• Question: do you think habitation on other planets is possible

    Asked by chris to Matthew, Andrew on 21 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 21 Nov 2014:


      I think that living on another planet is possible on the short term, but even our most feasible neighbour Mars has problems. Mars does not have a fluid core of iron, so it does not have a magnetic field -this means that it does not have the magnetic protection that we enjoy from the solar radiation, and bit-by-bit its atmosphere is being stripped away by the solar wind, and damaging solar radiation can reach the surface of the planet.

      We can probably make a home there for a short period, but I don’t think that habitation there is possible for the long-term – we could not relocate our civilisation there permanently.

    • Photo: Matthew Camilleri

      Matthew Camilleri answered on 21 Nov 2014:


      Well, this is not going to be the easiest thing to achieve, mainly because of all the technological requirements that are needed to go from one planet to another, to create life supporting environments on the planet.

      The easiest thing is to actually find a planet that is similar to earth which already have an atmosphere and a similar gravitational field. We are still a couple of decades, if not centuries away from being able to spot such planets though.

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