Elon Musk: We Need to Nuke Mars

Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, hopes to send people to Mars someday, but first he thinks we earthlings should nuke it. That's not as bizarre as it sounds, he told Stephen Colbert last night, reports Fortune. The idea is to make the "fixer-upper" planet more habitable: Dropping thermonuclear weapons on the planet's poles "would melt the Mars’ polar ice caps and kickstart a greenhouse effect—similar to the one we’re currently experiencing on Earth—that would quickly make the planet warmer," explains Quartz. (Colbert had wondered about using a blanket.) Quartz also notes that the idea has been kicking around for a while, though it's usually not a topic on late-night talk shows. (Click to read some hilarious tweets from "Bored Elon Musk.")