10 Strange Facts About Mercury (A Photo Tour)

• Mercury, Closest to the Sun.
• Most Extreme Temperature Fluctuations in the Solar System.
• The Smallest Planet.
• Survived Impact with Giant Asteroid.
• Mercury’s Crazy Orbit.
• Mercury Has Ice.
• It Has a Huge, Iron Core.
• A NASA Probe Mapped Mercury’s Entire Surface.

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and is also the smallest of the eight planets in our solar system. For every 2 orbits of the Sun, which takes around 88 Earth days, Mercury completes three rotations of its axis. It is gravitationally locked and this rotation is unique to the solar system.

Mercury is the smallest and fastest planet in the solar system. It is also the closest planet to the sun. It is named after the Roman messenger god Mercury, the fastest Roman god. The planet Mercury was known by ancient people thousands of years ago.

One day, Mercury could slam into Earth, obliterating all life on our planet. That’s a doomsday scenario scientists have said is a small but real possibility. Then Mercury can hit Earth—or, through its gravity, jostle the orbits of the other inner planets so that Venus or Mars crashes into us instead.

Compared to other planets, Mercury is difficult to explore. The speed required to reach it is relatively high, and its proximity to the Sun makes it difficult to maneuver a spacecraft into a stable orbit around it. MESSENGER was the first probe to orbit Mercury.

The fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth is NASA’s New Horizons mission, currently on its way to visit Pluto and the outer Solar System. New Horizons is traveling at about 80,000 kilometers per hour. It would take about 40 days to get from the Earth to Mercury when they’re closest.

But Mercury does rotate, just incredibly slow. At its current rotational velocity, it takes about 176 Earth days to experience one Mercurian day-night cycle. But you wouldn’t make it to the next day because you would die in about two minutes due to freezing or burning up.

Only one NASA spacecraft has visited Mercury and that was Mariner 10 in 1974 and 1975. It was programmed to fly by the planet three times to take images of its heavily-cratered surface.

Mercury is a rocky planet with a huge iron core which makes up a large part of its interior. The core takes up nearly 3/4 of the planet’s diameter. Mercury’s iron core is about the size of the moon. Iron makes up about 70% of Mercury’s total weight making Mercury the most iron-rich planet in the Solar System.

Does Mercury have rings or any moons around it? No, Mercury doesn’t have either rings or moons. Neither does Venus! I think that this is because the planets are fairly close to the sun, and the sun’s strong gravity would interfere with anything in orbit around those two planets.

In the same way, the ISS isn’t floating in space, it’s falling towards Earth and missing! And when you jump off the ISS, you’re initially moving at that same speed. Second, without rockets to maintain your speed, you’ll slow down and spiral toward Earth. But it won’t be quick.

The reason that objects don’t fall to the center of the earth is that the force of gravity is balanced by the “normal force.” Basically, this force arises because the forces between molecules in the ground are strong enough that molecular bonds aren’t broken when we step on them.

Gravity. Fortunately for us, Earth’s gravity is strong enough to hold onto its atmosphere. Mars, for example, is less than half Earth’s size and around one-tenth Earth’s mass. Less mass means less gravitational pull.

Based on our best understanding of the physics of the universe, the first mass was created in the form of tiny particles (a LOT of them) right after the beginning of the universe itself, about 13.7 billion years ago.

In the case of gravity, mediated by spin 2 particles, charge is mass, which is always positive. Thus, q1q2 is always greater than zero, and gravity is always attractive. For spin 0 force mediators, however, there is no restriction on the charges and you can very well have repulsive forces.