Is Terraforming Uranus And Neptune Possible?

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    Terraforming Uranus
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SUMMARY

Terraforming Uranus and Neptune is theoretically possible but impractical with current technology. The discussion highlights that while energy-intensive methods could strip away their atmospheres, transforming them into rocky planets akin to Earth, the effort would be better spent on closer celestial bodies like Mars or Venus. The consensus is that the motivation for such an endeavor is lacking, as advanced civilizations would likely focus on creating customized environments rather than terraforming distant gas giants. The conversation also touches on speculative technologies, such as manipulating quantum particles and moving celestial bodies.

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Given the energy to "blast" away that much mass, why waste time terraforming?
 
It's not possible with any technology we presently have, but given a massively powerful enough source of energy it could be deemed as being possible technically.
What does not seem possible however is that there could ever be a reasonable motivation for doing this when it would be a lot less effort to terraform Mars or Venus, or even objects like Ceres which have the advantage of being closer to the Earth and receive more heat from the Sun.
 
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I agree w/ rootone. This is the kind of question where "can it conceivably be done?" is the wrong question. Engineering can do damned near anything given unlimited resources. The right question in such cases is more often "why would you ever want to?".
 
That whole wiki is filled with nonsense. If you had the power to (one of their suggestions) move Io into Venus' orbit and remove 95% of Neptune's mass, you wouldn't mess with terraforming, You'd just build a bespoke solar system out of its constituent parts.
 
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Vanadium 50 said:
That whole wiki is filled with nonsense. If you had the power to (one of their suggestions) move Io into Venus' orbit and remove 95% of Neptune's mass, you wouldn't mess with terraforming, You'd just build a bespoke solar system out of its constituent parts.

True.

The technology would be at a level to take quantum particles and just just produce 'whatever' for whatever reason as needed.
 
The Wiki also talks about moving dwarf planets to be moons of the outer planets Uranus and Neptune, terraforming black dwarfs by moving them into orbit around Sun-like stars (this probably would occur in the distant future, as no black dwarfs are thought to exist today) and even creating artificial "suns".

http://terraforming.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf_planets_become_moons_of_the_ice_giants

http://terraforming.wikia.com/wiki/Terraforming_Black_Dwarfs

http://terraforming.wikia.com/wiki/Artificial_sun
 
Jupiter60 said:
The Wiki also talks about moving dwarf planets to be moons of the outer planets Uranus and Neptune, terraforming black dwarfs by moving them into orbit around Sun-like stars (this probably would occur in the distant future, as no black dwarfs are thought to exist today) and even creating artificial "suns".

http://terraforming.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf_planets_become_moons_of_the_ice_giants

http://terraforming.wikia.com/wiki/Terraforming_Black_Dwarfs

http://terraforming.wikia.com/wiki/Artificial_sun
See posts 4 and 5
 
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With that level of technology at your disposal you could easily terraform Venus, Mars and the moon. They would make far more suitable candidates then Neptune's core as the core is probably not a very pretty place once you remove all the Atmosphere. It is under tremendous heat and pressure right now so once you remove all the gas you would probably find a landscape made of a pretty exotic material.

That is if you bother with Terraforming at all. As long as we are talking God like technology and unlimited power, you could just build space stations the size of continents and have a customized environment.
 
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Sure, but it'd require a K2 or K3 level civilization to harness that kind of power. If you stuck Neptune in the path of one of those jets being blown out by a quasar, it'd probably shred the atmosphere in seconds. Scale that down to a long duration, highly energetic bean and I see no physical reason such a thing couldn't be done.
 
  • #11
DHF said:
With that level of technology at your disposal you could easily terraform Venus, Mars and the moon. They would make far more suitable candidates then Neptune's core as the core is probably not a very pretty place once you remove all the Atmosphere. It is under tremendous heat and pressure right now so once you remove all the gas you would probably find a landscape made of a pretty exotic material.

That is if you bother with Terraforming at all. As long as we are talking God like technology and unlimited power, you could just build space stations the size of continents and have a customized environment.
See posts #4 and #5
newjerseyrunner said:
Sure, but it'd require a K2 or K3 level civilization to harness that kind of power. If you stuck Neptune in the path of one of those jets being blown out by a quasar, it'd probably shred the atmosphere in seconds. Scale that down to a long duration, highly energetic bean and I see no physical reason such a thing couldn't be done.
See post #4
 

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