A NEW candidate is emerging as the next host world for human life.
A Nasa scientist has developed a theoretically possible plan to make Venus habitable.
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Alex Howe, an astrophysicist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center, drafted a paper detailing how humans could construct ‘cloud cities’ and terraform Venus.
The plan starts with blanketing Venus with “72 trillion” massive, connected patches about 30 miles above the surface – this shell will vacuum seal what is below it and work to alter the chemistry of air above it to make it breathable.
Supplying the planet with water comes with an innovation that sounds like the plot of a Rick & Morty episode – ice would be mined from nearby moons and glided toward Venus.
With the full concentration of Earth’s resources, the paper says Venus could support human life in 200 years.
Howe addressed the widespread lean towards Mars over Venus as a potential human outpost.
“Venus also provides some advantages over Mars for colonization with its near-Earth-like surface gravity, an atmosphere thick enough to provide robust protection from cosmic rays,” he wrote.
The Daily Beast reported that Howe’s paper is not peer-reviewed but considered “very much a possibility,” by experts.
Howe addressed the outlandishness of the topic and wrote that he simply hopes to show that altering Venus’ landscape is more achievable than one might think.
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Venus has been a hot planet in more ways than just its scorching surface.
Nasa announced they will send two probes across space to measure test long-held theories about the planet next door.
Shortly after Nasa went public with DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, Chinese officials said they were musing exploring Venus.
The recent discovery of phosphine gas – a chemical signature of life – in Venusian clouds could be a clue in a cosmic mystery about life on other planets.
But today’s planned missions to Venus are a far cry from terraforming the planet and moving society there.
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