Mars: will it naturally become more Earth-like?

[GreysonCarlisle]

@MrDibble

Adding a few million tons of micrometeorites to Mars isn’t going to do much *unless *it’s all U, Th and K[sub]40[/sub] and you manage to get it into the Martian mantle and core without the active tectonics Mars lacks.

So it would take something that basically reinvented the planet, like a Theia event, to jumpstart Mars. Thanks!

[Colibri]

@GreysonCarlisle

Follow-up question, if you’d all be so kind. Is the solar wind acting on a low-mass unshielded planet strong enough to strip dust away from the planet and into space? If so, once the atmosphere is gone, will Mars start dissolving?

The solar wind is made up of energetic charged particles. They can strip particles from an atmosphere because those don’t weigh very much. Dust particles are made up of comparatively very large numbers of atoms so the particles in the solar wind wouldn’t be able to impart enough energy to them to cause them to overcome the gravity of the planet. On the moon, the surface is enriched with nuclei from the solar wind, so the wind actually deposits material (but in very small amounts) rather than stripping it away.

[Jonathan_Chance]

@orcenio

We just fire up the ol’ global alchemistry set to match our Mars-rock-to-atmosphere production to Mars’ natural size-based losses. I mean if we are fathoming a reality that can **create **a habitatal Mars, we are probably fathoming a reality that could **also sustain **it.

Isn’t that what the Barsoomians were doing with their atmosphere plants? I’d totally go for that if we got Barsoomians out of it.