We will be living on Mars in the end of 21st Century???

It may sound weird, but scientists are sure that idea about people living on Mars can't be only a sci-fi story...


I found this article on news.softpedia.com. It is said, that when the Earth will no longer be a good place to live, people will be living on Mars. Yeah, it sound kinda good, but... I dunno, though. Destroy one planet and then live on another, 'till it will be destroyed... 
Actually, I don't think if this idea will be realised because in my opinion, these 'terraforming' jobs will last more than hundread years. Strange but this article was published in 2006...
Anyway, I'll let you read this article and you can agree or disagree with my opinion.




A group of scientists calls for an innovative project to terraform the Red Planet by the end of this century, so that people will be able to live and work on its surface. This technique has been presented in sci-fi productions for some time and could be put  in practice by the end of the 21st century.

Artist's conception
of a terraformed
Mars in four stages
of development. Image credits:
Wikimedia

Terraforming literally means "Earth-shaping" and it's a process where a planet resembling Earth in physical composition is modified by humans to support lifeforms that live on Earth. This involves altering the atmosphere, the temperature and the general environment in order to make them similar to what is found on Earth.

Mars will be the most likely candidate for such a transformation, said Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time visiting fellow of the Hoover Institution, who presented a manifesto at the Aspen Institute, containing main ideas for transforming Mars into a space colony.

"I suggest that the near-term outlook is that Mars will be terraformed. We're currently in the tenth millennium of the terraforming era" Wood said. "The terraforming impulse in humankind will be quenched only by massive adverse selective pressure," but the adversaries of this idea may reconsider when Earth will no longer be able to support the growing population, or when irreversible environmental changes and even cosmic events will force us to look for another home.

For now, there is no effective method of terraforming another planet and mankind is only beginning to truly explore our solar system. Before being able to raise the average temperature of the planet, removing all excess carbon dioxide and generating soil to support agriculture, we must first get there.


So far, a manned mission to Mars is not scheduled for this decade, possibly not even for the next, but in the last eight decades of the century, we could overcome the technical problems with new technologies and maybe even establish a colonizing mission on Mars, with the purpose of transforming it into a second Earth.


This is a map of Mars surface:
http://www.google.com/mars/#lat=37.753344&lon=-0.560302&zoom=7&map=visible