Life in the Solar System: Mercury’s Strange Structures
Tuesday, December 6, 2016 12:30
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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel to the Planet Mercury?
If you went there today you would find temperatures in excess of 400 degrees Celsius during day light, and below 180 during the night. It is completely inhospitable to us Humans.
But could Mercury have been able to sustain life in the distant past?
Well, funnily enough Planet Mercury has been hiding an exciting secret, the closest planet to our Sun is constantly shrinking and newly discovered tiny cracks on Mercury’s surface called fault scarps means that out of all the planets in our solar system, only Mercury and the Earth are tectonically active, with crusts that change their shapes from the inside out.
With the discovery by the Messenger Spacecraft of at least 100 billion tons of water ice, and also organic material in the permanently-shadowed craters at its north pole, it is entirely possible that Mercury could have had at one point in its evolution, the building blocks for life.
Does that not blow your mind or what?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel to the Planet Mercury?
