Alternative Luna & Mars

[kengr]

Got a variant on an idea I had in the past.

Both Luna and Mars are capable of retaining an atmosphere and hydrosphere for significant periods of time if they were somehow given them.

For Luna it's hundreds to thousands of years. For Mars it'd be *much* long, both because of the higher gravity and being farther from the sun.

Lot's of authors have written about terraforming Mars. I can think of only one who tried it with Luna.

But my new thought was what if Someone (aliens?) did it in the distant past and set up some maintenance methods.

So both Mars and Luna are habitable and have been stocked with terran life forms (including humans)

This wouldn't be obvious to folks on earth until at 1600s or later. Without telescopes, you might notice some clouds and the like on Luna, but that'd be about it.

Mars would likely take until the 1800s or so.

I'm assuming that Luna doesn't have tech beyond Medieval if that. Mars might be more advanced. But no radio at least.

Given all this, History would be mostly the same until recently.

I'm wondering what things you folks think would change in that universe. The big cvhanges would be in the last 100-150 years.

I'm also interested in folks take on how civilizations might develop on Luna and Mars.

ps. I have vague memories of some site that would display maps of Mars and Luna with oceans of various depths. If anybody knows what they are, I'd be grateful for the info.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Atmospheric refraction and Rayleigh scattering would mean that even to the naked eye the moon would blurry and blueish.

[kengr]

Given how little you can make out with the naked eye, the blurriness wouldn't be a significant difference I'd think.

The color definitely wouldn't be.

On the other hand, I just realized that the oceans and cloud tops would reflect a lot more light. so the moon would be brighter.

And the phases might be a bit less pronounced.

[siliconshaman]

You're probably right about albedo being higher, but the moon would have biosphere and that too would modify it. I suspect the contrast would be higher, the oceans would be brighter, the land darker.

Although, i'm boggling at what sort of adaptations the plant life would have to cope with the lunar night... 28 days with no light...I'm guessing they might work like high arctic plant life and go into hibernation. The atmosphere being thinner would offer less insulation so it would be cold at night, cold enough to freeze probably.

Bioluminescence would probably become a big thing too among the animal life. Maybe some of the plants would develop carnivorous habits, sort of like sundews or pitcher plants but scaled up, using the animal life as a energy source during the long night.

[kengr]

Remember, it's only 14 days of dark. And 14 days of light.

And the atmosphere wouldn't be thinner. Same "sea level" pressure as Earth. In fact, because of the lower gravity, pressure drops off more slowly with altitude.

That 14 days of light should help the plants grow faster and build up reserves for the night.

I expect some animals will do long naps/short hibernations to deal with the long nights.

Come to think of it, I can see some plants having "fruit" with high levels of "slow burn" nutrients to encourage animals to eat them and carry seeds around.

I see a lot of critters caching the fruit in their dens. So it'd be advantageous for the seeds to be able to germinate and grow from deep underground.

BTW, there probably won't be a lot of adaptations from animals, because they haven't been on the moon long enough. I don't see terraforming happening more than a few hundred thousand years ago.

The plants will have a lot more generations to adapt.

Of course, a few 100k years ago puts us in an ice age. That *would* give the plants and animals a head start on adapting.

[stickmaker]

Historically, many thought the large lava plains on the Moon were actually oceans. Which is where we get such names as the Sea of Tranquility.

Excerpt from a short story I'm trying to sell:

"Humans believing there's some alien structure on Mars has a long history," said Barstow, hoping to change the subject. "Lowell seeing canals. The face and the pyramids. The spoon and all those other odd rock formations the landers found. All optical illusions or coincidence. We were cynical about the existence of artifacts on Mars long before we actually got someone here. Then came the Fifth Manned Mars Mission. Which had a neutrino detector on board. When it spotted a large void where no neutrinos came through that was dismissed by many as a problem with the instrument. Only it wasn't."

[kengr]

Yeah, right. They get good imagery of he whole planet *except* that one volume.

Suure it's a malfunction.