Mars offers a hostile environment compared to Earth.
Sending humans to Mars seems to be the new milestone in space exploration. However, the dream of colonising Mars appears difficult to achieve due to the brutal conditions on the planet, which experts have warned can cause people to turn green and lose their eyesight. According to Indy100, biologist Dr Scott Solomon from Rice University in Texas, US, explained that children born to human settlers on the Red Planet would experience a series of drastic mutations and evolutionary changes.
In his book, Future Humans, Dr Solomon claimed that due to the incredibly harsh conditions on the surface of Mars, it could be extremely difficult for humans to survive, let alone thrive, on the Red Planet. He wrote that if human settlers on Mars give birth to children, the latter are likely to undergo various drastic mutations and evolutionary changes.
These mutations can occur because of low gravitation forces and high radiation and can result in green skin tone, weak muscles, poor eyesight and brittle bones, Dr Solomon explained.
According to Indy100, Mars is a smaller planet than Earth and has 30% less gravity than we have evolved to live with. The Red Planet also lacks a magnetic field, and a protective ozone layer, leaving the planet open to space radiation, UV and charged particles from the sun and cosmic rays.
This kind of environment has led to the mutation of humans at extreme rates so that they can cope with new conditions. This, Dr Solomon explained, could see skin colour change to help cope with radiation.
"Perhaps in the face of this high radiation, we might evolve some new type of skin pigment to help us deal with that radiation. Maybe we get our own green men," he wrote in his book.
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Moreover, the expert claimed that brittle bones brought on by the lack of gravity could cause women's pelvises to break during childbirth. He also argued that eyesight could start to become weaker due to the reduction of the need to see far distances, as humans would be living together in small enclaves.
Notably, so far, only uncrewed spacecraft have made the trip to Mars, but that could soon change. US space agency NASA is hoping to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s and SpaceX chief Elon Musk recently said that humans could be living in a city on the Red Planet in the next 30 years. Several new missions are also launching before these given timelines to push exploration forward.