Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asked at the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

We have gazed upon the moon with wonder since the dawn of humanity and named its craters

as seas, but could those become true seas one day?

Welcome to Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur, and I am your aforementioned host,

Isaac Arthur.

Today we'll be discussing if it could ever be possible, let alone practical, to terraform the

moon, to give it seas and sky, and make it a beautiful blue and green gem in our sky.

The simple answer is yes, it can be done, though it is a monumental task, and how practical it is would depend a lot on both your available technologies and how badly we want to do it.

Today we'll be discussing several different approaches and what is it involved in each.

But let's begin by laying out some basic principles of terraforming, the main hurdles

to doing it to the moon, and the advantages it has, and some misconceptions involved.

First, there's two basic camps of terraforming, which are meant to make them more Earth-like, and

that's terraforming and para-teroforming.

There's no truly distinct line between the two, but para-teroforming tends to manifest in options

like a dome on a planet full of pressurized and breathable air, or artificial lighting

to match Earth's sunlight duration and spectrum.

There's also bioforming, which is when you alter organisms to fit an alien environment.

You might adjust everything's biology to be content with a 27-hour day on one planet, or

more overtly give humans and other mammals gills so they could live on a water planet.

...