Can Plants Survive on Mars? The Case for Mars 15

so the Martian atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and if we terraform Mars to be even warmer we're just going to be adding more co2 which means at some point we're gonna have to convert that atmosphere to oxygen now what are some of the challenges were going to face and having to do that and our plants really the best option and doing so let's talk about that [Music] so first let's talk about well the current Martian atmosphere there it actually be no point whatsoever in converting the current Martian atmosphere to oxygen and the reason is the Martian atmosphere has such a low pressure that if you were to put a plant or a animal on the surface it wouldn't be able to breathe it's only point six kilo Pascal's meaning that it would almost act as if you went to the vacuum of space all the atmosphere all the gas would just spread out so much we'd have no ability to breathe whatsoever now when we talk about terraforming Mars it's a really common thing to discuss how we need to raise the temperature of the surface and in doing so we would actually have to increase the atmosphere to around thirty to fifty kilo Pascal's now once we got to this region where this pressure is much larger that's a time when we would actually want to start converting the co2 atmosphere to oxygen because that is a region that we would actually be able to breathe and plants would be able to photosynthesize so the first way of converting the co2 to oxygen is by following the steps that it happened here on earth and by implementing cyanobacteria algae and plants we would be starting a process called eco Price's which stands for beginning a new eco system we would basically be creating a brand new climate on Mars one that has whether it be bacteria algae moss or plants now there are a few problems with implementing these organisms onto Mars and this is the radiation and the soil also known as regolith on the surface now let's first talk about radiation the Curiosity rover just a few years ago made a discovery that it experiences about 300 millisieverts which is approximately 15 amount of times the exposure of radiation that a nuclear power plant worker is allowed to be exposed to now there's another problem the Curiosity rover also had short periods of time where it experienced twice the amount of radiation as the average amount just because of the lack of the magnetic field and lack of atmosphere made it so that solar effects have a much greater effect on Mars then the same effects would have to us here on earth in terms of radiation it's also theorized that if we were able to increase the atmosphere and potentially add a magnetic shield as mentioned in his videos that would be able to bring the radiations down to a more manageable level however scientists here on earth are still trying to understand how plants and photosynthetic organisms react to radiation even though at high enough radiations the DNA breaks down we have been able to see four examples in cases of Chernobyl or experiments that have been done on the ISS how exactly these plants react to these high levels of radiation but there are some that do manage it pretty well however the bigger problem with Mars is the soil or the Martian regolith as it is commonly referred to the Martian regolith hasn't really been known for finding a lot of nitrogen and that's a pretty big issue because here on earth we have something called the nitrogen cycle it's actually as valuable as the water cycle in terms of life as we know it so the nitrogen cycle starts as n2 or nitrogen gas in the atmosphere is broken down by different nitrogen fixing bacteria in the soil and by doing so it turns n2 into ammonia which then is converted in nitrite goes to nitrate plants are then able to use nitrate to grow and then when an animal consumes the plan the plan itself converts that nitrate into well protein something that we've all heard before so by converting something that was once nitrogen gas through a series of bacteria and the plan itself we can then find well protein what we use to get energy and then when animals pass away and decompose that goes back into the soil and recreates this process now nitrogen has actually been found on Mars just a few years ago the Curiosity rover found nitric acid which is kind of like nitrate however has an extra hydrogen atom but the findings aren't as good as expected the Phoenix lander about ten years ago tried to do similar samples in a different location on Mars and it wasn't able to find nitrogen and it's not a good sign when we've been trying to track different regions of soil for many years and we only have a few cases of finding some which could be a problem because if nitrogen is a really rare element then the likelihood of us being able to easily create an ecosystem drastically goes down because we won't have that night cycle but rather we would have to manually fertilize an entire planet which would be a very difficult task to do however some scientists do theorize that nitrogen can exist in larger molecules that aren't detectable by these experiments so there is a plan of action for terraforming the surface and this is what they want to do so they want to start out first by implementing algae and cyanobacteria this isn't gonna start creating oxygen but rather it's gonna take these large boulders and break them out down into gravel or a finer soil now once you do that that actually allows for things such as moss to start to grow and moss will start to create oxygen but not at the rate that we want the purpose of the moss is actually to break down that gravel even further to create a finer soil something that would be able to well house grass shrubs really small plants and this will be a major step because once we're able to house grass or small shrubs then the climate on Mars would start to look like what Tundras look like here on earth there'd be a lot of similarities between the two especially near warmer regions and where there's water now after many generations of the cyanobacteria than leading demas many generations of moss breaking down the soil leading to grass and the many generations of grass eventually getting big enough to shrubberies and maybe even bushes that's when we'll be able to implement high-altitude pine trees these pine trees will be very crucial to the development of oxygen on in the atmosphere and this is because these pine trees already are able to not only operate at low pressures but are very well at operating at low temperatures down to 42 degrees Fahrenheit and also they don't need pollinators to spread their seeds they could just spread them through the wind therefore if there is enough nitrogen or fertilization in the soil then they will be able to just spread naturally without having to use bees or manually planting them and once these trees started to grow in the regions that grass had been existing for years and the soil was fine enough we would be getting to a point where well oxygen would be created fast enough and it's theorized that maybe after 5-10 generations of these trees or human generations you get to a point where it would be breathable now these numbers aren't for sure because we don't know exactly how much nitrogen is in the soil we don't know how exactly these plants are gonna react in this radiation zone and how this might change it will work however there are theories that by doing genetic modification and by enhancing these organisms we'll be able to achieve this a little bit faster however the biological approach is still rather slow because it'll take many many generations just to get to a point where oxygen can exist now is that the only option well it turns out it's not there's another option which is using electro chemistry electrochemistry is the process of breaking apart whether it be a molecule in the separate molecules or molecule in the elements by using really high temperatures really high pressures and a positive and negative or anode and cathode disturbance now NASA is actually already doing this they're working on the Mars oxygen in pseudo resource utilization experiment also known as moxie this experiment is about the size of a shoebox and is going up on the 2020 Rover which will be launched in just a couple of years from now the experiment is aiming to actually create about 10 grams of oxygen per hour on the surface of Mars and like I said earlier it's going to be using this electrochemistry process it will pressurize the Martian atmosphere being mostly carbon dioxide it will then raise the temperature to about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit at this high temperatures the elements within the molecule of carbon dioxide start to energize and once you create a magnetic field that separates the positive and the negative atoms or the molecules then you'll get carbon monoxide and an oxygen atom to separate from one another the oxygen atoms will connect with another oxygen atom as they cool down to form oxygen gas and the carbon monoxide then will be exhausted into the atmosphere now this sounds really great if this works on the surface we will be able to effectively create oxygen on the surface of Mars using the Martian atmosphere this will be a technological feat and be a real advancement for science now there is a problem with this method it's extremely power intensive in order for it to work you have to pressurize the atmosphere so much that it has to be a hundred times that of the regular pressure of Mars in addition you then have to raise all of that gas to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit so that the molecules can actually separate from one another now if you wanted to scale this up to be a giant machine on the surface of Mars then you would probably require just a nuclear reactor just to run it itself to put it into perspective the one that that's only a size of the shoebox that's on the rover is gonna be taking up 300 watts of power when the rover itself only generates a hundred watts per hour which is an issue because it's going to be running on batteries reserves and isn't sustainable to constantly be running so the main difference between the biological process and the electrochemical process is one takes many generations and is dependent on the molecular makeup of the Martian regolith or the Martian soil and the other is dependent on well how much energy were able to consume and if we're actually capable of producing that much on the surface now there is a really quick discussion I want to bring up a lot of people question whether or not we should even send life or organisms to Mars everything that's been sent to Mars thus far has been made in a cleanroom trying to minimize the amount of potential organic matter that we send now some people say if Mars is a dead planet then we might as well just try and do our best to bring it back to life whereas if Mars actually already houses life that will be a scientific breakthrough and could show us a lot more about how life forms and what are some of the limitations that is why everything that is sent is so clean and made sure to be so precise because if we accidentally contaminate the planet then we could we could ruin a lot of science that could be learned from understanding how life is formed on another planet so currently converting the Martian atmosphere from carbon dioxide to oxygen isn't really a problem that people are worrying about the main problem that people are worrying about today is whether or not we can send humans to Mars and if there's a reason of colonizing it so this ends my discussion on terraforming the Red Planet the next few episodes of the case for Mars are gonna look into colonizing the Red Planet what are some of the challenges we'll be running into is it possible and if it is possible will we see it in our lifetime thank you for watching and I hope to see you in the next episode

Channel: Martian Wolf

Views: 112,163

Keywords: mars, life on mars, mars rover, plants, planet, space, mars (planet), nasa, growing plants on mars, science, mars anomalies, plant, plant (organism classification), forest on mars, china vegetables on mars, face on mars, mars spacex plants nasa, growing plants on the moon, vegetables on mars, greenhouses on mars, live on mars, garden on mars, on mars, plants grown on space soils, plants on the moon, water on mars, mars plant life, planet mars, moon, news, earth, the martian

Id: 9CAvgsZ2yQk

Length: 11min 49sec (709 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 07 2018