If you were to put Earth's atmosphere on........(see below)?

Question

If it were possible to put an identical atmosphere of Earth's on Mars and Venus, would either one of them or both of them be habitable for humans?

Or would Mars still not be able to hold it because of it having so little gravity to keep it?

And would Venus just be too close to the sun still to be Earth like even with an identical atmosphere?


Just curious.

Answer 1

interesting thought, but i don't know. maybe

Answer 2

If it was possible to put an Earthly atmosphere on Venus and Mars, both planets would be habitable by humans, at least for awhile. Then things would start to change.

Assuming that Venus has active volcanos, which appears to be the case, it's atmsphere would soon start to accumulate CO2 and water vapour. Both these are greenhouse gases and the temperature would begin to rise. Eventually the temperature of the atmosphere would reach a stable temperature which we would expect to be considerably hotter than on Earth. Also Venus rotates in a completely different way to Earth. It would require some fancy computer modelling to predict how the atmosphere would eventually look, but I doubt if it would be particularly pleasant anywhere on the surface.

Mars would be a more congenial place. It rotates at about the same rate as Earth with a similar tilt, so stable atmospheric circulation patterns similar to the Earths would appear along with stable icecaps. Any water vapour might condense into cloud and perhaps if Mars was supplemented with a big dose of water, seas would form. Once again, computer modelling would predict in better detail how it would all turn out. The low gravity of Mars would see the atmosphere gradually leak off into space, but this would probably take millions of years.

Answer 3

Mars would be able to hold an atmosphere as thick as ours if it had a global magnetic field. The gravity on Mars is sufficient, but Mars has only localized magnetic field caused by crustal anomalies, this allows the solar wind to strip away parts of the Martian atmosphere.

Venus could also retain an atmosphere like Earth's, but most likely the temperature would still be, on average, 100 degrees F. This is because Venus is almost 30 million miles closer to the sun and would absorb much more light than would Earth.

If either of those two planets had an earthlike atmosphere though, both would be habitable, just not as ideal as our planet, and humans would probably have settlements there.

Answer 4

Mars: Is half the size of Earth so gravity is considerably less and unable to hold the same amount of gas. In addition Mars has no magnetic filed because the core cooled down long time ago, therefore the Sun will blow away any significant gas around the planet. At the end you will have what is present now.

Venus: Is about the same size as Earth with close to the same gravity as Earth but its rotation is about 242 days or so, meaning that one side always faces the Sun. Unfortunately this prevent Venus to have a magnetic field and shield itself from the Sun's radiation, in addition the amount of volcanic activity in Venus in addition to lack of liquid water will contaminate the atmosphere with green house gases and the temperature will rise again. A possible solution will be to increase the spin similar to Earth so a magnetic field is formed and somehow release some of the sulfuric acid to space or make it precipitate to the ground. Oh! and add water, plenty of water.

Now what are the chances of making that happen?

Answer 5

Earth has a "magnetosphere" caused by the spinning of the Earth's internal "magma" (called "lava" when it comes out of volcanoes). The magnetosphere protects us against radiations that would kill us. Mars has no magnetosphere. Even if there were a thicker atmosphere on Mars, mankind could not live there without some kind of shielding against the radiation.

Venus is too close to the sun and has an acidic atmosphere - it may never be hospitable for human habitation.

Answer 6

I think in both cases wouldn´t be so simple.

1. Venus is closer to the sun and that will make a difference. So men still had to build some vaults, or shelters, to avoid death. Gravity won´t be a problem since Venus is almost a twin of the earth.

2. In regard to Mars, gravitation would be different since its one third of the Earth´s size, but again we would have to develop some compensator. Water may flow in the mars lakes, oceans and seas. But it still will be cold and freezing planet. We would need to build shelters too.

Answer 7

Mars does already have an atmosphere not as thick as ours though!