Elon Musk (Photo : REUTERS/Rebecca Cook)
Before sending people to Mars to colonize the Red Planet, Space X CEO Elon Musk proposes hitting the planet with thermonuclear weapons. He says it is the fastest way to warm the planet to make Mars habitable for humans.
Musk plans to use SpaceX reusable rockets to drop the thermonuclear weapons over the poles, he explained on Wednesday at "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," reports Mashable. By doing that, Mars would become fit for human habitation in two or three years.
However, Colert warns Musk that if he does that to the Red Planet, he would be considered a supervillain because bombing planets is what supervillains such as Lex Luthor would do.
Besides Musk's "villainous" proposal, other suggestions to terraform Mars slowly includes hitting it with greenhouse gases to build up its atmosphere. Another way is to transport frozen methane from other planets or from the moon and bring to Mars algae and cyanobacteria that produce oxygen.
Other scientists, however, find Musk's idea a bad one. LA Times cites Brian Toon, University of Colorado, Boulder, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, who says that while it is possible to make Mars earthlike, there are a lot of barriers that must be surpassed.
University of Washington associate professor of earth and space sciences Joshua Bandfield adds that using thermonuclear weapons may not be enough to warm Mars. He warns that it could also alter the terrain of the Red Planet which would make it harder to understand how things work in Mars.
