Mercury Has Ice And Organic Material, Says NASA Probe

Liquid water is the holy grail for scientists looking for extraterrestrial life. Until now, the generally held theory is that if a planet is too close to its star, then its water will evaporate. Researchers have now determined, however, that Mercury, the planet closest to our sun, does indeed contain pockets of ice and organic material near its north pole. 

Mercury orbits around the sun every 88 Earth days, and its surface temperature can reach a scorching 800 degrees Fahrenheit. This is hot enough to melt lead, which is why the discovery is so surprising. Not only does Mercury have ice, but may contain organic building blocks that could help explain the dissemination of life throughout our universe.

"We thought the most exciting finding could be that this really was water ice," says research team member Maria Zuber, the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. "But the identification of darker, insulating material that may indicate complex organics makes the story even more thrilling."

Scientists theorize that the ice and carbon-based organic material are leftover deposits from comet or asteroid impacts. The material has migrated towards the poles of the planet. 

Studying Mercury is particularly hard because it is so close to the sun and its radiation. Electronics have a tough time standing being so close to our bright light in the sky. The findings were the result of readings from NASA's Messenger Probe, which braved a hectic elliptical orbit to complete its mapping missions.

Messenger's mapping also revealed another interesting tidbit. The allocation of natural resources seems to indicate the Mercury undergoes an Earth-like phenomena: global warming. 

"This suggests that in the past, ice was more extensive on Mercury, and retreated to its current state," said Paul Lucey, a professor of geophysics and planetology at the University of Hawaii who was not a part of the research team. "Even Mercury experiences global warming."

While I won't open up the can of worms about whether humans created global warming or not, ice on a planet that can be a mere 30,000,000 miles from the sun is pretty extraordinary.

Read the studies published in the journal Science titled "Thermal Stability of Volatiles in the North Polar Region of Mercury" and "Bright and Dark Polar Deposits on Mercury: Evidence for Surface Volatiles."