Research Suggests Mars Once Had a Thick Atmosphere 98
astroengine writes "At one time, Mars had a thick, protective atmosphere — possibly even cushier than Earth's — but the bubble of gases mostly dissipated about 4 billion years ago and has never been replenished, new research shows. The findings come from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, which has been moonlighting as an atmospheric probe as it scours planet's surface for habitats that could have supported ancient microbial life. 'On Earth, our magnetic field protects us, it shields us from the solar wind particles. Without Earth's magnetic field, we would have no atmosphere and there would be no life on this planet. Everything would be wiped out — especially when you go back 4 billion years. The solar wind was at least 100 times stronger then than it is today. It was a young sun with a very intense radiation,' Chris Webster, manager of the Planetary Sciences Instruments Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News. Unfortunately for Mars, the last 4 billion years have not been kind."
Terraforming Mars (Score:4, Funny)
If we're going to terraform mars, I say we should go big.
Collide Mars and Venus together, that gets you a planet that's 92% of the mass of the Earth. Maybe add Mercury in there as well, that gets you 98%.
Move to an appropriate orbit and wait for it to cool... ;)
With the violence of the impact, you should be able to get a magnetic field going. I figure that the collision that created the earth & moon is what kickstarted ours.