I am absolutely fascinated by the idea of Terra-forming other planets. The other day there was a link on Fark.com regarding that very subject. People pointed out in the comments the real problem with Terra-forming Mars, there isn't a strong enough magnetosphere.
So, I started doing a little reading about the Earth and its magnetosphere. What is really interesting though, it where the Earth gets it's heat. According to this article, 90% or so it radioactive elements that are decaying.
http://www.physorg.com/news62952904.html
If you go look at the wikipedia article on Terra-forming Mars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars you will see that the ideas center around creating an atmosphere for Mars. However, whatever atmosphere is created, is doomed to be blown away by the solar wind.
I have a new idea about how to Terra-form Mars. I say we start not on the outside, but the inside. Here is what I propose. Somehow we bombard deep into the planet with alpha and beta particles and enrich the heavy uranium deep within the planet. This creates a chain reaction of enrichment not unlike what occurs in a reactor that Terrapower is working on. http://www.intellectualventures.com/OurInventions/TerraPower.aspx. This may cause an initial release of energy/explosion if we can target a large enough pocket of uranium, though I don't think it would work that way.
Anyway, the idea being that the enriched radioactive elements would have a shorter half-life but give off more heat. Enough maybe to cause the core of Mars to come loose and generate a larger magnetic field. And maybe to re-introduce plate tectonics and thus release co2 into the Martian atmosphere.
So when you are done, you may have a planet with a shorter lifespan than Earth, but that lifespan would still be hundreds of millions of years.
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