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Can Venus be terraformed?

Giuseppe Frisella
2 min readAug 31, 2023

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Venus’ main problem is its atmosphere, composed of extremely toxic elements, surface temperatures of 460 degrees that are capable of melting lead, and an atmospheric pressure 90 times that of earth.

Making it habitable is conceivable, though far from easy. We could bomb Venus with hydrogen bombs, which, reacting with the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, would produce water and graphite, thus creating an ocean that would cover most of the surface of Venus, also cleaning the atmosphere of sulfuric acid.

The atmosphere would now have a pressure that is only a few times that of Earth, and would be mostly composed of nitrogen.

With a solar shield, large lenses that shield or deflect sunlight, we could decrease the planet’s temperature and reduce the amount of radiation reaching it, as well as recreate a 24-hour day-night cycle, since on Venus one day lasts many months.

It would then be necessary to populate Venus with microorganisms genetically modified to survive the planet’s conditions, produce oxygen, and make it, over several generations, something similar to Earth.

Venus has a gravity and size similar to that of our planet. With a breathable atmosphere and an artificial day-night rhythm, it is now as close as we could get in the solar system, except perhaps only Mars. The only difference is that the sun would rise in the west and set in the east.

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Giuseppe Frisella
Giuseppe Frisella

Written by Giuseppe Frisella

I'm a curious person and I'm on Medium mainly to read and share thoughts and knowledge. I love science, especially physics and evolutionary biology.

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