Admin Is there water present on Mercury?
Recent data show that water ice may exist in the bottoms of craters at Mercury’s poles. Although Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, and can be extremely hot over most of its surface, ice may exist at the bottoms of some polar craters because the crater floors are permanently shadowed by the crater rims.
How did water get to Mercury?
The most popular theory is that ice-filled comets and asteroids pummeled Mercury and the rest of the solar system at a turbulent time early in the solar system’s history, releasing countless tons of water onto each of the planets.
How can ice exist on Mercury?
Because Mercury does not have a substantial atmosphere to transport heat around the planet, the darkness allows ice to remain frozen despite the extreme temperatures of the tiny world.
Where does the water on Mercury come from?
It’s possible that the solar wind is kicking up water from the ice deposits at Mercury’s poles, or maybe it’s coming from cometary fragments. Or maybe the solar wind is depositing the oxygen and hydrogen atoms on Mercury’s surface in the first place.
Is there water ice on Mercury?
In the announcement, Sean Solomon, principal investigator for the Mercury Messenger program, said the probe had uncovered new evidence that deposits in permanently shadowed regions of Mercury’s poles is water ice. The ice is found predominantly in impact craters, according to data obtained by Messenger.
How does mercury pollution affect the ocean?
North Atlantic waters, for example, showed the most obvious signs of mercury pollution because that’s where surface waters sink to form deep and intermediate water flows. The tropical and northeast Pacific ocean, on the other hand, were relatively unaffected; it takes centuries for deep-ocean water to circulate to these regions.
What does the surface of Mercury look like from Earth?
The battered surface of Mercury. The smallest planet in our solar system and nearest to the Sun, Mercury is only slightly larger than Earth’s Moon. From the surface of Mercury, the Sun would appear more than three times as large as it does when viewed from Earth, and the sunlight would be as much as 11 times brighter.