If we terraform mars, isn't the dirt still toxic?

No, as terraforming means changing that.

Whether it is really possible, is a different question, but after you have an atmosphere, you could have engineered microorganism processing the soil etc.

▲

marcosdumay 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Just exposing the Martian soil to water for some time is enough to destroy the perchlorates.

(Turns out there's a region in Antarctic with them too, so we can always test things there.)

▲

operatingthetan 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In that sense then the term "terraforming" is on equal footing with alchemy.

▲

wolvoleo 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Doing something like that at planetary scale is science fiction anyway even if we did have the tech to do it.

	▲	baq 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Talking to computers and expecting computers to answer coherent English was science fiction 4 years ago. Don’t lose faith
	▲	generic92034 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I would not be so pessimistic. Look what the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria have done for our atmosphere.
	▲	wincy 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Maybe we’ll turn all of Mars into paperclips with our efforts! Glorious paperclips. First Mars, then the universe!
	▲	naravara 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If you can kick off self-sustaining biological processes it’ll happen on its own eventually, but you’d just be looking at generational time scales to do it. Of course you’ll probably have lots of side-effects.

▲

JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> In that sense then the term "terraforming" is on equal footing with alchemy

NASA has proposed using "synthetic biology to take advantage of and improve upon natural perchlorate reducing bacteria. These terrestrial microbes are not directly suitable for off-world use, but their key genes pcrAB and cld...catalyze the reduction of perchlorates to chloride and oxygen" [1].

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/general/detoxifying-mars/

▲

fylo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]