Mercury—an atmosphere-less planet where temperatures can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius)—may have once hosted the chemical ingredients for life beneath its surface, according to a study published last week in the journal Scientific Reports.
Some models that incorporate the effects of clouds responding to the warming or cooling of the planet have found it possible for habitable conditions to have existed on the planet as late as 700 million years ago.
Researchers find that volcanic activity ended approximately 3.5 billion years ago on Mercury. The innermost planet at one point possessed intense volcanism, but according to a new study, it ended roughly 3.5 billion years ago.
Mercury's original atmosphere dissipated shortly after the planet formed 4.6 billion years ago with the rest of the Solar System. This was because of Mercury's lower gravity, and because it's so close to the Sun and receives the constant buffeting from its solar wind. Its current atmosphere is almost negligible.
Mercury is a small, rocky world. It is only about as wide as the Atlantic Ocean and 18 Mercurys would fit inside the Earth. Mercury is very like the Moon. Its surface is covered with impact craters.
No, Mercury has been visited by spacecraft from Earth, but no human has ever gone into orbit around Mercury, let alone stepped on the surface. Just what would it take to visit Mercury?
"Once Mercury crosses Venus's orbit," Laughlin says, "Mercury is in serious trouble." So is Earth. At that point, the simulations predict Mercury will suffer generally one of four fates: it crashes into the Sun, gets ejected from the solar system, it crashes into Venus, or — worst of all — crashes into Earth.
It is unlikely that life as we know it could survive on Mercury due to solar radiation, and extreme temperatures.
Humans would not be able to breathe on Mercury. The planet has a very thin atmosphere with little oxygen to breathe in.
Also, if you are closer to the Sun, the atmosphere is hotter and the molecules are moving faster and so can reach escape velocity. This is why Mercury has no atmosphere, but much smaller and colder Pluto can still retain a thin atmosphere.
Scientists studied about 6,000 of the structures and calculated that the planet's radius of 2,440 kilometers (1,516 miles) has shrunk between 14 kilometers and 20 kilometers (8.6 miles and 12.4 miles) since its creation.
Actually, you might be surprised to know that there is no oldest or youngest planet. Mercury is exactly the same age as all the rest of the planets in the Solar System: approximately 4.6 billion years old.
“While all of the lava flows we see are super old – Mercury stopped being volcanically active 3.5 billion years ago – you see that the most recent evidence of volcanic activity only occurred in places where there are impact craters, places where the shell is thin or damaged,” Byrne says.
Early in martian history, the climate was warm enough for potentially habitable lakes and rivers of water to exist. However, roughly 3.6 billion years ago, the climate shifted from being habitable to inhabitable when liquid water disappeared from the surface.
The red planet once had a global ocean, rivers, and lakes. Then, the solar wind — charged particles from the Sun — stripped away the Martian atmosphere. As the planet's protective shield faded, all liquid water on the surface evaporated into space, merged with minerals, or fled underground to become water ice.
Drastic climate shifts 700 million years ago made the planet's atmosphere incredibly dense and hot. The hellish planet Venus may have had a perfectly habitable environment for 2 to 3 billion years after the planet formed, suggesting life would have had ample time to emerge there, according to a new study.
Problem 3 – Which planet has the atmosphere with the greatest percentage of Oxygen? Answer: From the table we see that Mercury has the greatest percentage of oxygen in its atmosphere.
Previous missions to Mercury
Why haven't we gone to Mercury? Actually, we have—we just haven't landed on it. NASA's Mariner 10 imaged it in 1974-75 during three flybys and and NASA's Messenger mapped it from 2008-2015.
Even though Mercury is closer to the Sun, Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system. Its thick atmosphere is full of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and it has clouds of sulfuric acid. The atmosphere traps heat, making it feel like a furnace on the surface. It's so hot on Venus, the metal lead would melt.
Although usually disregarded as being too hot, Mercury may in fact be one of the easiest bodies in the solar system to terraform. Mercury's magnetic field is only 1.1% that of Earth's but it is thought that Mercury's magnetic field should be much stronger, up to 30% of Earth's, if it weren't being suppressed by certain ...
Mercury occurs naturally in the earth's crust. It is released into the environment from volcanic activity, weathering of rocks and as a result of human activity.
Jupiter's environment is probably not conducive to life as we know it. The temperatures, pressures, and materials that characterize this planet are most likely too extreme and volatile for organisms to adapt to.
Mercury has extreme climes. The part facing the sun is extremely hot, whereas the other side is freezing. There is a lack of air on this planet. Without a spacesuit, one would survive for hardly 2 minutes.
Mars and Venus could slam into Earth billions of years hence
New supercomputer simulations predict that, in 3 billion to 4 billion years, there is a slight chance that Venus or Mars will slam into our planet thanks to the subtle gravitational interactions between Jupiter and Mercury.
Oh, and the entire process takes six or seven years because of the complex trajectory a spaceship would need to follow in order to reach the tiny, innermost planet. And it doesn't get easier after landing, given a host of threats on the surface — most notably the incredible temperature extremes on the planet.