Recently, the innovator and the author of many ambitious projects, Elon Musk, has once again raised the issue of necessity of terraforming a lifeless Mars. Now is the time – while there are no permanent settlements, it is possible to use the most radical methods. For example, to melt the ice at both poles of the planet, dropping back a few dozen nuclear warheads.
This idea of the Mask was initially considered untenable from a scientific point of view, because the stocks of water in the Martian ice is too small to significantly change the planet’s atmosphere. It is now about 200 times more rarefied than earth’s, and after rastoplenny ice saturation water vapor reaches a maximum of 7 % of the earth, which is still too little. But the main thing in other – humanity is just not powerful enough energy source to do it.
In response to the invitation Mask mathematician Robert Walker published in the blog Science 2.0 the math. It makes no sense to blow up the ice a powerful bomb fragments will remain at the pole. It is necessary to evaporate very quickly so that the moisture does not have time to re-condense and fall out as snow. The atomic bombs that are almost better than anything else that is available to people, but there is one problem. Light flash, the moment of maximum transfer of thermal energy in a nuclear explosion only lasts for about 50 seconds.
And followed by simple calculations, from which it follows that rastoplenny ice caps of Mars to blow up… at 3500 atomic bombs by megatons of power every day. The whole process will take about seven weeks and will require 180 gigatons of explosives, which at the disposal of mankind just yet. But even if we find rich deposits of uranium on the Mars and to establish mass production of nuclear bombs — a project will still fail. Because the level of radioactive contamination of the planet exceeds all conceivable indicators and that life will once again become impossible.
Source — Science 2.0