Terraforming: Well, We Could Put All The Men On Mars And The Women On Venus, But It Might Take A While
Friday, June 11, 2010 - 16:51
in Mathematics & Economics
Terraforming is the concept of engineering planets to make them habitable for terrestrial life. This idea was born out of fiction. Olaf Stapledon, in his 1930 novel Last and First Men, first described a project undertaken to make Venus suitable for humans which began by placing photosynthetic plants on the surface to release oxygen. In 1942, Jack Williamson coined the term “terraforming” in his short story "Collision Orbit." In 1961, Carl Sagan wrote the first academic paper on terraforming and published it in Science, moving the terraforming to the realm of serious scientific pursuit. read more