Hello everyone. When I was about 10 years old, I picked up a book about terraforming other planets. The idea that we could create a human haven on another planet was so exciting to me. How could we someday transform the nightmare runaway greenhouse conditions of Venus into a temperate zone capable of supporting plants and animals? Could we warm up Mars and live in oxygenated bubbles on the surface? With the urgent optimism of a fifth grader, I figured that one day, and maybe soon, people would be inhabiting other planets in the solar system.
When I thought about life already existing on other planets, it felt like more of a sci-fi pipe dream. Terraforming was more feasible, I felt, because it was something that humans could realize if they just implemented the right plan.
It was only after a couple of decades had passed that it hit me: We may be closer to finding life elsewhere than we are to overcoming the engineering challenges of terraforming another world.
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