Mercury Water Proof!

Scientists have finally shown what has been postulated for decades: the planet Mercury holds billions of tonnes of water ice at its north pole.

A report in Science shows evidence from the Messenger spacecraft that craters in constant shadow host water.

A futher pair of Science papers shows that much of the ice is beneath an insulating layer of dark material rich in organic and "volatile" molecules.

The findings may help explain how these ingredients first arrived on Earth.

Messenger was the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, and since its arrival in March 2011 has been feeding back the best images of the planet that scientists have ever seen.

The principal evidence for water ice comes from the craft's "neutron spectrometer", which can detect the subatomic particle neutrons as they stream from Mercury.

"Neutrons are generated when cosmic rays hit a planet," Sean Solomon, Messenger principal investigator, explained to the Science podcast.

"Hydrogen is the best absorber of neutrons, so a neutron spectrometer looks for the signature of hydrogen near the surface by looking for decrease in the flux of neutrons coming from the planet."
Sean Solomon

This dip in the neutron count showed vast amounts of hydrogen in specific places at the planet's pole, consistent with deposits of water.

But further measurements using a laser and looking for reflections showed that much of the ice is covered with a layer of dark material tens of centimetres thick.

"The guess is that both the water and the dark material, which we think is organic-rich material, were delivered by the same objects impacting Mercury: some mixture of comets and the kinds of asteroids that are rich in organic and volatile material like water ice," Prof Solomon said.

"These are very common objects in the Solar System, we know many of them have orbits that bring them very close to the Sun."

Prof Solomon said that what Messenger finds not only unlocks secrets about the innermost planet in our Solar System, but could also shed light on those of other planets.

"The surprise that we received on making the first chemical measurements of Mercury was that none of the theories for how Mercury was assembled are correct," he said.

"So we're having to rewrite the books on how Mercury was assembled, and by implication how all the inner planets were assembled.

"The ice at the poles is only a recent chapter in that history but it's one that might be very informative."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't any life there just disintegrate? Like I'm confused as to how there is ice there in the first place.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't any life there just disintegrate? Like I'm confused as to how there is ice there in the first place.

"The surprise that we received on making the first chemical measurements of Mercury was that none of the theories for how Mercury was assembled are correct," he said.

I don't know about you guys, but I find this pretty fascinating and exciting. It is widely accepted that water is the catalyst needed for carbon based life as we know it, meaning Mercury could have / have had lifeforms on.

Geez it's entirely past my bed time, I was sitting staring at the title of this thread wondering how can mercury (the liquid metal) be water proof (as in resistant to water).

>_>;;;;;;

2:55 am and I was thinking the same thing lol, misleading title.

HAHA! We Americans will do a fine job of turning this thread into a shitstorm of ignorance and misunderstanding!


Sleep tight Europeans!!!!!!!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't any life there just disintegrate? Like I'm confused as to how there is ice there in the first place.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't any life there just disintegrate? Like I'm confused as to how there is ice there in the first place.

Yeah, because asking a simple question, and making a broad generalization like you have, are the same thing, right?

The giant mass of ice could also be cryogenically keeping samples of mercury's indigenous lifeforms intact. I just hope that the human race has advanced sufficiently enough to find any specimens in my lifetime.

I've seen this movie. We thaw them out and they just kill us off one by one.

^ that guys pic

TOO HAWT!!!

clicked that and somehow ended up reading about X-Men?

Boffins reckon the evidence of live microbes deep in the dark, cold, briny depths of Antarctic lakes suggests that life may thrive in similarly hostile environments on other worlds and moons of the solar system - and beyond.


A zoo-o-boffinry team discovered an ancient colony in Lake Vida, Antarctica, estimated to have been isolated for more than 2,800 years. The amazingly tough Vidan life thrived in minus-13°C brine of more than 20 per cent salinity and swirling with noxious ammonia, nitrogen, sulphur and supersaturated nitrous oxide.

“It’s an extreme environment – the thickest lake ice on the planet, and the coldest, most stable cryo-environment on Earth,” Nathaniel Ostrom, zoologist at Michigan State University, explains.

“The discovery of this ecosystem gives us insight into other isolated, frozen environments on Earth, but it also gives us a potential model for life on other icy planets that harbour saline deposits and subsurface oceans, such as Jupiter’s moon Europa.”

Instead of depending ultimately upon the energy of the Sun like most Earthly life, the alien microbial life in the lake, situated in the northernmost of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, lives on the chemical energy released by hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the water. Such geothermal heat could be present at various far-flung locations in outer space, including the possible sub-icecap lakes or oceans of Europa.

The chemicals that would make life impossible for most creatures on Earth - nitrate, nitrous oxide and hydrogen gas - provide the energy to support the microbial ecosystem, possibly through chemical reactions between anoxic brine and surrounding iron-rich rocks.

“If that’s the case, this gives us an entirely new framework for thinking of how life can be supported in cryoecosystems on earth and in other icy worlds of the universe," says lead boffin Alison Murray of Nevada's Desert Research Institute.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US.