Skip to main content

5 Amazing facts about planet Mercury.

 

  1. Most extreme temperature fluctuation

Though mercury is the closest to the sun still it is the second most hottest planet of our solar system , but it does have the most extreme temperature fluctuations in the solar system. The temperature during the day can reach 840 degrees Fahrenheit (450 degrees Celsius), but at night, temperatures can get as low as minus 275 F (minus 170 C). That equals to a temperature difference of more than 1,100 F (600 C), the largest of any planet in the solar system.

2. Mercury has water ice and organic compounds

This may sound surprising given that the planet is so close to the Sun, but the ice is in permanently shadowed craters that don’t receive any sunlight. Organics, a building block for life, were also found on the planet’s surface. While Mercury doesn’t have enough atmosphere and is too hot for life as we know it, finding organics there demonstrates how those compounds were distributed throughout the solar system. There’s also quite a bit of sulfur on the surface, something that scientists are still trying to understand since no other planet in the Solar System has it in such high concentrations.

3. Mercury has wrinkles

As the iron core of the planet cooled and contracted, the surface of the planet became wrinkled. Scientist have named these wrinkles, "Lobate Scarps" . These Scarps can be up to a mile high and hundreds of miles long.

4. Mercury is shrinking
When researchers checked the images from the MESSENGER spacecraft they found something which they didn't expect. They found some many small valleys and many fault scraps (regions where the faults have vertically moved upwards). This was a proof that mercury shrank.


Later they found out that there where many smaller fault scraps which means mercury is still shrinking. This shrinking is a result of mercury's core cooling. As the core cools ,the volume of the core reduces which is the reason for the formation of fault scraps. Till now mercury has shrunk 14 km in diameter and is still shrinking.

5. Mercury has "Tail"

Comets have tail , mercury has a tail so does that make mercury a comet?
Don't take it seriously , mercury is a planet not a comet but it does have a tail.

It was predicted in the 80's that mercury has a tail, later it was found that mercury does have a tail which is made up of sodium. Mercury actually has a very thin atmosphere which contains sodium. These atoms get thrown out when the sunlight hits them. This is what looks like a tail. Even though it was predicted in the 80's it was only discovered in the 2001.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What are Antiparticles? Is there something that we should worry about?

  Simply put , antiparticles are the opposite of the subatomic particles but with different charge and different magnetic properties . For example the antiparticle of electron is a particle with same mass but different charge , in this case positive charge and it is commonly referred to as Positron.. While the electron has a negative electric charge, the positron has a positive electric charge, and is produced naturally in certain types of radioactive decay . The opposite is also true , the antiparticle of the positron is the electron. Particle–antiparticle pairs can annihilate each other, producing photons ; since the charges of the particle and antiparticle are opposite, total charge is conserved. For example, the positrons produced in natural radioactive decay quickly annihilate themselves with electrons, producing pairs of gamma rays . It is not possible to create an antiparticle without either destroying another particle of the same charge (as is for instance the case when an...
Post a Comment
Read more

5 Science Facts That School Didn't Teach Us

https://bismuni.com/pi44ai5kt?key=b1e465821452bd5a40fd39aee6f4dc57  1.Oxygen Has A Colour As a gas, oxygen is odourless and colourless. In its liquid and solid forms, however, it looks pale blue. 2.Bananas are Radioactive This is strange but true , bananas contain potassium, and since potassium decays, that makes them slightly radioactive. But it’s nothing you need to worry about. You’d need to eat 10,000,000 bananas at once to die of radiation poisoning. 3.Water can exist in three states at once This is called the Triple Boil, and at that temperature, water exists as a gas, a liquid and a solid simultaneously. It requires very specific conditions to achieve, so please don't try this at home. 4.Helium can work against Gravity When helium is cooled to extreme temperatures, just a few degrees away from absolute zero (-460˚F or -273˚C), it  turns into a superfluid , meaning it can flow without friction. It can climb up and over the sides of a glass, and leak through molecule-thin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Time Travel Paradoxes (Part-2)

 An another type of casual loop paradox is  "Predestination Paradox" 1.Predestination Paradox   A Predestination paradox  occurs when the actions of a person traveling back in time becomes part of past events, and may ultimately causes the event he is trying to prevent to take place. This results in a ‘temporal causality loop’ in which Event 1 in the past influences Event 2 in the future (time travel to the past) which then causes Event 1 to occur. Suppose one day your brother dies in a hit and run car accident , and to prevent this you travel back in time and reaches the place to stop your brother but accidently you hit your brother with the car and realizes that the person who hit your brother was not someone else but you. You wanted to save your brother but you were destined to complete the loop and kill your brother. 2.Killing Hitler Paradox This paradox is quite similar to the Grandfather Paradox but this has a huge effect on everyone in the world rather than ju...
Post a Comment
Read more