Engineered metal rods just nine micrometres long, manufactured from materials abundant in Martian dust, could raise Mars’s global average temperature by more than 30 degrees, according to two climate models. The scheme would require releasing them continuously at 30 litres per second and assumes each particle remains airborne for a decade—but it transforms the first step toward terraforming from a near-impossible materials problem into an immense engineering one.

Conductive rods made from Martian materials could warm the planet efficiently in climate models, but a decade-long particle lifetime and planet-scale production remain assumptions. The post Engineered metal rods just nine micrometres long, manufactured from materials abundant in Martian dust, could raise Mars’s global average temperature by more than 30 degrees, according to two climate models.…