▲ The Mars terraforming

 Have you seen the movie, The Man of Steel? This is a movie of Superman and a Kryptonian general who both from the planet Krypton. The Kryptonian general wanted to make Earth as Krypton by changing Earth's atmosphere. One scientist in the movie mentioned the word, terraforming. What is terraforming?

▲ The terraforming scene of `Man of Steel`

 Terraforming can also be called as planet renovation. It renovates the ecosystem, temperature, and atmosphere. Many scientist think that terraforming is the hardest thing to achieve, but is also the most important goal. There are many things we need to terraform, and NASA organized the requirements. The first need is the existence of liquid water. We cannot survive without water. The second is that the atmosphere should be habitable for organic matter to be synthesized. We need to make a green belt of trees to synthesize the needed components for organic matter to grow. The last requirement is the the need of an energy source for metabolism. I believe that this is the most important thing because the purpose of the terraforming is to live on a habitable planet. Is there any proposed site to be terraformed? Most scientists think that Mars, Venus, and Europa are the most suitable sites to terraform. Venus is the first planet that scientists have for chosen terraforming, but the atmosphere is too thick and the atmospheric pressure is too high. So, the temperture is too high to terraform. Europa has liquid water, but it is located in the radioactive belt of Jupiter. The most possible planet we can terraform is Mars.

▲ Terraformed Venus

 Mars has a very thin atmosphere  and the proportion of oxygen is under 1 percent. There is scant greenhouse effect on this planet, so the average temperature is minus 62 degrees Celsius. So, many scientists want to melt Mar's  polar caps, so that we can make a thick atmosphere. There are two hypotheses on how that can be done, from Carl Edward Sagan and Elon Musk. Carl claimed that he can melt the polar cap by using microorganisms. They can get more solar energy which can make these melt, but it needs too much times. On the other hand, Elon Musk claimed that it is easy to melt the polar caps by using nuclear power. However, it also has a disadvantage because it involves a radioactive fallout. So, for the moment, some scientists prefer to do paraterraforming. It is not terraforming a whole planet, but constructing a building to live in. It is very easy to live in one, and we can achieve within a very short time. Unfortunately, we need too much money to do maintenance and it remains too delicate for meteors.

 As time goes by and we continue to use too much energy, the Earth is getting too polluted. Someday, we need to leave for another planet. Someday, we cannot avoid terraforming. I dream that in the future, my descendants will be able to romp on the surface of other planets like Mars.