This article is a couple of years old, but it deals with a subject I find interesting: terraforming. A graduate student at the California Institute of Technology wants to use greenhouse gases to raise the temperature on Mars enough that it could comfortably support Earth-based life forms. She proposes to use these gases, such as octafluoropropane, to change the Martian climate and has coauthored a NASA study on the subject. However, it is projected to take hundreds of years for this method to increase the equatorial temperature to 50 degrees. This seems like too long of a time frame for most people to seriously consider, as most people (or at least those with power and money for funding the project) would want assurance that such a project would allow people to colonize Mars more quickly than that. However, I think it is a fascinating idea. One must also consider the ethics of such a venture: should we really overhaul this planet to suit our own needs and wants, even if it doesn't contain any native life? And what happens if Mars does turn out to harbor life forms? Should we leave the planet completely pristine for the sake of some microbes? Who can say?