sexta-feira, 18 de julho de 2008

To the CONQUEST DE MARS. Part I

To the CONQUEST DE MARS.

SUPERINTERESSANTE Nº 119 MARCH 2008-03-13

We Martian them

The planetary Mars society and some scientists believe that the first mission in the Red Planet would have to consist of modifying its atmosphere and its surface for becomes - lo inhabitable.

As to transform the Red Planet into a new Land.

Revivers of worlds.

The important stroll of history.

The Mars society constructed a center of inquiries in a barren desert of the Utah (United States), where if they study the challenges that the first colonists to inhabit the Red Planet will have to face.

The experience is simulated to the point of the members of the team to have of envergar facts of astronauts before leaving the installations.

MARS 2008

Although it is barren, currently

The planet could be conserved

In sub Alone the necessary elements

To be able it returns - lo to the life.

Some scientists believe that already we have the technology necessary to initiate the terraformação of Mars, a process that will be able to transform the barren surface into one éden bathed by the sea.

Omnipresente orange tonality - colored rust he is visible in all the peaks, craters dunes, ravines and valleys, even in the dust, that remains suspended perpetual in the atmosphere on the horizon of the planet.

Entardecer shows a sublime light and has something of decidedly extraterrestrial in the inclination angle them shades. Mars is red, dry and cold; a stony vitality that reflecte its true essence: this is a mineral world.

The man always wanted to know if there he was produced, at some moment any spontaneous generation of life, animal, same vegetable or of virus. Paraphrasing Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Martian Triologia, whatsoever that it gives beginning to the life, one esporo proceeding from the space a broth of culture appeared of a sulphur source efervescente, the hand of God not yet we know if this happened in Mars.

The truth is that it will be able to have - verified, at a precocious moment of its evolution, had in the Red planet seas, rivers, lakes, clouds, rain, snow, glaciers, coastal zones and canals. To put everything this disappeared. Today, it does not pass of a small rocky sphere that is too much far from the Sun and whose nucleus of nickel and iron that already does not turn for below of the Crust is as a off battery.

Of fact for guilt of the atmosphere, he was frozen and it went up until the surface. The carbon dioxide passed for a subliming process and formed new and finíssima atmosphere, while the oxigénio was glue ace rocks, colorful - of red.

The water condensed underneath of land in the form of permafrost e, the one in other places, filtered - for the subsoil throughout quilómetros until constituting underground seas whose destination if is unaware of.

But the polar regions, covered of ice of water and carbon dioxide, show a different color of the red.

Now, in a species of reverse of the history of the War of the Worlds, the terrestrial ones intend to conquer this congealed sphere, where it does not have practically oxigénio, layer of ozone or magnetic field, and where the minimum temperature negative patrol 90ºC, to transform into one vergel similar to the Gardens of the Babilónia, that combines the esplendor of tropical beaches with the beauty of the Scottish field.

It will not be easy. We will have to face a place whose force of gravity is 2,5 times lesser of what ours, situated the 60 million quilómetros of house and where the wind reaches, in a surface bombed for the radiation, the 150 km/h, generating dust sand storms that years can last.

An army of engineers studies the case has decades and is responsible for the fact of the terraformação concept (a term that until has little did not exist in the dictionaries) to circulate to start it currently.

The question is to know will be possible to return to the pulsation Mars?

How I obtained - lo?

Over all: we will have you make it?

Apt for the life human being

The prescription to make over again a planet congealed in the time consists, basically, in heats - lo, to create an atmosphere, irrigates it with water and protects - lo of the inclemencies.

The process would delay the 500 50 a thousand years, consonant the opinion of different the scholars.

However it may be, a thing is becomes - lo apt for the life and other, very different, is to make with that it can receive life human being.

In a report published for the Nature Magazine, already a pair of years the planetary scientist Chris Mckay of the Center of Inquiries of NASA, one of the most respected in the United States, concluía that to terraformar Mars for the humanity it is very difficult.

It will be almost impossible, therefore we would need oxigénio very, and this gas is extremely difficult to produce up there.

It is far from our current technological horizon.

Mackay insists on its affirmations.

The oxigénio of the Land needed thousand of years to form itself.

Leaving of the beginning of that we could full Mars of planets and give - it ean with the same productivity of ours, we would have to embed enormous amounts of organic carbon to be able to generate it.

The photosyntheses, would lead by itself, is not enough.

We would take 50 a thousand years to injectar in the atmosphere of the planet the oxigénio that we would need, designates.

“On the other hand, it will be possible them plants and to restore the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere”, explains the scientist. “As?

Heating the planet, a process that we know very well.

Of fact, it is what we are to make in the Land.

The more heat we introduce in the atmosphere, thicker it will become; the more dense, more we will obtain heats there -.

In this direction yes we will be able to make with that Mars returns the life.

Mckay locates - the half way between the reds and the greens; that is between that they want to conserve Mars as it is until if discovering if it lodged life and the ones that they intend to initiate when of the Land natural and synthetic extremofilos organisms.

I believe that we would have to create a biosfera in Mars, affirms Mckay.

However the ingredients would have of being in the measure do possible, aboriginal.

We have tests of that it had water in abundance in Mars, for what we deduce that existed life at some moment.

I think that it would have a great possibility to find vestiges of frozen it or deceased, to be able reconstitutes there -; better still, to find refugee life under the surface and to leave that it comes back to control the biogeoquimicos cycles of the planet.

In my opinion to take life of the Land would have to be finishes it resource.

If Mars will not have a genome, then, yes it could - me partilhar ours, but I believe that full Mars of Martians is well more interesting of what full of terrestrial.

On the other hand, the aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin is a green convicto.

Much has written on the terraformação of the neighboring planet, with the base in an anthropocentric concept, and until NASA already a version of its plan of settling adoptou as reference for future missions.

Zubrin established, has ten years the Mars Society, in order to promote manned trips more early possible.

For me to transform other worlds into inhabitable places for the humanity is a moral obligation, says.

All the beings livings creature transform the space that inhabit, are bacteria or people.

Today we face a quandary in the long run: or we decide in them to terraformar other worlds, or leave to languescer irresponsibly.

E therefore so is not complicated as it seems.

An asteroid of bigger dimension is enough to collide with the Land.

A Martian paradise

Mars is an ideal place for our civilization, wrote Zubrin in the book marries will be Mars.

It has everything: enormous amounts of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxigénio in the subsoil.

These elements alone constitute the base of water and the food, as they are the raw material to produce plastic, wood paper, clothes and fuel for rockets.

Practically all the composites with industrial interest exist in the red planet, including an isotope of hydrogen evaluated in ten a thousand dollar the kilo.

Mars will have to be colonized.

Mars is the new World.

For John Rummel, responsible for the Division of Astrobiology of NASA, the first thing that we would have to inquire before modifying the half Martian is if life exists.

If to appear, will be very interesting to discover if he is native this has something distinguishes that it from the terrestrial one.

In this in case that, we would have to assure that we would not contaminate it with our bacteria, therefore would be probably, the discovery most important in the history of the humanity.

If we discovered Martian bacteria with a similar ADN to the terrestrial one, would be allowed to think that it existed, about some moment one I interchange between both the worlds, what it would become in them in a species of interplanetary right cousins.

To install - in the red planet one would be, this in case that, as to congregate the family to see what it happens.

If not to exist life in Mars, we will have to proceed the terraformação from a simple rock.

A suitable time to the atmosphere, the biomass will enter in share.

It will have to manufacture tons and tons of microbes, cinobactérias, lichens and fungos that need little oxigénio and are resistant to the cold, the dehydration, the ultraviolet radiation and to the salt excess.

Although it has numerous organisms in the Land that tolerate some of these conditions, none obtains to support all in simultaneous.

Therefore it will be necessary to proceed the genetic selecções and modifications.

The force of the evolution

With the ticket of the time, the yellow lichens could be substituted by great forests of trees of up to 200 meters of height, capable to absorb enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and to produce oxigénio.

In this height, good part of the planet will be covered of water.

The great depression of vast Borealis, in the North Pole, will be submerged in the deep one of an extensive sea.

The vast crater of Hellas Planitia to have - the transformed one into a lake with eight quilómetros of depth.

The ravine system Valles Marineris a gigantic scar of 4500 km of length and 11 of maximum depth, will be a monumental fjord.

E the Olympus Mons (the biggest volcano of the Solar System with its 21 quilómetros of height and 600 of diameter) to have - the Tornado an island with the top to lose itself - in clouds and endowed with a proper ecosystem.

It is not thus so difficult to imagine Mars with life. All the new genetic beings of this new biota, would be surely, terrestrial, write Stanley Robinson, but the land would be narciano.

E the land is a powerful responsible genetic engineer for determining what it lives and what dies, stimulating the evolution of new species.

The measure that the generations if occur, all the members of biosfera evolve in set, adaptando - to the land in a complex communitarian reply.

This process, no matter how hard we have to intervine, is of our control.

The genes pass for mutations, the creatures evolve a new biosfera.

Eventually, the minds of the creators, as everything the remaining portion, also will have moved.

It continues

Images of Nuno Alves, Text of Interesting the Super Magazine.

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