We've measured the earth, theres no curve anywhere. We see mountains from 300 miles away, thats not possible on NASA's globe. Theres no proof the earth is moving. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says outerspace isnt real. Cannot have gas pressure next to a vacuum. yes, cody is a fake scientist who thinks the globe lie is real.
Sure you can, Mars already has deadly radiation covering its entirety, just blow up what you need too, but that still leaves a problem, where on mars can you escape the deadly radiation?
Hey Cody! Love your solution ! But have you heard of the theory of placing a rather small electromagnet at Lagrange point L2 right between the sun and Mars and create a electromagnetic field as to repel solar winds to make an atmosphere on Mars. I've heard the energy that would be needed for such electromagnet would be minuscule (not even a hundredth of what USA makes annually iirc). Could you have a look about the calculation and do a little video about it please? Keep it up 👍
Geomagnetic fields are super overrated. You can give Mars 10x Earth's magnetic strength and in 1 billion years there'll be marginally a difference. Mars won't grow itself an Earth-like atmosphere overnight. If you have the ability to raise Mars air pressure +100x to match Earth's, then that same mechanism can be used to top-off the absolutely miniscule amounts the solar wind strips away (yeah, it is *miniscule* on human timescales).
@@MAD-SKILLZ No, I meant we use the magnet to protect from solar winds, while we do the thing we know best to make an atmosphere (with our greenhouse gasses, probably methane used to fuel Starships). And overengineer phytoplankton to create oxygen out of Co2. If we can do self replicating robots/factory, we would go exponentially faster, and I'm pretty sure we already have the technology to achieve this. And out of the carer crater made to extract ore we could have our base.
@@Aaronit0 that's the thing, we don't need to protect from the solar winds. If we created a mars atmosphere tomorrow, it would be millions of years before we lost any meaningful amount.
@@MAD-SKILLZ But creating the atmosphere would be a progressive thing. I thought solar winds were a constant thing that would sweep off any little light atmosphere we would try to build up?
@@Aaronit0 look at Venus, 100x Earth's atmosphere and 2x closer to the Sun than Mars. No magnetic field, and it's doing pretty fine. If you can replenish the new Mars atmosphere faster than it's stripped away (which you *definitely can*, if you can create one in less than a few million years--Mars with Earth's atmosphere would lose around 40-70 tons per day, basically nothing), then the ridiculous task of creating a geomagnetic field is obsolete.
We've measured the earth, theres no curve anywhere. We see mountains from 300 miles away, thats not possible on NASA's globe. Theres no proof the earth is moving. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says outerspace isnt real. Cannot have gas pressure next to a vacuum.
@LabRat Knatz can’t wait to see the kind of equipment that will be necessary for this. Nukes? Conventional explosives? Kinetic energy? Something else? Btw, does anyone want to research high energy plasma from another dimension? Now would be the perfect time to begin.
I don't think it changes. There's a very simple experiment used to calculate the coefficient of friction of materials, where you just put a block over a flat plate, and incline the plate until the block moves. That angle lets you calculate the coefficient of friction, and it turns out you don't need to know what the gravity is, because it affects the force pushing the block down the same as the normal force, which causes the friction that keeps it in place. Every force is scaled with gravity proportionally, and you just need to know which one is bigger, so gravity doesn't matter. I think sand behaves similarly
The angle of repose uses a formula from Statics, based on Newton's first law, so it isn't affected by gravity - mostly just friction and material composition. In this case, it would matter more about how smooth/round the pieces of rock are. Check out the Mark Rober's video about how adding air to cause sand to behave as a liquid because it reduces the friction. Its a really interesting experiment. Therefore, blasting a conical shaped hole would need an additional angle for safety factor to ensure regular sandstorms or earthquakes (marsquakes? lol) don't cause rockslides when movement does occur. But that's about it. Static materials are actually very predictable.
yeah, we love him, that's absolute and a must, but the idea is insane, I call it a 15 billion years waste. Really disappointed at him that he thought it would be a great idea. Wrong on so many levels here.
yehhh, tho its not such a bad idea if the planet can handle it and humans can continue to improve the planet after. (likely too high of a risk, possibly causing unforeseen issues though) also, counterintuitive way to form a prank by saying "I don't suggest we actually... attempt"
The planet is an otherwise barren hostile waste land, can't make it worse xD Plus it's kinda cheap to play space billiards and the reward could be huge (a 25 km deep hole is impossible on earth, so it might lead to easy metal mining on mars)
curvature rate of earth = .666ft per mile squared. Earth going around sun = 66,600mph Gravity discovered in 1666 (666 newtons) The north and south arctic circles are at 66.6 degree latitude. Diameter of the moon = 6x6x60 Surface temperature of Uranus = 6x6x6 Plutos Orbital Velocity = 4.666km/s Speed of sound in knots = 666 earth circumference in nautical miles = 600 x 6 x 6 Mars 1.666 AU from sun Saturn orbital distance 1,426,666,422km The sun is 666 times brighter than venus Longest time a female astronaut has been in space = 666 days.
The dome would be miles wide. Building this on a planet with zero infrastructure, and a non-breathable atmosphere isn't exactly trivial. What is your definition of quickly?
After over 5 years of watching your videos, this one video finally confirmed something I've always expected. You are a mad scientist lol. You have a laboratory, your own clone robot, evil hench (wo)men (Your chickens), swarms of bees and now your talking about throwing astriods at planets. There should be a youtube reward for best mad scientist. Keep it up buddy haha love the ideas.
I've thought about this before, just in context of a vertical mine shaft. You're explanation answered a lot more engineering questions I had that I never explored. Thanks.
Cody you are an absolute mad man and a legend and I love every minute of it. You blow my mind with your ideas and I learn a ton from your channel. Thanks for always being there when I need a change of pace from the usual stuff I watch on YT. Hope you're doing well and keep on being you.
I thought about this concept too a while back (except with nukes, don't @ me it was a thought experiment) around the time SpaceX announced the then-named BFR but I never did the calculations. I mean I knew it'd be unreasonable but I'm thrilled Cody took the time to work it out in such detail while not venturing too deep into the weeds. If I did the math I probably would've forgotten about angle of repose. I know this because I had to google "angle of repose" after he said it.
We've measured the earth, theres no curve anywhere. We see mountains from 300 miles away, thats not possible on NASA's globe. Theres no proof the earth is moving. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says outerspace isnt real. Cannot have gas pressure next to a vacuum.
Its definitely a cool idea in itself, the problem is the damage the whole procedure would probably do to the rest of the planet , like ejecting quite the large debris field into orbit where it acts like a high speed minefield hunting for space ships and satellites. The other thing i could imagine being a problem is that part of the atmosphere will probably be ejected by this as well , i am no physicist so i am not sure if it would be a significant number or if it would even contribute to the already low atmospheric pressure by essentially evaporating a part of the ground material.
additionally high energy impacts create similar results on the backside of celestial bodies. Would we get two civ pits? don't know. Would there be more destruction and ejected material? quite likely.
@@taylors1545 Sorry for the text wall, so here is a short summary: "there won't be a hill on the other side". And here is why i think so, from my understanding of it the seismic force would be distributed through the ground, sure there will be earthquakes but its not strong enough to create a mountain on the other side. I think i see where you come from with this assumption but the impact isn't actually making a dent like hitting metal with a hammer, its faster and has much more energy so when it hits, the ground will sure be compressed at the impact site but the mass will not be pushed through the planet and make a dent on the other side, the liquid planet core alone would prevent that and act like a cushion. Instead the compressed mass will try to find a way to decompress, going straight up is no option since there is a rock on top that had ludicrous speed and therefore will not just allow mass to fly upwards , down works a bit but the compressed matter will want to go somewhere , so it will spill out upward on the side acting like water when you throw in a stone. There is so much energy in play there that the ground really just acts like a liquid. Most of the energy will be distributed there, the rest will move as earthquakes through the ground but it won't be enough to have any direct effect on the other side of the planet.
Shooting things into orbit is impossible. The resulting "orbit" would intersect mars somewhere (with enough energy close to the launch site, so it would impact around the crater). So the only way stuff actually escapes and doesn't come back, is if it reaches escape velocity. And I doubt that that would happen.
@@anonymousanon4822 Hmm you make a good point, while the impact certainly will eject mass into space, most the resulting orbits will probably lead it back to Mars or straight into outer space, a resulting stable orbit for some might be a really rare exception if possible at all. Still even the temporary orbiting debris could cause damage to equipment we would have in orbit around Mars by then.
This has kind of already been thought of. In the Mars Trilogy, they dug "moholes", 20km+ deep holes into the crust to get higher air pressure and release geothermal (areothermal?) heat into the atmosphere to aid in terraforming. Also, Hellas Basin is basically a similar thing.
@@gestaltengine6369 yes but very slowly and not much at human temperatures. The surface soil is already saturated in CO2 in mars, but probably the newly dug up and obliterated soil at the crater site will be different
We've measured the earth, theres no curve anywhere. We see mountains from 300 miles away, thats not possible on NASA's globe. Theres no proof the earth is moving. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says outerspace isnt real. Cannot have gas pressure next to a vacuum.
No, that is a different concept. What I'm sceptical about though, is whether the atmosphere would actually be thick enough. Also, martian dust still remains a big problem that needs to be solved. Additional fake 'gravity' could in theory be made by making all inhabitants wear suits with ferrous metals in them, and have permanent magnets (perhaps made from martian ores) in the flooring. A later game option could be genetic engineering of humans, if, a private company decided to work on that. That's probably gonna take a long time, but once the technology is there, designer ecosystems could even be a thing. I think that especially, random gene editing research will give us the most data on the relation between certain genes.
After watching this, I some how had a weird thought. How much rare minerals such as gold or platinum are pumped out from oil wells? After all they have a lot of saltwater that is also brought up and separated and those oil deposits were once located at the bottom of an ocean or a sea.
I'm curious what pressure you're actually creating at the bottom of the crater. Are you going for one Earth atmosphere, or for the roughly 1/5 Earth atmosphere necessary to keep one's blood and saliva from boiling? Or somewhere in between?
@@borttorbbq2556 is this for the typical 80/20% N2/O2 mix we have on earth? Because if you can increase the percentage of oxygen in the air (though I know going to 100% can be bad) you can get away with a lower total pressure.
@@alexsiemers7898 He didn't mention anything about a BREATHABLE atmosphere. Only that the total "air pressure" would be sufficient. so atmospheric composition would be the same as the current atmosphere, meaning mostly CO2, with a little water vapour, nirogen, and some other trace gasses. You'd still need an oxygen tank to survive, but at least you wouldn't need a pressure-suit. That said, the thing we could do almost immediately afterwards? Put some super-effective photo-synthesizers in there, to start producing oxygen, and changing that balance. If it took something like... 100 years to change the orbital parameters of those asteroids, allow the impacts, and the location to cool off enough to the point that we can deposit some photosynthetic life-forms. maybe another 100 years before we could walk outside and just... breathe. The biggest issue is going to be the nitrogen honestly. But there are solutions for that. That said, this whole process would likely put enough energy into the planet that a lot of the polar ice-caps would melt, producing a bunh of additional gasses that could also fill the hole... In all honesty, even though it's an April Fool's Day thing... It's actually a totally plausible option, that is capable of being accomplished with todays technology.
@@alexsiemers7898 Lots of space stuff has used 1/5th bar of pure oxygen. It requires some precautions, especially when transitioning to and from it, but otherwise works well. Apollo switched to a "normal" atmosphere for fire safety (some fire-resistant materials are flammable in pure oxygen) The reason the space station uses normal atmosphere is so you can abort and come back to earth without having decompression (recompression?) issues.
Love the concept! Great thought exercise! As a minor issue aside... Kick the bottom of the plexi a few inches forward or backward and the reflection of your monitor won't be visible.
That was actually a premise in C.S. Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet", where the indigenous life forms all dwelt in the very deep "canals" or gorges. It was written in the early 40s, I believe.
The "canali" observations were pretty standard astronomy fare until around that time, so it was believed that mars was covered in canal-like channels, and a lot of people outright assumed they were artificial or in other ways fantastical.
Lining the rim of the 100-km hole with solar panels would also be a good way to power this colony, as this massive berm would be further elevated and have even better access to (the admittedly weak) Martian sunlight. Another potential advantage is that all the kinetic energy impacting the Martian soil/surface would likely release large quantities of gas and (depending on whether certain theories are correct) water that's been trapped in the clays/siliceous materials.
heck, why not just also bring some rare-"earth" metals refining equipment with the first colony ship while we're at it? We're slamming the asteroids into the face of a planet anyway, so we might as well mine even further down while producing materials that might be useful in solar panel production.
For a fraction of the effort you could run a nuclear power plant and not need to have a massive pile of batteries. Solar has a place for low power remote use cases, like space probes in the inner system, warning blinking lights and possibly short burst radio SCADA systems.
Any civilization that can redirect asteroids accurately enough to create this hole probably has no trouble transporting a few thousand solar panels to Mars. But yeah, nuclear is still the more practical option.
This could be a good setting for a sci fi / fantasy story, set entirely within the crater. There could be a wealth gradient, where as you get further from the center of the crater they lose more and more resources, eventually losing oxygen as the cities climb up the sides of the crater. Perhaps a large tower is built atop the central meteor, or built from it that houses the government and the most wealthy. The main character could be someone coming from the edge of the basin, traveling inwards in hopes of success and meeting people along the way, or someone who is exiled from the center to the outskirts, or even outside the crater itself, perhaps he finds other craters that were hidden from those within the crater, like how the other cities were hidden in divergent.
reminded me of the Inca's altitude research station, where they took plants from the low lands and gradually moved them up the terraces in a (meteoric?) crater to get them better adjusted to the cold and altitude of the Inca heartlands.
@@cwtrain I mean I think we landed on a comet already, if we can land some thrusters on an asteroid and adjust its orbit to intersect Mars' at the right time we'd be in good shape
Heck yeah! Discussing crazy ideas just because its fun. I have my own crazy idea to share. If we find a gas impermeable rock layer deep inside mars, could an explosive gas mixture(CO+ O2) be pumped just below this layer over several years, and detonated when the right quantity of gas is reached?
It would be more simple to detonate a hydrogen bomb. Modern nuclear weapons are so powerful they don't form a lot of radioactive material as they use nearly all the energy from their fuel, and if they do form some sort of radioactive elements the lifespan of those is rather short.
@@vadimsimon5453 Tom Scott made a video on how Britain wanted to detonate a bomb underground for compressed gas storage. Turns out, the radioactive contaminants would be a problem. There are short, medium and long-lived isotopes. The activity of the longer lived isotopes would've been enough of a hazard that they decided to drop the idea. Considering we want people to live there, not such a good idea.
That's an interesting idea for sure. Also, depending on the composition of the asteroids used, you may be able to offset the reduction in atmosphere outside the crater as the volatiles (like H2O and CO2) trapped in the asteroids are released upon impact. Then again, that could potentially be offset by the sheer volume of material that will be flung into space at escape velocity.
@@VikingTeddy terrible idea, we'd need like tens of thousands of them. It'd be better to impact asteroids at a "low velocity" steadily growing mass. Either way this is a millennium project
@@hunn20004 Wouldn't need a lot, one is enough. we're perfectly capable of making asteroid impact scale nukes. There's no upper limit to how powerful they can be built. I don't see why it would be a bad idea. It could be assembled on site, maybe remotely. I'm interested in possible down sides since safety or fallout wouldn't be an issue.
If this is possible, have any space agencies ever explored finding planets that have this occuring naturally that could be a genuine option for humans to live in?
There is no other planet in the solar system other than Mars that would allow humans to live and nothing outside of the solar system is an option really, no one will probably get to another star system.
@@connorburns6599 so have any space agencies ever explored finding planets that have this occurring naturally that could be a genuine option for humans to live in?
@@johnandlarrythere’s no real way to find them yet. Cloud cities on Venus would have the pressure and temperature of Earth… but you wouldn’t want to get caught outside in a storm (it rains sulfuric acid)
Why not just build an airtight glass/metal dome over a crater and terraform the inside? It would be much much cheaper and achieve basically the same thing.
@@fasddfadfgasdgs In lower gravity, constructing a glass dome would also be cheaper, and ok yeah maybe it isn't cheaper in hindsight, but its definately seems a waste to blow giant wholes on mars when its already covered with them lol.
A bit mad but no more than a Dyson sphere. If you can put a ring around a star, you can certainly dig a big hole somewhere. All that regolith can be used to build towers reaching up to ground level while a 25km deep conical hole slowly turns into a 25km deep colonised canyon
How deep would you need to go to hit something like half an atmosphere, uncomfortable but technically livable? (Or even less if you bring your own oxygen and simply don’t want to have to wear a counter pressure suit to stop your body exploding) I understand the exponential argument so maybe it doesn’t buy you that much, but still!
Unless you want future Martians to evolve to be thick and long it would be better idea to dig deep enough to get the same pressure as earth. The people on Mars will already be tall because of the gravity.
One thing about digging deep holes on Mars: In some places on Mars, this could cause periodic flooding of the bottom of that hole. We could actually use this to our advantage. Maybe we could have an aquatic environment with 1 Earth atmosphere pressure? That would involve a far shallower hole. Some kind of buoyant covering could prevent evaporation/sublimation of the water.
~60 mbar is the limit in terms of gas bubbles in blood; per my (very approximate) calculation this would occur at a depth of 22km. But we can't breathe even pure oxygen at this pressure; the minimum required partial pressure of oxygen is ~120-160 mbar, at a depth of 26-29km. You absolutely would still need your own oxygen in any case; if we were to replace the entire atmosphere with oxygen the hole would need to be much, much deeper! Best case: own oxygen + hexafluoride atmosphere = 9km deep hole, or 10km for xenon.
This has been on my mind since I saw the inaccuracy of the new "death star" (star wars) that was the size of a planet and had an atmosphere, but it also had a giant pit... I though that it would fill up with atmosphere and would have crazy high pressures and temperatures at the bottom. After thinking that came to my mind what size a hole would have to be to contain all the earth atmosphere inside it... and later can we terraform a patch of mars this way?... thanks for the video dude
You have to also consider the density, the Star Killer Base might be the size of a small planet, but it's also mostly hollow, in the end not planet like as all. I would presume any atmosphere would be artificially generated and artificially sustained.
curvature rate of earth = .666ft per mile squared. Earth going around sun = 66,600mph Gravity discovered in 1666 (666 newtons) The north and south arctic circles are at 66.6 degree latitude. Diameter of the moon = 6x6x60 Surface temperature of Uranus = 6x6x6 Plutos Orbital Velocity = 4.666km/s Speed of sound in knots = 666 earth circumference in nautical miles = 600 x 6 x 6 Mars 1.666 AU from sun Saturn orbital distance 1,426,666,422km The sun is 666 times brighter than venus Longest time a female astronaut has been in space = 666 days.
Heh, you see a thing that can literally shoot FTL laser beams to annihilate planets on the other side of the galaxy and you contemplate how its giant pit would have higher pressure air in it
@@veggiet2009 correct, the amount of pressure depends from gravity, which in turn depends from the weight of the "planet". In the case of that space station, I doubt it weighted anywhere near an actual planet where most of the mass and volume (i.e. anything below a few hundred kilometers from the surface in something that is tens of thousands of km of diameter) is literally molten metal
Mathematically it isn't possible to contain all of the atmosphere in any size open hole. There is an asymptotic approach to 100%, so a better question would be how big to contain 90% or 98% of the atmosphere. But even then you need to define the construction of the hole, where on the planet is the excavated dirt deposited, what is the ratio of width to height, etc? (It all effects the local gravity and thus the pressure and density gradients.)
Just plain crazy. Once we can redirect such big asteroids in quantity onto Mars we won't want to do that because there will already be plenty of people on Mars who will be seriously upset about the prospect of the fallout of debris, earthquakes and whatnot.
@@mechadense we can already predict asteroid trajectories for decades in a future and at this scale tiny changes in trajectory can have dramatic consequences, we just need to find a good candidate and push it precisely
@@pahom2 I doubt we can predict trajectories to the extreme accuracy to hit a pre made target crater more accurately than say +-2km many years in advance. Also that capability is way beyond what is needed for mere planetary defense were it's just necessary to get it well away by some planet-diameters in case there is a chance that it might hit, so there is no world-saving motivation for funding to do ultra accurate pinpoint aiming here. I'd say that humanity will have a first Mars base "soon". Gut feeling: Well less than 50 years. Nudging several ~10km diameter asteroids even a tiny bit is a big costly feat and will take similar timescales I'd assume. And as said this will just be for defense, not for ultra accurate pinpoint offense, or at least I'd very much like to hope so …
@@mechadense well... the second part of proposal (hit the first crater the second time to get rid of the bump in a middle to make a perfectly shaped whole) is unrealistic, but the first part seems achievable
@@pahom2 - A crater from one single impact at a somewhat random spot seems much more achivable, yes. The crater won't get all that deep though (as necessay for high pressure atmosphere), this is not really compensatable by a bigger impactor, which is why Cody proposes the difficult "multi hit process". - Would suck mountains if it accidentally blasts off the tip of Olympus Mons 😂 (joke). At least the side of the planet should be predictable. - Assuming there are well more than 100 people on Mars already when all the massive asteroid redirection stuff is ready, which my gut feeling say is >>50% probable, there are hard questions: ★ How accurately would people need to aim to not hurt colonists & to what probabilty? ★ How would people go about convincing colonists to let them go though with this? Especially if estimates of effects are controversial.
A very interesting thought experiment! Thanks for this! I love this "think outside the planet" kind of thinking. Given enough time and resources I can see this being a possibility...
This is something I always wondered about the classic anti flood argument 'if the flood covered all the mountains, you'd die of altitude poisoning'. If the entire earth was covered in water that was as high as the highest mountain, wouldn't the air pressure still be the same at sea level?
It would be slightly less because the air would have to spread over a slighter bigger surface, but essentially yes air pressure is relative to sea level no matter where that sea level is.
curvature rate of earth = .666ft per mile squared. Earth going around sun = 66,600mph Gravity discovered in 1666 (666 newtons) The north and south arctic circles are at 66.6 degree latitude. Diameter of the moon = 6x6x60 Surface temperature of Uranus = 6x6x6 Plutos Orbital Velocity = 4.666km/s Speed of sound in knots = 666 earth circumference in nautical miles = 600 x 6 x 6 Mars 1.666 AU from sun Saturn orbital distance 1,426,666,422km The sun is 666 times brighter than venus Longest time a female astronaut has been in space = 666 days.
I thought the 'great flood' hypothesis was that it was a bunch of ice dams melting for various cultures as the last ice age ended, and it got changed from 'everyone got washed away' to 'it rained for forty days and forty nights' by thousands of years of oral history.
I asked you to cover this idea some years ago, Cody, and so glad you did... Now we just have to find 3 suitable asteroids and impart enough momentum and next level orbital mechanics to get them to impact at the right location and angle... I see a problem with that - the first impact will blow out a lot of atmosphere, and then the 2nd one would blow out the collected atmosphere as well. The amount of air around the rest of the planet would decrease dramatically too as it flows into the hole and compresses. Work out the volume of a cone with 100km base and 25km apex at 0.5 atm, and compare with the volume of the atmosphere at 0.01 atm - I expect it would be a significant fraction! We'd also have to wait perhaps decades to centuries for the crater to cool down enough to be visitable. Using electric remote mining vehicles with pretty much the same technology that we use to make deep open cast mines now may take a while, but at least they would be achievable after enough time. Perhaps one way that would take less than a lifetime would be to drill several parallel boreholes then knock them through at the bottom to make a large cavities. Sunlight could be concentrated and piped down via fiber optics, in addition to PV electric... Then habitable spaces could be built using membranes containing oxygen instead of heavy pressure vessels - perhaps one day, but it'll be a very long time before it could resemble anything here on Earth unfortunately. In the meantime, let's keep this home habitable too...
@@ricomotions5416 Think about it some more. The crater now contains atmosphere at a higher pressure - the 2nd incoming asteroid interacts with it, heats up, hits the bottom of the crater with a massive explosion and blasts the contents of the crater, including the atmosphere at escape velocities up into space, some of which never return. The remaining atmosphere flows into the crater, and there is now less atmosphere on the planet.
@@ahaveland The biggest nuke we ever detonated here on earth was the tsar Bomba, that shit didn't even disturb the atmosphere one bit. A comet would disturb it significantly more, but still not accelerate it anywhere near to escape velocity
@@ahaveland idk how much would actuallynget ejected. Gasses and solids behave basically the same at those impact velocities. So the amount of gas ejected I would imagine is similar to the amount of crust ejected, which is some, but most of it stays on the planet after falling back down. Gas would be the same except some of the gas wouldnt come down from solar winds taking it away. The pit wouldnt be 50x as dense as the upper Atmosphere btw. only the bottom ,(smallest part) is. Most of it is near the top, where the pressure is lower. Just a guesstimate, but maybe the avg pressure is about 0.04atm for it to go down to 0.5atm
Hey Cody! Mars already have some holes, lets just use them more efficiently! I've read a proposal to cover some of Valles Marineris (specifically the Ophir chasma) with a membrane of some sort and raise the pressure underneath. What do you think?
i saw a youtube video where the soviets used atomic bombs to blow out a hole which was then used as a reservoir. Perhaps this woudl be easier than using asteroids. How could an asteroid be moved anyway?
@@christopherchung9916 1. Asteroids are heavy and our rockets are puny 2. Only the very first colony can be made using asteroid impacts, it is too much devastating thing to do. 3. A membrane can be formed on site. The colony has to have a way to repair it anyway.
@@legolegs87 Ideally we'd find asteroids with trajectories that are already near-misses for mars and nudge them. We barely have any experience with this, so targeting the same impact point repeatedly won't be easy. But on the upside, it would teach us more about how to turn future earth impact events into near-misses instead...
On the other hand, there's this nice planet with breathable air, beaches, forests and all kinds of nice things.. and we don't have to go very far to enjoy it :)
Love to see scientists like you who understand the gravitational nature of atmospheric pressure. Our own atmosphere is not nothing, though since its invisible gas many people can't understand that. Our atmosphere is made of wall to wall atoms and molecules. Even though they are invisible they still have gravitational weight and are held in place in the atmosphere by the Earth's gravity. And they are layered by atomic weight, with the heaviest on bottom and the lightest on top. Of course gasses toward the outer part of the atmosphere suffer competition between the Earth's gravity and extraneous bodies of mass like the Sun or Jupiter. As a result many, many metric tons of hydrogen, our lightest element, or least attracted to gravity, float off each year headed toward those other sources of gravity. Your theory to bombard Mars with asteroids may not be fully possible. I think you may be discounting the possible changes to Mars rotation and orbit trajectory as they apply to Mars gravitational changes as they may affect Earth or other planets and bodies of mass that flow through our solar system. I'm afraid these changes could be harmful to the gravitation ballet of all the bodies in our own solar system and possibly even beyond. I think the planet we are looking for will be one with an atmosphere capable of producing water in any of the three states it can exist.
Im pretty sure gasses mix very well in amtospheres even the heaviest gasses go up in the atmosphere, otherwise such an effect would be a lot more prevelant, meaning the gasses would be stacked on top of eachother like water and oil. Not an expert tho could be totally wrong.
@@TheDeadMeme27 Wind is very similar to ocean waves. It is produced from a bettle between the Earths gravity and the moons gravity mostly. The Earths gravity tries to keep the atmosphere in place while the moons gravity tries to to drag it. That causes wind. As the Earth rotates and the moon passes over there is a friction that causes turbulence in the air. So yes, there is some mixing of atoms in the atmosphere horizontally and vertically. But generally you will find a severely depleted amount of oxygen above 20,000 feet above sea level. At that level and higher you can only find lighter gasses. All atoms layer themselves like the oxygen atom does. The oxygen atom is not unique in that regard. Gasses rising does not occur instantly. When hydrogen is released on the surface it very slowly rises toward the upper atmosphere. Gasses in our atmosphere are layered by weight generally speaking.
Most of the heat is expelled with the ejecta coming from the hole. I would estimate the range being something in the 90% range. And the thermal enegy thats left is rather quick to radiate out. This idea is crazy and at the same time viable solution.
Seems unnecessary to wait after each when much of that cooled material will be ejected. Could be more efficient for further ejections to hit heated material. But we would need to wait after the final impact.
@@tedlis517 Yes agreed, One interesting question is if this would be done with nuclear weapons / detonators how much does one need. Yes there is the radiation in this but most of the radioactive material would surely be ejected to the space. Fascinating concept overall with nukes or meteorites.
Wow really cool idea Cody! I wonder if nuclear bombs would be more practical, but I have no idea if they would be as effective. Could we dig the hole by detonating multiple tsar bomba analogues? I think nukes have been used on earth to excavate large amounts of dirt before. Not sure if the radiation would be an issue though.
The dinosaur killer asteroid that Cody's talking about has the energy of 4.5 billion times the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. There are about 15 million tons of uranium deposits on earth and about 60kg go in a bomb, meaning you can make 250 million bombs using all the uranium that exists on our planet, including all ore deposits that haven't been discovered. You can use up all extractable uranium on earth to make nukes and you're still 4.25 billion nukes short.
It’s way more efficient to use the nukes to push the asteroid onto the correct course. This Reminds me of another crazy idea I had to actually accomplish that.
Great theoretical experiment, but hampered by an important fact you may have overlooked. Mars has a dead core. The inner metallic core of the planet is not rotating, which creates a far weaker magnetic field. This is partly why Mars has such a thin atmosphere. The low gravity and lack of magnetic field may cause your well of atmosphere to jet off the planet
The atmosphere can't leave the planet from underneath the rest of the atmosphere. A much more likely end to the useful life of the experiment would be natural forces closing up the hole. Quakes and tremors (Mars has them) would erode the sides into the hole, slowly reducing the total depth. Wind would bring dust and sand into the hole, etc.
Solar wind erosion is an extremely slow process, and for habitability purposes an artificial magnetic field could be set up easily on site or via a couple "geo" stationary satellites
We've measured the earth, theres no curve anywhere. We see mountains from 300 miles away, thats not possible on NASA's globe. Theres no proof the earth is moving. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says outerspace isnt real. Cannot have gas pressure next to a vacuum.
This is strangely one of the easier things to deal with. We have the technology to build a satellite that produces a strong enough magnetic field right now. Can be powered by solar nuclear or both and double as a communication relay and research instrument if you're into that kind of thing
It's a good idea. I think it might be little bit easier if we started with some tiny fish and aquatic plants first. It might save on the requirement to build such a deep hole since we'll have the water to provide the atmospheric pressure.
That is an interesting thought experiment. I wonder if Marsian winds blowing over your hole would create a low pressure area and pull your pit atmosphere up and out. Or if there would be winds that strong and sustained over a 100km area.
It is true Marsian winds blow with high speed but they are also extremely low pressure. This means that the total mass of atmosphere blowing over the crater is not really that big compared to the amount of gas trapped inside. However I think it is likely to create some interesting atmospheric phenomenons. This heated up mass of Martian air will inevitably rise above the crater hight and will be eventually cooled by the freezing cold Martian winds. If we were able to keep our crater air humid, snow or rain would fall pretty consistently
sandstorms could be a problem, imagine having to take tons of sand 25km out all the way outside the hole everytime a storm hits, that would cost a lot of energy
Mars's atmosphere is way too thin to do proper "sandstorms". On Mars they move very little dust and are very very weak, they are a nuisance and dirty up the solar panels and that's it. Yes that movie with Matt Damon is a lie.
In all seriousness digging "pit cities" on mars might actually be a really good idea to begin with. We'd need to mine for resources anyways, the lower gravity allows for somewhat easier extraction and mine tunnel systems could be larger. Digging a large quarry to get ores, rock and sand for building materials could then be converted into a city pit, even if the atmospheric pressure wouldn't be great enough for a livable atmosphere those pits would be more protected and could even be canopied to keep in a larger pressure. This canopy could be done in multiple layers: You have the outer atmosphere over the pit canopy, under it you have slightly increased atmospheric pressure which would push upwards against the canopy which would slightly counteract gravity pulling it down, then the city itself encased in smaller "domes" which have a "survivable atmosphere" (not pleasant to live in but you can survive in it) and finally the city main structures which are fully pressurized and have full air. Having it encased like this would also trap moisture so you could possibly use that to cultivate plants in a high CO2 atmosphere on the outside, you'd just have to find ones that can grow in lower pressure and lower light conditions. Also as you mentioned while Mars' core isn't as hot as Earth's it would still provide some geothermal heating. You could dig deep enough to the point where the heating could be used for geothermal power generation through heat exchange into the much colder atmosphere. This would also heat up your pit cities and, while I'm not an expert on that at all, possibly provide some heating for the atmosphere in general.
That ground rock would be quite warm at the bottom. Mars' interior warms by about 4-7 degrees Kelvin for every kilometer down you go (as best we can tell), so to go 18 kilometers down from Hellas Planitia (7 kilometers down) would raise the rock temperature by possibly up to 126 degrees Kelvin. Estimates I've seen for the average temperature at the bottom of Hellas Planitia are around -56 degrees Celsius on average, so your rock temperature would be around 343 degrees Kelvin - the equivalent of 157 degrees Fahrenheit. Some of that would obviously radiate away if you made the crater wide, but even so you probably wouldn't have to go down far below the surface for the rock to get hot again.
Rather than doing the multiple bombing, The central crater could make an amazing spaceport. It's elevation makes it easier to reach and depart from, and fairly close to the base. Plus it would be relatively hardened I imagine. It's fun to imagine the bureaucracy involved for cratering Mars to make it more habitable.
I think the main problem here is of course dust/sand carried by Mars' wind. It wouldn't take long for the new fresh crater to start filling up and need constant energy emptying. Would have to take that in to account.
My first question was "How would you aim them", then realized that if you had a whole string, each following in the 'shadow' of the next, then the turbulence from forcing the atmosphere aside might hold the next one in place. They might not land exactly where you want them to, but they should impact properly. Does that make sense?
I would say better control of the speed of each asteroid, makes it simpler then getting a bunch to hit right after another. This way you could aim it and control its speed during the multi year journey from I assume the astroid belt. Then by accounting for the planets rotation and the asteroid's speed, it hits the target at as close to a 90 degree angle as possible making the atmosphere effects on the impact location pretty much nothing. Also by using asteroids and not comets that might start releasing gases that could offset the impact location.
There was a planet in Larry Niven's Known Universe like this. It was Mars-like until it was hit with a superweapon that carved a huge canyon that all the atmosphere fell into. Afterwards they renamed it Canyon. Wonder if this could be applied to opposite effect on Venus, creating a big hole for the extra atmosphere to fall into, leaving the rest of the planet habitable (or at least without a crushing, lead melting atmosphere). There's probably too much atmosphere for that, and you might not be able to dig as deep, the crust being more plastic. But I don't know enough to assert either way.
though no digging equipment can handle Venus surface conditions. the longest any artificial object has been able to weather the conditions on the planet's surface is 90 minutes
