(ORDO NEWS) — Have you ever seriously thought about what it would be like to live on Mars, roam the moons of Saturn or host on Mercury?
Frames from Hollywood films immediately pop up in my memory … To find out how it would be in reality, we suggest taking a trip to the planet closest to the Sun!
Perhaps Mercury is not a planet that humanity will ever try to colonize. The reason lies in the extreme temperatures. But if we did have the technology to survive on Mercury, what would our lives be like there?
To date, only two spacecraft have visited Mercury. The first, Mariner 10, made a series of flights around Mercury in 1974. However, this device managed to see the consecrated only half of the planet.
The second planet was explored by NASA‘s Messenger spacecraft. In March 2013, he went into orbit around Mercury. Photos taken by this spacecraft have allowed scientists to compile a complete map of the planet for the first time.
As seen in the images of Mercury, the poles of the planet are covered with water ice. “The presence of these ices would theoretically make life possible on Mercury, but setting up a base at the poles is not the best idea,” says David Blevett, one of the lead scientists on the Messenger project.
“In the polar regions, we could take shelter from the sun,” Blevett says. “However, the low temperatures in these places would be no less of a challenge.” The best solution, according to the scientist, would be to establish a base not far from one of the ice caps, perhaps on the edge of a crater.
But one way or another, extreme temperatures will become an insurmountable obstacle to life on Mercury. Daytime temperatures here can reach 430 degrees Celsius, while at night it drops to minus 180 degrees Celsius.
Today we know that a day on Mercury lasts almost 59 Earth days, and a year is about 88 Earth days. This ratio of the duration of a day to a year is unique for the entire solar system. That’s where, where, and on Mercury we would definitely have time to complete all the tasks for the day!
During the day, the Mercury sky would look black instead of blue. This is due to the fact that there is practically no atmosphere on the planet that would scatter sunlight.
“Here on Earth, at sea level, air molecules collide billions of times per second,” Blevett notes. “On Mercury, the atmosphere, or ‘exosphere’, is so thin that the atoms never actually collide.” This also means that on Mercury at night we would not see twinkling stars.
Without an atmosphere, there is no such thing as weather on Mercury. So, living there, one would not have to worry about heavy winds! And since there are no sources of liquid water and active volcanoes on the surface of the planet, tsunamis and volcanoes would also not pose a danger.
However, some natural disasters still did not bypass Mercury. Here there are earthquakes caused by the force of compression (unlike the Earth, Mercury does not have tectonic activity).
Mercury is about two-fifths the diameter of Earth. In terms of gravity, the planet is comparable to Mars. Gravity here is 2.5 times less than on Earth. “This means that on Mercury we could jump many times higher and lift heavy objects without difficulty,” says Blevett.
And finally, living on Mercury, you would have to forget about Skype calls home! It takes at least 5 minutes for the signal to reach the Earth from Mercury.
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