Mercury is only 35 million miles away from the glowing Sun. The face that never has any relief from the perpetual radiation becomes very hot. This surface of Mercury must be perpetually hot enough to melt lead. Lead, tin, bismuth, and such materials are perpetually liquid. All sulphur, sodium, potassium, and even mercury are gases. The temperature is probably around 650 degrees Fahrenheit. On the dark side it is not nearly so hot, but currents of the gases from the hot side must flow toward the cool side, and large quantities of hear must be conveyed in this way. Altogether, we are not drawn to Mercury as a pleasant place of abode.
Mercury has little or no atmosphere. This is against it, too, as we Earthians view matters. Owing to its small size and consequent small gravitational attraction and the high temperature, it could not hold its atmosphere. Probably the nearby Sun has most of it. The light we receive from Mercury is, of course, reflected light from the Sun, just as is the case with our Moon an-d all the planets. Mercury is so near the Sun that we always see it near sunset or sunrise. It has phases, precisely as has our Moon.
Its surface produces the same spectral lines as volcanic material on Earth, and we therefore judge that the same material exist there as do here. It must be rough, jagged, dry, hot, silent, and dead, with numerous extinct volcanoes. We suspct that life has not yet appeared upon Mercury, nor do we expect it will, for not only must it await the cooling of the Sun, but it must gain an atmosphere, which is an unlikely event. We are forced to exclude Mercury as the possible abode of intelligent beings within any time that we can imagine.
Mercury is about 57 million miles from Earth when we both happen to be on the same side of the Sun. Our diameter is around 7,900 miles, whereas Mercury is only 3,080 miles. By way of comparison, our Moon is 2,160 miles in diameter, or about two-thirds that of Mercury. Mercury’s speed in his travels around his orbit is high because of his proximity to the Sun, being the interesting figure of 107,000 miles per hour.
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