Could We Really Terraform Mars?

Humans have long dreamt of terraforming mars, but is it even possible? Building a mars colony would require technological leaps that we can only dream of at the moment. But if we could terraform the red planet, what might that process look like?

Sources:

Founder & Director: Peter Schumaker
Chief Editor: Tristan Reed
Original soundtrack by Joseph McDade

[BelialTnTn]

Terraforming Mars would be irrelevant anyway when we discover the protomolecule.

[Rafaga]

Great video. Love the beautiful graphics and the soothing background music. Much appreciated.

[lemon-bonbon]

Turns out we we're the aliens we were searching for all along.

[Adam.]

I wonder how many flat earthers will be in the comments trying to say the moon and Mars are just lights in the firmament.

[Itsmarkyoung]

Copying Kurzgesagt thumbnails down to the font 💀

[Thomas-VA]

some say that an atomsphere created would last long enough in human years vs planet, but wouldn't nuke radiation last long enough too

[Jan]

We should do Venus before Mars. We could more easily Terraform Venus than Mars. Venus has a thick atmosphere with CO2 and Water Vapor, 90% of Earth gravity and is already habitable at an altitude of 50 Kilometers. We just need to reduce the CO2 so that the pressure and temperatures decrease and do something about the sulfuric acid.

1:28 Venus
3:09 Venus

[Aureora]

As always - interesting content 👌
Thank you Koranos! 💜

[yufeng]

The lack of a magnetic field means all of the hard work you put into developing an atmosphere is for nothing. Like another user said, better to just hollow out the planet and live underground.

[TheRealityWarper]

Yeah... I don't think that'll ever happen. Instead, I'd suggest hollowing out Mars' mountains and building gigantic, layered cave societies within them.

This would completely circumvent the need for protection, as the outside of the mountain would shield from radiation, and you could just fill the cave system with oxygen so you don't need to wear suits.

[Thomas-VA]

Welcome to the Martian Fyre Festival, you'll love the habitats and the cheese sandwiches

[roman]

We should Terraform both Mars and Venus, Sol system with 3 habitable worlds would be cosy.

[samsky]

Never understand why we don't ever see the idea of directing comet's towards planets for things like gas and ice.you have a whole planet to let them crash into and we are getting to a point we can almost land on asteroids. Seems just as feasible to do that with not so distant tech as it would to build a 100km mirror to divert the sun's rays to the poles.
Again as many have pointed out a lack of magnetic field is an issue. But theoretically you can top up lost GHG with more comets.

[TheEducatr]

Terraforming Mars? That’s sound interesting. Mind-blowing video. Join the journey to a new world!

[hussainkhan-fglv]

We might be able to do this quicker than most expect since we are at the cusp of achieving agi or even asi, it will accelerate our technology rapidly and with the increasing number of humanoid robots building such megastructures will be much quicker, we maybe able to achieve fusion in the near future enabling us to create huge amounts of heat energy to melt those ice caps, with advancements in quantum computing, managing such mega projects will be a breeze, material science will lead to new kinds of alloys and materials with some chance of discovering properties which might shift whole paradigm of whats possible like room temperature super conductors, carbon nano tubes etc

[heristyono]

0.6℅ atmospheric pressure. It's a dead end.

[filipprochazka]

There is one other issue that isn't mentioned as often - Mars lacks any suitable buffer gas (or compounds thereof). In Earth's atmosphere, that role is filled by nitrogen. While CO2 is sufficiently nonreactive to be useful in that role from purely chemical standpoint, "air" consisting of 21% oxygen (same as on Earth) and 78% CO2 at 1 atm pressure would very quickly lead to CO2 poisoning - in other words, it wouldn't be breathable.
This also is resolvable, however, it would be quite daunting to perform. The atmosphere of Venus contains, if my math is right, roughly three times as much nitrogen as Earth's does (by mass - Venus has WAY much more atmosphere than Earth does, so fraction of nitrogen in Venus' atmosphere is actually quite small).
I suspect there are other options for a buffer gas (I suspect argon could hypotheticaly be used? It is sufficiently inert, we are used to breathing it, as it is the third most common gas in Earth's atmosphere, but I am not certain if it wouldn't also function as an asphyxant if it comprised 78% of air at 1 atm pressure). There would be another restriction on what the buffer gas could be - if it would be helium (plenty of that in the solar system, although all of it in deep gravity wells), it would likely escape Mars eventually even with the magnetic field issue fixed.
Either way, terraforming Mars won't likely be possible to result in a surface breathable air without massive import of external material.
(just to note, while a 99% O2 and 1% CO2 atmosphere would probably aleviate the CO2 poisoning issue, it would be unpleasant to breathe, not to mention, I am not certain if such atmosphere at 1 atm pressure would be able to retain enough heat, and then there's the elephant in the room - near pure oxygen atmosphere at 1 atm pressure causes a LOT of every day materials to self-combust).

[ManImTheVoid]

Why not instead people on mars works on a mega project that is basically a tunnel that wraps around the planet and connects to both sides?

You would technically make the planet habitable before terraforming it and you can build from this Straight tunnel.

[Soysaucy]

If we could terraform another planet we could also fix our planet

[lemdixon]

Ganamede is the only moon in the solar system with a global magnetic field. The magnetic field on Saturns moon Titan comes from Saturn itself.