Among the millions of dreary, horrifying and outright obnoxious videos doing the rounds on the internet, one seems markedly interesting. With the image of a reddish planet rotating in the foreground, a voice booms from the background that NASA thinks it can make Mars habitable.

The video necessitated further surfing of the internet, which among other things flashed this Business Insider headline: "NASA scientists think a giant magnetic shield could make Mars habitable". The gist of the report: NASA scientists presented a bold plan at the Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop saying, by launching a giant magnetic shield into space to protect Mars from solar winds, they could restore the Red Planet's "atmosphere" and terraform its environment so that liquid water flows on its surface once again, which in other words means it would be "habitable for future generations of human colonists".

Two terms in the report are of special import: "habitable" and "human colonists".