Great News for a Mars Colony!

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Sometimes, scientists have to dig, work, and sweat to make scientific discoveries. And sometimes, a robot rolls over a rock that turns out to be a revelation.

That’s what happened when Mars exploration expert Roger Wiens, professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences in the College of Science at Purdue University, had NASA’s Perseverance rover fire its laser at some unusually pale rocks on the Martian surface — and discovered that they were composed of unusually high levels of aluminum associated with the mineral kaolinite.

That was interesting in itself, but what made the discovery truly fascinating is that this mineral typically forms only in very warm and wet environments. The finding, published by Wiens and his team in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, suggests that Mars may have been warmer, wetter, and weirder than scientists previously thought.
 
WJ-OSU-STEELERS said:
www.bbc.com

Scientists find promising hints of life on distant planet K2-18b

Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
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More on this story. I know it's hard to believe but in the 1980's there was a serious debate among astronomers and astrophysicists if planets existed in abundance or were very rare. Today we now know that planets are ubiquitous across the Galaxy. My guess is that within a decade the signatures for life will prove almost as plentiful:

www.sciencealert.com

Strongest Evidence of Alien Life Yet Found 124 Light-Years Away

Astronomers announced Thursday that they had detected the most promising "hints" of potential life on a planet beyond our Solar System, though other scientists expressed scepticism.
www.sciencealert.com www.sciencealert.com
 

The uncertainty of science: Scientists studying four different core samples drilled by the Mars rover Curiosity have detected abundant amounts of the iron carbonate mineral siderite, suggesting that there is more carbon within Mars’ crust than previously believed.

If that quantity of carbon is confirmed, there might also have been a carbon cycle between Mars’s atmosphere and the liquid water theorized to have once been on the surface. This cycle could also have made the atmosphere both thicker and warmer, conditions necessary for that liquid water to exist on the surface.
 
space2025.substack.com

Will a Terraformed Mars Leak?

Yes, but ...
space2025.substack.com space2025.substack.com

So let's focus on Mars for the moment. If we are going to colonize Mars, we have two major decisions to make: terraform, or not?

My intuition is that we'll choose not to terraform, because I think by the time it's feasible to terraform Mars, the Martians will like their planet the way it is, thank you very much. But who knows?
 
lotr10 said:
More on this story. I know it's hard to believe but in the 1980's there was a serious debate among astronomers and astrophysicists if planets existed in abundance or were very rare. Today we now know that planets are ubiquitous across the Galaxy. My guess is that within a decade the signatures for life will prove almost as plentiful:

www.sciencealert.com

Strongest Evidence of Alien Life Yet Found 124 Light-Years Away

Astronomers announced Thursday that they had detected the most promising "hints" of potential life on a planet beyond our Solar System, though other scientists expressed scepticism.
www.sciencealert.com www.sciencealert.com
Click to expand...
This is why the Science is seldom settled:


New analysis casts doubt on 'biosignatures' found on planet K2-18b​

 
phys.org

Super-Earths are common outside the solar system, new study shows

An international team including astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) has announced the discovery of a planet about twice the size of Earth orbiting its star farther out than Saturn is to the sun.
phys.org phys.org

"We found a 'super-Earth'—meaning it's bigger than our home planet but smaller than Neptune—in a place where only planets thousands or hundreds of times more massive than Earth were found before," said Weicheng Zang, a CfA Fellow. He is the lead author of a paper describing these results in the latest issue of the journal Science.
 
Ideally we'd find a super-earth that still has about the same density as our own planet. Gravity being about the same would be huge - I still think that's our biggest obstacle to being multi-planetary. The lack of gravity destroys our bodies.
 
Crusaders said:
Ideally we'd find a super-earth that still has about the same density as our own planet. Gravity being about the same would be huge - I still think that's our biggest obstacle to being multi-planetary. The lack of gravity destroys our bodies.
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The potential living space would also be greatly increased.
 
Who has a better chance of doing this? Musk? Bezos? Some other country?

I haven't thought of it before but are there private efforts in other countries?
 
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