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  • Re: Enough liquid water on Mars to cover the surface to a depth of 1 mi

    From Ernest Major@21:1/5 to William Hyde on Wed Aug 21 22:16:13 2024
    On 20/08/2024 21:22, William Hyde wrote:

    In fact, if CO2 is the main greenhouse gas, the amount require to make
    Mars habitable also makes it uninhabitable. Nor can any such atmosphere
    hold enough H2O to matter.  Vast amounts of some neutral, stable, GHG
    are required. ArNe2 would be perfect, if only it existed. CFCs possibly, though they do eventually break down.

    WikiPedia tells me that ArNe2 does exist; at 4K. I'd worry about what
    making it stable at room temperature would do to the rest of chemistry,
    but if one assumes that the rest of chemistry is unchanged then the next question that comes to mind is whether ArNe2 is an anaesthetic like
    several of the inert gases are.

    --
    alias Ernest Major

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  • From Ernest Major@21:1/5 to William Hyde on Thu Aug 22 22:32:19 2024
    On 22/08/2024 21:19, William Hyde wrote:
    Ernest Major wrote:
    On 20/08/2024 21:22, William Hyde wrote:

    In fact, if CO2 is the main greenhouse gas, the amount require to
    make Mars habitable also makes it uninhabitable. Nor can any such
    atmosphere hold enough H2O to matter.  Vast amounts of some neutral,
    stable, GHG are required. ArNe2 would be perfect, if only it existed.
    CFCs possibly, though they do eventually break down.

    WikiPedia tells me that ArNe2 does exist; at 4K.

    And it's Ne2?  That was just a guess, or even less than a guess.

    I thought that you'd picked on ArNe2 because greenhouse cases have to be
    at least triatomic (because you need bending modes for infra-red
    absorption), any known triatomic gas is problematic in some fashion at
    the concentrations necessary, and neon and argon are the commonest noble
    gases.

    With CFCs a question that comes to mind - at the concentrations required
    in the Martian atmosphere is the equilibrium concentration of fluorine
    and chlorine from their breakdown acceptable. (I suspect that it is, as
    CFCs are extremely effective greenhouse gases.) At least one CFC
    (halothane) is an anaesthetic, so there's that to take into account as well.

    --
    alias Ernest Major

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