Ironically mercury while being the closest planet to the sun, isn’t the hottest planet in the solar system. Venus takes that title because of its atmosphere holding so much co2. Im sure its fine were putting so much of it in our atmosphere.
Yeah I prefer summer to winter so if we get summer and super summer now I would enjoy that until I’m dead and after that, why should I care?
/s just in case.
Too autistic for this. Why would it be unsettling? Mercury is much smaller than the sun. If it was suddenly bigger in proportion to the sun, then I’d be unsettled.
Less about size and more about size and relative distance. Think about being on Mercury and the entire sky is blazing sun - and yet it survives.
I mean, nothing on Mercury survives. At night it’s -170 degrees Celsius and +430 degrees at day.
Those are some mercurial tempera…tures
on Mercury and the entire sky is blazing sun
I’ve never thought about this and holy shit
It’s very hard to convey the size of the sun in a photo. On earth, it isn’t bigger than the moon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen, in a real photo, just how massive the sun is. I absolutely dwarfs a planet, which is kind of chilling. I’ve never seen a photo that shows anything further away from the camera than a planet AND that much bigger.
Right, I feel like no astronomer should be unsettled by just a picture of our solar system.
You’re not invited to my birthday party.
Looks like a dead pixel.
The scale of the universe continues to blow my mind.
This reminds me of that part of that space opera I read where there was a nomadic colony on mercury which needed to always be moving at exactly the right speed to stay on the dark side of the terminator.
That was in the Red / Green / Blue mars trilogy, one of my favorites. Though I think I’ve seen the concept in other works as well.
Basically the temp difference between day / night caused contraction of the rail tracks, pushing the whole city forward so it was always just ahead of dawn.
The nomadic colony got expanded on in KSR’s novel 2312. I don’t actually remember much about it in the Mars Trilogy.
But I’ve seen the concept before in an old EU Star Wars novel, one of the Solo books maybe, where Lando was operating something similar as his new venture.
And before that maybe mentioned by Sagan. And before that…
I’ll have to get 2312, haven’t heard of that one. Same universe?
Adjacent, probably. Very similar, and seems to purposefully be set a hundred years after Blue Mars ends (2212).
But it starts and ends on Mercury after a voyage through the solar system, not spending much story time on Mars.
Damn, that’s a great idea. I gotta go back and finish that series.
I’m sorry but my socks are still on. 100% wool.
Science Journalists; Neil Degrasse Tyson claims dead pixels may actually be Mercury sized planets!
Praise the Sun! \0/
Bring forth the shears of stumping!
TIL the sun is dark brown. Crazy the tricks our minds play.
How is the next transit of Venus not until 2117? That blows my socks’ mind. Seems like that should be happening very regularly.
Same reasons for any eclipses :
.1- plane of orbits (the one for Venus and the one for the Earth) do not exactly coincide and
.2- because distances between objects are much larger than objects, including size of the sun.I believe you. Still seems wild that I will never see another one in my lifetime.
Proof that light is a particle and not a wave?
Yes, but also both. (a simple example follows)
Think of it like you being at work or home. If I check your house, either you’re there, or you aren’t. If you’re there, you’re at home, simple. If not at home, you’re at work.
Same with your work: either you’re there when I check - or you aren’t, therefore at home.
But before I check either location (it’s understood that you are only in 1 of those 2 places), you are effectively in both places, and neither place, all at once.
And if I work from home?
Checkmate physicists
Then you are either at work or at home. But until I check, you are out getting tacos.
My socks were appropriately blown off but I still didn’t get invited.
No, you morons! That’s your thumb with the close ad X under it.
I guess because of perspective, Mercury being millions of miles closer to the camera than it is to the sun, the actual proportions would have the planet being much smaller by comparison
Mercury’s apparent size in the sky when close to us is about twice the size as when mercury is in the other side of the sun from us. So mercury would appear about 75% the size it is in this photo of it were next to the sun (so about the same distance away as the sun is).
Neat! Thanks!
