Team:Valencia/Terraforming

Time goes by... (El tiempo pasa...)

Follow us:

Our main sponsors:

Our institutions:

Visitor location:

Terraforming of a planetary body (planet or moon) or planetary ecosynthesis is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere composition, temperature, topography, or ecology to be similar to those of Earth to make it habitable for Terran organism, including humans. Terraforming is a common concept in science fiction. In fact, Jack Williamson, a science fiction writer, coined the term in 1942. But the first to use the concept was H.G. Wells in his The War of the Worlds (1898), where the martian invaders start a terraforming-reverse process in order to change our planet for their own benefit. Recent work in fiction exploring this concept includes the wonderful Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson that has filled our dreams about the red planet with astonishing details

Kim Stanley Robinson with his Mars Trilogy has been one of the major inspirators of our work. They are really worth reading books.

In the scientific field, the first one who talk about terraforming of Mars was the ever-inspirational planetary astronomer Carl Sagan in The Long Winter Model of Martian Biology: A Speculation (1971) and in Planetary engineering on Mars (1973) both published in Icarus. In [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzVYwyxidDY Blues for the Red Planet], the fifth episode of his mythical television series Cosmos: A personal Voyage, he exposes his ideas to the public. Sagan’s plan for terraforming of Mars implies seeding its polar casquets with dark plants. These plants will be artificially selected or genetically modified to resist and “survive” the harsh conditions of Mars climate. The positive point gained with this seeding will be realeasing oxygen and darkening the martian surface, melting down the polar casquets and liberating the ancient martian atmosphere trapped in there. This fusion water could be transported to the equator by the construction of a network of channels, similarly to the one Percival Lowell believed an inexistent Martian civilization had constructed. Sagan’s opinion about the ethics of this terraforming process, in the case the planet result not sterile is categorical:

"If there is life on Mars, then I believe we should do nothing to disturb that life. Mars, then, belongs to the Martians, even if they are microbes."

Carl Sagan, the first scientist who study the terraforming of Mars, holds a model of the red planet in his hands (Hulton Archive/Getty Images).