• Question: if we go to mars would we ever evolve to the point where we are use to the atmospere?

    Asked by ChloeS to Anthea, Chloe, Kevin, Michel, Sean on 16 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Anthea Lacchia

      Anthea Lacchia answered on 16 Nov 2014:

      Hmm, no I don’t think this is possible. Humans have always needed oxygen to survive, and Mars has a thin atmosphere composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide. Evolving to breathe in carbon dioxide would be a huge change in our whole organisms, from cells to organs etc. and I’m sure that this kind of adaptation would take millions if not billions of years, so we are far more likely to go extinct well before this time.
      Even if we did somehow manage to survive on carbon dioxide, we wouldn’t survive on Mars because it has a thin atmosphere providing little shielding from radiation from the Sun and surface temperatures drop down to lows of about −153 °C at the poles (brr!!). Hope this answers your question!

    • Photo: Kevin Healy

      Kevin Healy answered on 21 Nov 2014:

      I dont think we could evolution requires each generation of a species to be able to survive. This would be just to big a step for humans and in fact for any large animals. Bacteria however may be more capable of doing this. This is because the are better at surviving extreme conditions eventually allow evolution to make them more adapted towards the weak atmosphere of the planet. This is why NASA has to be so carful to make sure they clean all the space landers of bacteria before sending them. We wouldnt weant to infect a whole planet now would we 😛

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