• Question: could plants from Earth evolve to survive on other planets like Mars?

    Asked by anon-209813 to Nick on 12 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Nick Werren

      Nick Werren answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      The soil on Mars is irradiated and full of toxic stuff, this means that the plants would have to evolve to deal with that, which would be difficult. The atmosphere and magnetic field of Mars is also very weak, and means that the Sun unleashes a lot of damaging radiation upon the planet.

      So how could plants ever live there? We would have to terraform Mars, we could do this by changing the atmosphere, or by constructing huge biodomes across the planet to protect the things inside from the Sun.

      The other option is that the plants might be like algae, or something else, and live in the ice caps of Mars.

      So the answer of your question is – yes, but it’d be very difficult!

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