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- Newsgroups: sci.astro
- Path: sparky!uunet!enterpoop.mit.edu!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!athena.mit.edu!acgoldis
- From: acgoldis@athena.mit.edu (Andrew C Goldish)
- Subject: Future life on Mars?
- Message-ID: <1992Dec29.153041.14481@athena.mit.edu>
- Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: vongole.mit.edu
- Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 15:30:41 GMT
- Lines: 11
-
- Since everyone has been discussing the end of life on Earth over the past
- few days, I was wondering whether or not life will be able to arise on Mars,
- at least for a short period of time, during the last one or two billion years
- of the solar system (that is, assuming there is no life there already). Since
- the sun is going to keep on getting more and more luminous, enough to turn the
- Earth into another Venus, it seems possible that Mars will be able to get
- warm enough for something interesting to happen. Can the increased heat
- from the sun melt enough ice cap and permafrost water and kick enough CO2
- into the atmosphere to make oceans and turn Mars into a habitable planet
- (at least in the oceans)?
- A. Goldish
-