Have you ever seriously thought about what life would be like on Mars, and what it would be like to wander the moons of Saturn or host guests on Mercury? Images from Hollywood films instantly pop up in my memory. We propose to make a trip to the planet closest to the Sun in order to find out how it would look in reality.
Perhaps Mercury is not the planet that humans will ever try to inhabit, it's all about extreme temperatures. But if we had the technology to survive on Mercury, what would this life be like?
To date, only two spacecraft have visited this planet. The first was the American space probe Mariner 10, which made a series of flights around Mercury in 1974. However, this apparatus was able to see only half of the planet illuminated.
The second Mercury explored the NASA spacecraft. In March 2013, he entered the planet's orbit. The photographs taken with this device, for the first time, allowed scientists to draw up a complete map of Mercury.
As you can see in the pictures, the planet's poles are covered with ice.
“The presence of ice theoretically makes life on Mercury possible, but creating a base at the poles is not a good idea,” says David Blavette, one of the project's lead scientists. “In the polar regions, we can be cut off from sunlight, in which case low temperatures will become the main problem.
The best solution, scientists say, would be to build a base near one of the glaciers, possibly at the edge of a crater.
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But one way or another, extreme temperatures will become an insurmountable obstacle to life on Mercury. Daytime temperatures on this planet sometimes reach 430 degrees Celsius, and at night the thermometer drops to 180 degrees below zero.
It is known that one day on Mercury lasts 59 Earth days, and a year is approximately 88 Earth days. This ratio of the length of the day and the year is unique for the entire solar system. Yes, on Mercury, we would have had enough time to complete all the daily tasks.
During the day, the sky of Mercury would be black rather than blue. This is due to the fact that there is practically no atmosphere on the planet that scatters sunlight.
“Here on Earth, at sea level, air molecules collide billions of times per second,” says Blavette. - On Mercury, the atmosphere, or "exosphere", is so rarefied that the atoms never actually collide with each other.
All this also means that at night on Mercury we will not see the stars shine.
In the absence of an atmosphere on Mercury, there is no such thing as weather. While living on this planet, there is no need to worry about strong winds. Tsunamis and eruptions are also not dangerous, since there are no sources of water and active volcanoes on the planet.
However, some natural disasters are still possible on Mercury. The planet can have earthquakes caused by the force of compression (unlike Earth, there is no tectonic activity on Mercury).
The diameter of Mercury is about two-fifths that of the Earth. In terms of gravity, the planet is comparable to Mars, the force of gravity on Mercury is two and a half times less than on Earth. This means that on Mercury we could jump much higher and lift heavy objects much easier than on Earth.
And finally, living on Mercury would have to forget about Skype calls home. It would take at least five minutes for the signal to reach Earth.
Olga_Vesna