What further work needs doing for the “White Mars” paradigm?
As mentioned above, there is some fine tuning to be done. I want to do more work on the explosive power of released CO2. I also want to build a small-scale model of a river flowing with liquid CO2 in a pressure vessel – with transparent walls so that we can observe the flow properties and erosion effects on dusty substrates. Obviously, these two objectives imply that careful consideration to safety is needed. I’d hate to prove my thesis about explosive power by having my aparatus go bang! I want to do more work on the solvent extraction properties of liquid and supercritical CO2 in Mars’ subsurface. This work has been done with water, and failed to explain the odd chemistry of Martian soil. Perhaps CO2 has some answers. I also want to do some work with CO2 clathrates and measure their outgassing rates at a variety of pressures and temperatures, and to see how gentle (or vigorous) grinding, as in a cryoclastic flow, will assist. I also need to build better atmospheric models, and contin
