How nuking the poles of Mars would create an atmosphere?

Question

Elon Musk said one of the methods they are taking into consideration to create an atmosphere on Mars is to nuke its poles. How nuking the poles would create the atmosphere?

Answer 1

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The idea of nuking the poles of Mars came around when people started to seriously consider the idea of terraforming another planet. If Mars's poles were to be nuked, the Ice Caps, mainly made of carbon dioxide, would vaporize. This vapor of carbon dioxide would be the first step in this process as a small atmosphere would form from this initial step. However, a larger atmosphere is achieved when you consider the greenhouse effect. The carbon dioxide would trap heat from the sun, heating up the ice caps and causing almost the entire Ice Cap to disappear and become a larger atmosphere. With carbon dioxide to warm the planet, trees could then be planted to chemically alter the atmosphere with photosynthesis producing oxygen that we can breathe.

This idea appears to work in theory if there is enough energy in the thermonuclear bombs, however, our current energies of these bombs would require tens of thousand of them to be dropped to release a small amount of carbon dioxide. Therefore this plan may not be feasible.