OLN.H | Mercury

The next neighbour that you’ll meet – and another you’ll definitely want to keep going past – is Mercury.

Travelling at 28,000 kilometres an hour, it will still take you 74 more days past Venus to get to this rocky, crater pocked little furnace, which is the the closest planet to the sun.

Mercury is also the smallest planet in our solar system, with a circumference of only 15,329 kilometres. It rotates on its axis very slowly–one day takes over 1400 hours (that’s over 58 days). Although Mercury’s rotation is slow, Its orbit is very fast; a full year takes just 88 days, the shortest year in our solar system.

Its speedy orbit is what led ancient Roman astronomers to name this planet Mercury, after their messenger god. Mercury was also the god of travelers, and is often depicted wearing winged sandals.  In spite of the Roman name sticking around, it was Assyrian astronomers who first recorded Mercury’s presence.

Its rocky surface is made of iron sulfide that, on the sun side, hits temperatures of 427 degrees Celsius, but interestingly enough drops to minus 175 degrees Celsius in the areas not exposed to the sun. This drastic difference in temperatures–the most extreme in the solar system–is because Mercury has almost no atmosphere.

On most planets, the atmosphere acts as a blanket, helping to maintain steady temperatures.  Remember Venus’ thick atmosphere? That’s why it’s so much hotter than Mercury, even though it’s farther away from the sun. In spite of the tremendous heat during Mercury’s days, radar observations have shown frozen water in shadowed craters at Mercury’s north pole.

Venus and Mercury do have something in common: they’re the only two planets which do not have at least one moon. Mercury’s small size and proximity to the sun means that it wouldn’t have the gravitational force to hold onto a moon.  Scientists aren’t sure why Venus doesn’t have a moon.

Mercury has been visited by two different spacecraft:  Mariner 10 in 1974 and 1975, and MESSENGER (short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, Geochemistry, and Ranging mission), which orbited Mercury between  2011 and 2015. Since then, MESSENGER has taken over 250,000 photographs, essentially covering the entire planet.

Past that, you’re headed to the sun, another 46 million kilometres and 109 days away. Getting there presents a whole new set of challenges, not the least of which is that you’d absolutely, without question, be vaporized before you ever managed to touch down.

Curriculum Reference Links

 

  • Earth and Space / Building Blocks/ 1:  Students should be able to describe the relationships between various celestial objects including moons, asteroids, comets, planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies and space.
  • Earth and Space / Building Blocks/ 3: Students should be able to interpret data to compare the Earth with other planets and moons in the solar system, with respect to properties including mass, gravity, size, and composition.


Young Scientist Spotlight:
HANNAH HERBST

10 Fun Facts: The Hab

1. Aquarius is the the world’s only permanent undersea research station.

2. Most missions last about two or three weeks.

3. Fabien Cousteau, grandson of Jacques Cousteau, beat his grandfather’s record month-long underwater expedition by spending 31 days on the Aquarius Reef Base in 2014.

4. The lab is used by NASA, the US Navy, and researchers and educators from around the globe for training and research.

5. The internet connection is better in the Hab than at many places above the water.

6. You have to swim underneath the facility in order to enter it.

7. Crew members are called aquanauts (NOT aquaNUTS!)

8. In 1994, a crew of scientists and divers had to evacuate Aquarius and climb up a rescue line to the surface in 15-foot seas after one of the habitat’s generators caught fire.

9. Aquarius was featured in the comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon in 2012.

10. The Hab was originally built in Texas.

10 Fun Facts: Coral

1. Reefs usually grow up on the east shore of land masses.

2. Parts of a coral reef can be harvested to make medications to treat cancers and other illnesses.

3. A coral reef isn’t a single organism; it’s actually a community of life that lives and thrives in one location.

4. Only about one percent of the world’s oceans contain coral reefs. That’s about the size of France.

5. Coral reefs are the largest biological structures on earth.

6. Corals are related to jellyfish and anemones.

7. There are over 2,500 species of corals. About 1,000 are the hard corals that build coral reefs.

8. Reefs grow where there are stronger wave patterns and currents to deliver food and nutrients.

9. The Great Barrier Reef is 500,000 years old.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10 Fun Facts: Invasive Species

1. To be considered invasive, a species must adapt to a new area easily. It must reproduce quickly. It must harm property, the economy, or the native plants and animals of the region.

2. Some invasive species are introduced accidentally, but others are brought deliberately.

3. Ship ballast water transports between 3,000 and 7,000 foreign species daily around the globe.

4. The total loss to the world economy as a result of invasive non-native species has been estimated at 5% of annual production

5. Invasive species have contributed to 40% of the animal extinctions that have occurred in the last 400 years.

6. Rodents are some of the worst invasive species.

7. There are an estimated 50,000 wild ring-necked parakeets in parks across London and southeast England.

8. Black and Norway rats annually consume stored grains and destroy other property valued over $19 billion.

9. Northern Pacific seastars reproduce very quickly. In one area where they were introduced, their population reached an estimated 12 million seastars in just two years.

10. Starlings were introduced to New York in the late 1800s, as part of an attempt to bring animals that were mentioned in Shakespeare‘s work to America.

Alert: Cuteness Overload!

Cutest animal in the ocean? Keep your Sea Otter. Forget the Dumbo Octopus. Axolotl? Close, but no cigar.

The winner of the Cutest Sea Animal prize is the Leaf Sheep Slug.

Yes, a slug. This tiny (5mm) animal, found near the Philippines, Indonesia, and Japan, looks like a cartoon sheep covered in bright green leaves with pinkish purple tips.

Bonus: it’s one of the only animals that can perform photosynthesis, thanks to all the algae it eats.

Beat that.