NASA Probe Finds Ice and Organics on Mercury!

NASA has just announced that MESSENGER, the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, has confirmed the presence of ice covered by an unknown organic material inside craters near the planet's north pole - two major building blocks for life!

blogs.discovery.com...=fbsci1

Wild!

I thought Mercury was like 10000000000 degrees lol and was too hot to harbour anything! Well I guess everyday i look at the news nowadays, I'm proved wrong!

Ice sure, I could see that, no problem. However, now we get "confirmation" ( I put confirmation in quotations, because come on, we do need to do a little more probing and analysis before we jump to this) that organic material is on the ice! Good god, this actually made my year...Man, I hope it is true..this would be scientifically and philosophically groundbreaking!

-Ghoster

reply to post by CALGARIAN


Average temperature on mercury during the day time is 350 degrees celsius. Night time its 170 degrees celsius. There is a tenuous, at best, atmosphere on Mercury. So the planet does not retain the heat it receives from the Sun as it rotates. The side facing the Sun is amazingly hot, around 700 Kelvin or 430°C!!! However temperatures can plunge to 110 Kelvin or -163 °C when it is on the dark side. So not quite 10000000000 degrees even the Sun don't get that hot. But what a wierd place to find Ice and organic material. Star and Flag.

Interesting news, S&F!!

Some precisions about this dark organic compound, from NASA media releases page

According to Paige (of the University of California, Los Angeles.), the dark material is likely a mix of complex organic compounds delivered to Mercury by the impacts of comets and volatile-rich asteroids, the same objects that likely delivered water to the innermost planet.The organic material may have been darkened further by exposure to the harsh radiation at Mercury's surface, even in permanently shadowed areas.

This dark insulating material is a new wrinkle to the story, says Sean Solomon of the Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, principal investigator of the MESSENGER mission. "For more than 20 years the jury has been deliberating on whether the planet closest to the Sun hosts abundant water ice in its permanently shadowed polar regions. MESSENGER has now supplied a unanimous affirmative verdict."

"But the new observations have also raised new questions," adds Solomon. "Do the dark materials in the polar deposits consist mostly of organic compounds? What kind of chemical reactions has that material experienced? Are there any regions on or within Mercury that might have both liquid water and organic compounds? Only with the continued exploration of Mercury can we hope to make progress on these new questions."

A Mosaic of MESSENGER Images of Mercury's North Polar Region

Tradar image of Mercury's north polar region from Image 2.1 is shown superposed on a mosaic of MESSENGER images of the same area. All of the larger polar deposits are located on the floors or walls of impact craters. Deposits farther from the pole are seen to be concentrated on the north-facing sides of craters.

The yellow parts are those with the ice/organic deposits. (Kandinsky and Prokofiev craters mainly)

reply to post by theghoster


Absolutely agree with you. We'll need more analysis but i think this is great news and it also made my year for space discoveries!!

First Mars , then Europa, Callisto and Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, and Saturns moon titan. Now Mercury... (possible candidates of life)

Our solar System maybe a little more crowded than we though. Now lets just make sure these microbes and possible ocean dwelling organic lifeforms understand who the top dog is in this neighborhood.

Honestly this has me very excited nerd glasses on check.

Giddy with excitement check

Ice, as you know, is an insulator.

If for example we have a large enough ice cap with some thermal source underneath.
We could find a lake filled with some sort of Invertebrate life or whatever else would form under those conditions.
Algaes aerobic or non aerobic.
Or something completely unique.
who knows.

Exciting stuff!

This to me, is much more exciting than Mars! Unbelievable. It seems that we are uncovering more and more incredible things about our universe at an increasingly faster rate!

So many identical threads about this today! Have you bothered to look at the topics?

On the topic - I think it's great news and the way to go for science and space exploration.

I'm just having a hard time with this one. I suppose that there is always that possibility but, Mercury is pretty dang hot. This is pushing my mind in he direction of, these guys have no clue as to what is going on out there and that all there calculations are so far off that we may not have a single clue about anything.

reply to post by JPeveto4


Mercury has no atmosphere, and on the night side the surface loses heat very fast. It can get down to -170 C. In the polar regions, there are craters where the Sun never reaches. Ice can exist there.

en.wikipedia.org...

well I guess that lends a little more creed to the 'Star water' hypothesis........

especially for the polar areas....

It's a false flag alert!!!!!!!!

Hey,hey looky what we found on Mercury!

Meanwhile on Mars.....................

If there is life there and we've spent countless
money Mars'n out. NASA is gonna have some
splaining to do.

Also it goes along with You Tuber "suspicious observers"
theory of Star Water. Which I'm having theoretical fun with,
So please don't yell at me for dumbing down the thread.
(even if it does somewhat)
I'll see if I can link something
lightworkersxm.wordpress.com... e-and-is-not-natural-7-minute-weather-news-video-a-must-watch/

reply to post by kdog1982


I actually kept reading the posts waiting for someone to debunk this, so your post had me LOLing.

Amazing is all I can say. And NASA actually released the info. Imagine that........

ETA - is anyone else seeing the name Paige on the article and thinking what I am thing?!

reply to post by Doodle19815


would that be Phage?

and Kandinsky

reply to post by GezinhoKiko


I just couldn't help myself. I was actually waiting for him to step in here and offer up some info.

reply to post by andy06shake


No its rotation is identical to the suns so one side always faces the sun & one side never does. One side is the hottest place in the solar system and the other side is the coldest. There are dark places close to hot places where the temperatures are more moderate.

Absolutely awesome news this has definitely made my year who would have thought that ice existed there so the chances for life elsewhere just increased ten fold I don't care if its single celled slime organisms that don't move or some kind of sponge life is life and it is marvellous

reply to post by GezinhoKiko


Yeah, Kandinsky needs to drag his lazy arse out of bed and give us some input about his namesake.