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- Musk has repeatedly said that the atmosphere of Mars could be warmed to accommodate human life by destroying its poles and artificially creating a greenhouse effect.
- On Tuesday however, Musk suggested that satellites equipped with solar reflectors be preferable to the dropping of nuclear weapons.
- Spraying the Mars poles is not certain to have the effect sought by Musk, as they may not contain enough CO2 to warm the atmosphere sufficiently.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
Elon Musk has a new idea to make the atmosphere of Mars more livable – and that does not include launching nuclear weapons at its poles.
Since 2015, Musk has come up with the idea that the launch of thermonuclear weapons over the ice caps at the Mars poles could warm the planet's atmosphere, with the ultimate goal of making it habitable for humans. His theory is that the vaporization of water trapped at the posts would release CO2, which would create a greenhouse effect.
Read more: Here are some of the gaping holes in the plans of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to conquer the space
Musk reiterated this idea last week and even created "Nuke Mars" t-shirts. Tuesday however, he tweeted a new theory that replaces hydrogen bombs with satellites.
"It might make sense to have thousands of solar reflector satellites to warm Mars compared to artificial suns," Musk wrote. Artificial suns are how Musk refers to the theoretical current of nuclear explosions caused by nuclear bombs.
However, Musk has not completely abandoned nuclear weapons. "Nuke Mars refers to a continuous stream of very low-impact nuclear fusion explosions over the atmosphere to create artificial suns. Just like our sun, this would not make Mars become radioactive, " Musk said in a follow-up tweet. he also said the method was "not risky imo [in my opinion]"
Replacing nuclear weapons with satellites may not solve some of the major problems facing Musk's dreams of terraforming Mars. Last year, an article in Nature Astronomy concluded that releasing CO2 from Mars would not be enough to properly transform its atmosphere for two reasons.
First, the researchers found that there was not enough CO2 trapped in the poles to produce a fairly intense greenhouse effect. Secondly, unlike the Earth, the atmosphere of Mars is continually lost, so that any gas produced would drift slowly to outer space.
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