mars-atmosphere

A realistic look at Mars settlement: radiation, dust, low gravity, water, food, power, medicine, psychology, and the economics of staying alive.

Planetary magnetic fields are made by dynamos: electrically conducting fluid, stirred by heat and rotation, that regenerates its own field. Earth's runs in liquid iron, Jupiter's in metallic hydrogen, and Uranus and Neptune's in shallower layers that give them tilted, off-center fields. Mars lost its global field billions of years ago.

Terraforming Mars has been a science fiction dream for decades. The actual physics suggests it's vastly harder than commonly imagined, and a 2018 NASA-funded study concluded it's basically impossible with current or near-future technology.