Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Nautilus

    The Argument Against Terraforming Mars

    by Robert Sparrow Aug 16, 2017 4 minutes

    When it comes to the ethics of actions, such as the decision to terraform Mars, we should ask: What sort of person would do that—a virtuous or vicious one?Photograph by Kees Veenenbos / Science Photo Library

    In Kim Stanley Robinson’s science-fiction Mars Trilogy, human colonists “terraform” Mars, turning the rocky red planet into a lush green world. The colonists melt the polar ice caps with nuclear explosives, inducing a greenhouse effect that warms the planet. They then seed the landscape with genetically modified bacteria and plants to render the newly created atmosphere breathable. By the end of this process, their descendants are able to walk and live on the surface of Mars without space suits.

    Today many scientists believe that terraforming Mars is theoretically possible with continuing

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from Nautilus

    Nautilus3 min read
    Archaeology At The Bottom Of The Sea
    1 Archaeology has more application to recent history than I thought In the preface of my book, A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks, I emphasize that it is a history of the world, not the history; the choice of sites for each chapter reflects
    Nautilus13 min read
    The Shark Whisperer
    In the 1970s, when a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg was researching a new movie based on a novel about sharks, he returned to his alma mater, California State University Long Beach. The lab at Cal State Long Beach was one of the first places
    Nautilus5 min read
    The Bad Trip Detective
    Jules Evans was 17 years old when he had his first unpleasant run-in with psychedelic drugs. Caught up in the heady rave culture that gripped ’90s London, he took some acid at a club one night and followed a herd of unknown faces to an afterparty. Th

    Related