New Mars Forums

cIclops,

I got a few different results when searching for mean surface temperature of the earth.

The only site i found that combined land, ocean and ice all into one mean temperature was 5c.

Even browsing NASA it wasnt clear how they measured average temperatures and had no mention of including polar ice regions in any equation.

If 13.9 c is the mean temperature of earth, it just means Mars will need more than 1/4 bar of C02 for any hope of getting above the melt point.

C02 isn't the greatest greenhouse gas in the universe anyway, just a convenient one.
1/4 bar of C02 and a small amount of manmade super greenhouse gas might be the formula needed.

cIclops,

Another interesting thing with adding C02 to mars is the melt point of all the frozen items on mars.
Getting Mars warm enough to melt, might mean that when it melts the release of stored frozen water and gas will make it extremely warm, maybe to warm for a long period of time.

As you say it would be a wild experiment,  with such slow transport of the 1/4 bar it wont be a real fast experiment and easy to know when to stop import.

It sure is technically feasible to move the co2 to mars from Venus with our technology, but the costs and length of the project and maybe the enduring will to do such a thing would all be astronomical.

I will have to do some research on that 14c earth average temp.
Seems rather high being a canadian *lol*

cIclops,

No doubt the atmosphere would be complicated at Mars.
Adding just 1/4 bar of C02 might be enough to release the frozen water and gasses on Mars.
Those gasses are sure to complicate the picture.

I'm not sure that Earths average surface temperature is 14c?
Most of the surface ocean water is much cooler than this, maybe land temp 14c?

I seem to remember a report that when we take into account the oceans and poles on earth the average surface temperature isn't that far from everything being frozen, just 5c or so.
I could be wrong on that though so don't quote me

Would be sweet if 1/4 bar of C02 could wake Mars up.
I think 1/4 bar is a thing we could do, still pretty big project though.

SpaceNut,

1 Bar of Venus atmosphere would be perfect for mars.
The 1 bar of co2 would put Mars at similar temperatures as on Earth.

C02 separators for breathing apparatus on suits and habitat bases.
Outdoors pretty toxic to most life though, so engineering of plants for the surface a must.
Life in ponds shouldn't require much alteration or maybe none.

Now just the small problem of getting 1 bar to Mars.

Tom Kalbfus,

Interesting idea.
Couldn't we just separate the co2 on Venus into C and o2 an excellent rocket fuel.
Find a good use for the C in the project and you have a decreasing atmosphere while you are moving the planet.

Solar power for separation and power to get both o2 and C into orbit.
60 something bars of liquid oxygen would be some heavy duty thrust.

dicktice,

I think your idea of the floating cities will be the only way we will settle Venus.
Might also be a great long term production facility in the longer teraform terms.
I still don't like the acid clouds that are sure to make materials a problem.

I see lots of people with ideas for Venus involving sun shades, but the size and stability of such a structure in space with solar winds/storms so strong near Venus eludes me.

The only way i can convincingly make a sunshade at Venus is to collide small asteroids in orbit creating a debris ring.
Even that will only create about 25% shade, probably not enough to cool things enough to start doing anything useful on the surface.

The mass of carbon at Venus also has its possibilities as a smog debris ring orbiting Venus.
Problem with that is getting it to orbit.

Just my opinion, but i don't think Venus will be seeing a useful sunshade approach as a way to cool things to begin a terra form.

Tom Kalbfus,

With a manmade magnetic field i think the moon would loose very little atmosphere.
All depends on what we make the atmosphere on the moon, does it need to be nitrogen and oxygen like earth?

Titan, hmmm not much solar energy to work with at Titan.
Another problem at Titan is when you start warming the place up, all the gasses expand the atmosphere.
That would expose it to possible atmospheric escape.
Not sure you could add 02 to titan anyway, you get methyl oxide or kaboom, or both.

RickSmith,

It's a puzzle for sure.

Those little thumps on Mars even though they only make 50 ft wide craters should vaporize water around that impact site for another 50-100ft down and surrounding the impact zone.

On Mars that water at the atmospheric pressure doesn't ice out, it contributes directly to the atmosphere in the short term.
Only icing out as it cools, impacts on Mars should turn frozen h20 directly into gas.

The mystery is where is all that ice from at least 100 million years on impacts?
It cant be below the surface, because all forms of gas should be freed to the atmosphere with the heat from each impact.

I agree Mars has ice all over the place, but in such limited quantities that it maybe only accounts for a few 100 years of impacts.

It's something interesting to think about, really makes you wonder if all that expected frozen h20 will be under the surface or not.
Or maybe just not in the first 100ft depth.

Tom Kalbfus,

That is an interesting idea.
Any guess at how long it would take to move Venus?
And how close to earths orbit before we start tugging on each other?

On the same sort of thought, couldn't we park a large asteroid or KB in a sloppy orbit of Mars to heat its core up?
Maybe mine the asteroid or KB at the same time its in orbit for super greenhouse gasses/water/co2/hydrogen/nitrogen etc for Mars.

Similar to the Io internal heating from its gravitational tugs in the outer solar system.

dreammaker,

I'm not sure the pressure issue is a main one on mars, just heating up Mars takes care of the severe low pressure once we get to the melt point of water.

I think bacteria would do a nice job of converting Martian elements into useful greenhouse gasses and other useful items for colonists.

All we need for anaerobic bacteria is liquid h20, heat, food and a simple home such as vast plastic bags on the surface.

Select the bacteria on earth that produces the most waste products useful for greenhouse gas.   

A similar system with algae and clear plastic could produce a simple food chain and o2 for the colonists and as fuel.

Probably no need for huge nuclear reactors as all we need is heat and small pressure pumps, solar cells and batteries would probably do the job.

With the production of methane and o2 we have fuel to power everything.

C M Edwards,

Your welcome.

I had the same thought when the calculation came to me, very cool.
The numbers of black holes are mind boggling.

In pretty short work we can account for maybe 50% of the dark matter, with a little creativity I'm sure most of the rest isn't to hard to find now that we might have the culprit.

Black holes that are undetectable, galactic core black holes that accumulate mass.
Both of them are good candidates for more %.

More remaining unaccounted mass, failed stars to small to shine.
I wonder how many of those are created for every burning star?

Quote "I still have doubts about the ability of this to explain gravitational deviations on the intergalactic scale, though"

This sort of touches on a personal theory of mine so i will take a stab at it and see what you think

If our universe is just one of an infinite number of them (not parallel universes).
Something like bath bubbles that go on forever in every direction.

If our universe is one membrane that nothing can escape, except for gravity being a negative force, wouldn't our universe be pulled from all other surrounding universes in different amounts?

Each universe around ours could be in any state from giant black hole to near fully expanded universe.

When we actually collide with another universe one part of our universe halts its expansion, then our internal gravity is stronger than the external gravity.

That would explain the weird gravitational deviations in our universe, how our universe gets started each time, how it collapses and why it appears that our universe is speeding up it's acceleration.
It could even explain why a universe needs not be a particular size (mass) to repeat itself, it just needs to wait for the inevitable collisions to happen to start the big crunch.

John Creighton,

Good point.
I'm not sure of the data of black holes starting gamma ray bursts then stopping, then starting up again.
I bet that a small % of then do exactly that.

If we looked at size of black hole VS frequency or size of bursts i also bet a correlation exists for that.

Although i bet that all the gamma ray event we see are all very similar.
If they are to big they don't create them, or to small they don't focus them well.
The ones that make it to earth and are detectable are probable very very few of the true number of black hole creation events.

The daily number is just the number detected each day, or best guess of new ones each day.

C M Edwards,

10 gamma ray evens a day was the best guess they had on the show, only about 1/5 or less of the possible events are actually detected.
That was the reason for the 10 a day.

Gamma ray bursts are like nothing else detected, they require gamma rays to be focused from a black hole in two exact very focused opposite directions to traverse the distances to arrive at earth.

If they are not well focused they never traverse the distance. (that is another mass of possible black holes we simple might never know about)

For each one we see at least 1,000, and more like one in 20,000 happen that one of the two focal points simply don't point toward earth.

Like one man standing on the moon with a laser, another man on earth with a laser detector.

The man on the moon randomly starts up the laser in a random direction, the man on earth begins to detect for laser light.
After many thousands of attempts the man on earth detects one laser light.
Probably simple random angles could give a better % here, but i think they are probably close to right about 1 in 20,000.

Even if we are pretty conservative about the math and use the 1/1000 it  puts us at
5,400.8 trillion black holes.
Likely as much as 210,600 trillion black holes, not including poorly focused black holes or black holes that have passed the gamma ray production phase or black holes that never produce gamma ray bursts.

Those numbers would surely fill the needed quantity of dark matter.
I couldn't believe none of the scientists put this math together on the show about the inescapable quantity of black holes due to the detection rate.