crust will get hotter, and then the mantle, and a bit of the core, or even part of the mantle, could turn liquid, generating a magnetic field to block from solar winds and UV rays.

 

[Catastrophe]

Moni999

If you did 'put a bit more on the atmosphere' it would simply disappear into spece because there is insifficient to gravity to hold it.

Please do not ignore replies and just jump to a different question. Try to satisfy yourself with an answer. If you are not convinced please try to follow that question until you have a good answer. Nobody wants to take the time to respond and then have that response ignored.

Cat

 

[Wolfshadw]

Let me start off with saying that I am neither scientist nor mathematician. Even if the technology and unlimited financing did exist, I'm not sure any of this is even feasible, but I've been mulling this over in my head for the last few days and it seems there are three major obstacles to terra-forming Mars

1) Mars does not have a sufficient Magnetosphere to limit the loss of atmosphere to space.
2) Mars does not have sufficient gravity in order to prevent the lighter elements from achieving escape velocity.
3) Mars does not currently have sufficient atmosphere to provide enough atmospheric pressure to allow for liquid water on the surface.

As I understand it, the Earth's Magnetosphere is generated by motion of the planet's molten, outer core around the solid metallic inner core. The problem on Mars is that the the outer core has cooled to the extent that its motion has slowed and the geodynamo no longer produces a strong enough Magnetosphere around the planet.

Aside from temporarily moving the orbit of Mars outward to become a moon of Jupiter and letting Jupiter's gravity crack Mars like a walnut, how do we reheat to Mars interior? Once we figure that out, then we just need to place an object of sufficient mass in orbit around the planet which will slow the re-cooling effect of the planet's interior the same way our moon slows the cooling of the Earth's core.

So that takes care of the solar wind stripping away the atmosphere. Next comes increasing the gravity to prevent the escape of the lighter element within the atmosphere. I read an interesting article (found here) about using the properties of graphene to create mass. Since human occupation on Mars would need (for the time being) in an enclosed environment, we create domes where graphene is used for the infrastructure. Over the course of hundreds or, more likely, thousands of years, we'll need more and more domes in order to house the human populace and its infrastructure (farms/manufacturing/etc...). The global coverage of these graphene domes creates sufficient artificial mass to augment the planetary gravity and the loss of lighter elements within the upper atmosphere is reduced significantly.

Finally, Mars does not, currently have a sufficient atmosphere to sustain liquid water on the surface. It is my hope that the process of rewarming of the planet's interior as well as the introduction of a moon like object in a stable orbit around the planet would reignite global volcanism. With a stable magnetosphere and an artificially augmented gravitational field, the out-gassing of global volcanism would replenish the atmosphere, increasing the atmospheric pressure to the point where liquid water could exist on the surface.

Though we'd still need respirators and likely face masks, we probably could, finally, walk the surface of Mars without bulky space suits.

So those are my wild theories/ideas. I welcome any comments!

-Wolf sends

 

[IG2007]

Planets and satellites with low gravity like Mars, our Moon etc cannot hold an atmosphere. You can keep supplying with gases forever but they will simply leak away. Best chance is limited constructions of domes or caves rather than trying to change the whole planet / moon.

There is an old saying which is very true here:
Easier said than done,

At least I can make a dome, and make an artificial atmosphere and an artificial magnetic field. Can't I?

 

[Catastrophe]

At least I can make a dome, and make an artificial atmosphere and an artificial magnetic field. Can't I?

Dome in theory YES yourself NO
Artificial atmosphere NO
Artificial magnetic field NO
Cat

 

[IG2007]

I still don't understand that why can't I make an artificial magnetic field?

 

[Catastrophe]

I still don't understand that why can't I make an artificial magnetic field?

How come I find references like this?

"Green and his colleagues admit this idea is “fanciful,” but it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility. We might have the ability to build a magnetic shield for Mars in the next few decades".

 

[Catastrophe]

Have you seen this post in the Moon section?
It seems equally relevant to Mars, as mentioned.

"I think Mars and the Moon really are, in terms of their economic potential and therefore potential for colonisation, rubbish - more comparable in lack of opportunities to the High Atacama desert (only worse) than the extraordinarily resource rich and already well populated Nth America, where low cost existing technology in widespread use was sufficient to suppress native resistance and exploit the existing resources. You can't let longhorn cattle loose and expect the herds to grow on Mars any more than in the Atacama and you won't be able to drive them on their own feet and you on your horse to meat hungry cities and use the money to buy essential equipment to grow your dryland economy. Except in the most superficial and misleading ways, The Moon and Mars are not much like North America during the "golden age" of European exploration, conquest and colonisation."

 

[Catastrophe]

Have you seen this post in the Moon section?
It seems equally relevant to Mars, as mentioned.
C and P from Ken Fabian:
"I think Mars and the Moon really are, in terms of their economic potential and therefore potential for colonisation, rubbish - more comparable in lack of opportunities to the High Atacama desert (only worse) than the extraordinarily resource rich and already well populated Nth America, where low cost existing technology in widespread use was sufficient to suppress native resistance and exploit the existing resources. You can't let longhorn cattle loose and expect the herds to grow on Mars any more than in the Atacama and you won't be able to drive them on their own feet and you on your horse to meat hungry cities and use the money to buy essential equipment to grow your dryland economy. Except in the most superficial and misleading ways, The Moon and Mars are not much like North America during the "golden age" of European exploration, conquest and colonisation."

I find this particularly relevant to providing Mars with an atmosphere:

"You can't let longhorn cattle loose and expect the herds to grow on Mars. "

 

[Catastrophe]

When considering terraforming it might be useful to find how planets formed in the first place since it is these processes that you wish to copy or constrain,

IMO this is an excellent paper:
Planetformation:keymechanismsandglobal models
SeanN.RaymondandAlessandroMorbidelli

[PDF] Planet Formation: Key Mechanisms and Global Models | Semantic Scholar

Models of planet formation are built on underlying physical processes. In order to make sense of the origin of the planets we must first understand the origin of their building blocks. This review comes in two parts. The first part presents a detailed description of six key mechanisms of planet...

www.semanticscholar.org

 

[Mental Avenger]

But if we did settle on mars, and put a bit more on the atmosphere, it could trap enough heat. This means the crust will get hotter, and then the mantle, and a bit of the core, or even part of the mantle, could turn liquid, generating a magnetic field to block from solar winds and UV rays.

In order for that to happen, the temperature of the surface of Mars would have to raise to more than 6600°F. Even the temperature on the surface of Venus is only 864°F.

 

[Catastrophe]

Indian Genius
Have we yet convinced you on ALL or ANY points yet?
We have a saying "Softly does it".
Incidentally - NOT wishing to start a digression - in English, if only part of a sentence is enclosed in quotes (like "softly does it") the full stop comes after the enclosed quote. I think that in the other language you would put the quotes at the end, as in
. . . . . . . . . "softly does it." Is this correct?

 

[YetAnotherBob]

I still don't understand that why can't I make an artificial magnetic field?

You can actually make the magnetic field you envisage in theory. It only takes a rather large electromagnet. But the field strength you need to cover a planet, even a small one like Mars is quite large.
To get a comparable field to the Earth's field, you need a really huge magnet. It's relatively easy to overpower the Earths natural magnetic field locally. But for a planetary field, well, it's a challenge.
It's a nice idea and doable by modern physics, but not achievable with current technology. We can overpower the Earth's magnetic field locally, but doing that on a planetary scale is simply beyond us.
It is interesting to note however that solar flares do exactly that several times each year, so there are much larger fields at play in our solar system than those we observe here on Earth.
It is interesting to note that large magnetic fields have been produced in laboratories. In one example frogs were levitated by a magnetic, using the iron in their bloodstreams. It killed the frogs however. Those fields were where the frogs were located several million times the strength of the Earth's natural magnetic field locally.
The magnetic field falls off as the square of the distance from the actual magnet. We are generally 4 to 12 thousand miles from the magnetic poles of the Earth. That's 6,000 to 20,000 Kilometers away. The actual poles are also thousands of kilometers underground. You might want to do the math on how strong that field would be if you were next to the manget. Hint, it's much stronger than a full Tesla.
We might be able to build a power plant large enough to operate such a magnet here on Earth, but it will be most likely over a century before we could do so on Mars.
NASA's study was going to use a 400 kilometer square solar power array to power it's version of a magnetic shield for Mars. It was a study only, and nobody is seriously proposing that we do anything like that this century. They were going to place it in the Sun-Mars L1 point, so somewhere between the two bodies, probably a million kilometers or so from Mars. That way, it would provide a better shield for the planet. You have to do that before you can build up the atmosphere to anything like what a terraforming project would need. The minimum amount of atmosphere is easily over a hundred times the amount on Mars today. Humans need a minimum pressure of around a quarter of STP (Standard Temperature Pressure) or roughly 0.2 Barr of pure oxygen, higher if there are other gasses in the mix. That's what some spacecraft use. Mars can (barely) hold that much atmosphere if there is no solar wind.
That's why Mr. Catastrophe and I say it won't be done, and can't be done with just today's technology.
What we can do using today's best technology is build indoor farms and cities. Probably not those beautiful glass domes, but something serviceable that will probably be praised by anyone who actually lives there.
Someday.
But by that time, there will be more people who live in big cans out in free space. Look up O'Niel Cylinders to see what those will be like.
If you are interested in things like this, check out Isaac Arthur's SFIA Channel on You Tube. He actually talks about this and just how much power it would take. He looks at even larger projects there as well. He is a well trained physicist with an interest in Science Fiction and how it might be made real.

 

[YetAnotherBob]

[QUOTE="Catastrophe, post: 515100, member: 1109827"

"...I think Mars and the Moon really are, in terms of their economic potential and therefore potential for colonization, rubbish - ...
[/QUOTE]
The Moon is colonizable because of it's proximity to Earth and it's large resource base. It is economically viable, but not biologically viable. For it's biology, the Moon will always have to import at the very least, Nitrogen. Most likely, a moon colony will actually import it's nitrogen as food, and export the sewage (all biological materials are valuable in a large closed cycle environment).
What makes the Moon viable is that while it is astronomically expensive to ship material goods to the Moon, it's really quite cheap to ship them from the moon to the Earth. As easy as dropping rocks down a well. Current rail guns can do it. A longer track will allow for capsules that can survive atmospheric entry safely. When fully set up, transport from the Moon to any point on Earth will be no more expensive than is trans-pacific shipment of goods today. Getting there may take a century. That is actually the goal of Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com. He wants to move all the polluting industry off Earth. The Moon can't really be polluted.
We will probably have economically viable moon colonies by 2050. The bare bones basics will be there by 2030 (hopefully).
Mars is much farther away. So Mars is less viable economically, but much more viable biologically. It at least has some nitrogen. So we will colonize the Moon, then Mars and the asteroid belt.
Mars has some advantages in that. It's a good way station and can support human life and even civilization if we want it to. A Mars colony just needs a good power system. We already know how to do the rest.
However, I find that I do agree with those who note the relative advantages of space based colonies for the longer and even nearer term. Most of our "Moon Colonists" will probably actually live in orbit around the Moon or the Earth. It's simply easier to deal with the moons long day/night cycle by avoiding it. Then radiation and meteor protection can be added as simply as a meter or so of dirt brick. Cheap but effective. Remote control of the machines that do the actual work on the Moon is easy with a short time delay. Earth is too far off for the time delay to be really practical.
Time delay for Mars is of course orders of magnitude worse.

 

[Catastrophe]

Y A Bob
You have made it look as if that was my view. IT WAS NOT
As you see, I was quoting Ken Fabian.
C and P was intended to mean cut and pasted.
This is what was posted:
"Have you seen this post in the Moon section?
It seems equally relevant to Mars, as mentioned.
C and P from Ken Fabian:
"I think Mars and the Moon really are, in terms of their economic potential and therefore potential for colonisation, rubbish . . . . . . . . ."

I appreciate that no mal attribution was intended but I would ask you to please correct this. The original (not by me" is in Moon section as indicated. Thank you. Cat

 

[YetAnotherBob]

Sorry.
I do believe that Mars will one day be colonized, but it's only going to be a small part of a larger effort that will take centuries, not mere years.
However, I was just respoinding to what I read. Generally I do find you are reasonable.
So once again, I apologize if I misunderstood your intent.

Y A Bob
You have made it look as if that was my view. IT WAS NOT
...
Thank you. Cat
[/QUOTE

 

[Catastrophe]

Sorry.
I do believe that Mars will one day be colonized, but it's only going to be a small part of a larger effort that will take centuries, not mere years.
However, I was just respoinding to what I read. Generally I do find you are reasonable.
So once again, I apologize if I misunderstood your intent.

Thank you for that. I do try to protect my image

 

[IG2007]

Indian Genius
Have we yet convinced you on ALL or ANY points yet?
We have a saying "Softly does it".
Incidentally - NOT wishing to start a digression - in English, if only part of a sentence is enclosed in quotes (like "softly does it") the full stop comes after the enclosed quote. I think that in the other language you would put the quotes at the end, as in
. . . . . . . . . "softly does it." Is this correct?

Yeah, I got to understand that the vaporizing idea is idiotic. But, I still believe that my Artificial Magnetosphere still has some sense. Though, I got to understand that my idea of making an atmosphere is not right as well.

I am still not convinced that my idea of making an Artificial Magnetosphere is wrong or is not economic.

And by the way, in US English they spell "softly does it."

 

[Catastrophe]

Yeah, I got to understand that the vaporizing idea is idiotic. But, I still believe that my Artificial Magnetosphere still has some sense. Though, I got to understand that my idea of making an atmosphere is not right as well.

I am still not convinced that my idea of making an Artificial Magnetosphere is wrong or is not economic.

And by the way, in US English they spell "softly does it."

I am leaving it to others to post about magnetosphere for the simple reason that I consider the subject of 'planetary atmosphere' closed i.e., totally impractical. You don't need magnetosphere in a dome or cave (including "or whatever").

On the subject of quote marks, it just seems logical to close the included quote before closing the sentence i.e., ". . . .". but it is not worth starting WWIII over.
Cat

 

[YetAnotherBob]

Yeah, I got to understand that the vaporizing idea is idiotic. But, I still believe that my Artificial Magnetosphere still has some sense. Though, I got to understand that my idea of making an atmosphere is not right as well.

I am still not convinced that my idea of making an Artificial Magnetosphere is wrong or is not economic.

And by the way, in US English they spell "softly does it."

Smaller is usually better for first tries. That is often what "economic" means. Big things come later when you can pay for them with what you learn by small things.
Yes, a little magnetic field can be made and it has been proposed by NASA people in the past. This isn't for protecting an entire planet however, but for protecting a single spacecraft. So far no one has ever built one that big to the best of my knowledge.
Cosmic Rays are little atomic nuclei moving at close to the speed of light. They hit hard for atomic sized bullets. Solar Wind particles are exactly the same sorts of things, though they are moving more slowly, only a fraction of the speed of light.
But still they move at tens or hundreds of thousands of of Kilometers per hour.
The force fields generated by your magnetosphere don't stop the rays like those in Science Fiction shows do, they instead bend the path and sometimes slow them down. Some magnetic fields can also speed them up. What our natural force field, the magnetosphere that is, actually does is to bend them around us. The rays still strike the Earth, but they do so in the upper atmosphere at the poles. There they form the Aurora Borealis or the Northern (or Southern) lights. They also bend the Solar Wind downwards, so it doesn't strip off much of our atmosphere. Look up the Van Allen Radiation Belts if you want to learn more.
I don't want to discourage you. I doubt that Mr. Catastrophe does either. What we want to do is to encourage you to study and learn more. As you do so, you may just find ways to do things that we older folks don't know about. That's how our society learns after all. I do know a lot, but I don't know everything. As I said in a previous post, we point out ways that your current posted ideas have problems with. True Genius takes those problems and invents a way around them.
To do that really, you have to learn more. More Math and Science especially. You should try to do this. You have made a good start. Go on right through the University programs when you are ready for them. They will make you able to see things you cannot yet see clearly. But don't give up what you have now as you do so. It is valuable.
The vaporizing idea wasn't silly. It was however impractical. Yes, heat can liberate some gasses. But heat up and cool down take time. Thousands of years in the case of something the size of a planet. Doing the same thing on a local level takes less time. We call that process Industry. You will find there is rather a lot of it going on around you right now.
So don't give up and don't stop trying, but do study and learn and try new things.
I sincerely hope that you can in a few years show me a thing or two that I hadn't considered to be possible. That's what real Genius's do.
Bob