Elon Musk wants to turn Mars into a new Earth by dropping atomic bombs on the red planet

Space X founder Elon Musk has relaunched his proposal that a bombing of Mars by nuclear missiles could contribute to its terraforming by heating the surface of the icy red planet today.

On his Twitter account, Musk released on Aug. 15 a brief message titled "Nuke Mars", followed by another tweet containing the image of some shirts wearing this slogan. He even put this motto as a profile picture.

Four years ago, Musk participated in The end of the show with Stephen Colbert and discussed a strategy to make the red planet more livable: nuclear bombs explode on their poles. The explosions would vaporize much of the ice on Mars, releasing enough water vapor and carbon dioxide, two powerful greenhouse gases, to heat the planet considerably, according to the idea.

However, this idea runs up against the skepticism of many scientists who are questioning not only about the technological ability of the human being to cope with such an enterprise with the technology available, but also about the ethical dimension of it. to intervene on a planet of this level.

Reservations were also expressed as to the effectiveness of the initiative. A 2018 study published in the prestigious magazine Nature Astronomy concluded that Mars does not contain enough CO2 today to allow significant warming, even if everything was released into the atmosphere.