Its so crazy how Mercury and Pluto were one paragraph in the solar system books of my childhood, and now we are learning so much about the crazy geochemistry. What we have learned in the last 40 years about the entire solar system is wild.
How does he make an extremely interesting video every single day? I always give the videos a like before it starts because Anton has never made a video that bored me. But it still is amazing that someone can make such interesting content so often yet still calls us mere mortals wonderful.
The sun compacts planets that get close to it, so the closer to the sun the more dense a planet becomes, easier that way for the sun to eat the planets
I am quite sure Anton has a few people helping him. It's not only Anton, he likely has a small team to help him produce the show. Not to mention quite a few people supporting him on patreon. Credit where credit is due.🎉
@kayakMike1000 Well I don't see why it couldn't be, he's hyper focused on one area & very intelligent. But even if it's 50 ppl you're "giving credit to where credit is due" to imaginary ppl that you don't even know if they even exist or not 🤔, why❓️ Also every content creator of his size has a Patreon but come on you know they don't do the work they pay the bills so he can so he's thankful for that but...REALLY 🙄❓️
@kayakMike1000 if you've been following anton as long as i have you'd know that the quality of his content has always been this good. So your assumption on giving credit to his "team", whether it exists or not, is irrelevant.
@@kayakMike1000 You couldn't have written this comment without the inventor of internet or computer keyboard designers. Your life is nothing special mate, just one of the breeder among billions who have lived and died.
It seems every time we write off a planet as "a dull rock in space," it still has surprises for us. Another mystery about Mercury that needs to be solved is...if it DID lose most of its mantle in a collision, where did it all go? Future missions to asteroids may shed light on this if any of them share similar composition to Mercury's surface.
One side of the mantle?,No because Mercury is round so it would have to have been several massive hits?,Unless it was molten when formed & got hit?,Getting smaller would mean something is getting colder?
Just the oddly large eccentricity of Mercury's orbit suggests it probably had a different, maybe larger orbit in the past, so it may have indeed been brought into the current eccentric orbit by by a large impactor.
@@marcoflumino Einstein explained the mismatch between observations of Mercury's orbit against Newtonian expectations. Einstein did not explain how Mercury became eccentric in the first place.
Saw the aurora for the first time in my life last night. Because of the light pollution here it was hard to tell that it wasn't just a cloud or fog lit up by the lights. Still once I knew what it was it was cool. Wish I could have seen it from out in the country.
Anton, you must be one of the hardest working educators out there. Another fantastic informative video that succinctly covers such fresh new understandings, thank you.
As always, great video Anton! And yes, Mercury definitely needs more attention.👍 And I see a lot of people asking if Mercury could be the impactor called Theia that created the Moon. Both Anton and Fraser Cain have made several videos showing why that can’t be true. In fact, Anton has a really great video about how we may have found what remains of Theia within the Earth’s mantle. It’s really great and you should check it out! Also, computer modeling shows that Theia must have had an orbit that was very similar to Earth’s orbit. Where Mercury is now eliminates it from ever being in an orbit similar to that of Earth’s.
There is a lot of SciFi and some real science speculating that the original 5th planet between Mars and Jupiter either blew up, suffered a cataclysmic collision, or never completely coalesced into one planet; which gives us the present asteroid belt. Although this video doesn't directly suggest this, the notion will probably surface soon. What a provocative video, thanks Anton!
Dude we solved that mystery literally a hundred years ago. It’s just leftovers from the formation of the solar system, there was no 5th planet (between mars and Jupiter, anyways). Never has been, never will be. Your idea is comically outdated. Take it from me - I read old astronomy books for fun.
I almost have to wonder if photo nuclear erosion is a thing due to Mercury's close proximity to the Sun. This is basically the forced nuclear reactions due to energetic radiation. Things like absorbing protons and neutrons due to a lack of any mechanism that would keep them slamming into the surface.
The solar wind exists mainly of charged particles mainly protons and electrons with a few heavier ions. Given that neutrons can exist only 15 minutes outside of the atomic nucleus and the solar wind takes 3-4 days to reach Mercury there are essentially no free neutrons reaching Mercury.
Mercury is the only terrestrial planet that hasn’t had a lander on it. I mean even Saturn’s moon Titan had a lander touch down on its surface. Based on these recent findings reported here by Anton, a Mercury lander should definitely be the next planetary mission! I bet it would cost less than 1% the military budget.
Hello Anton there is a massive solar storm hitting the earth Canada and many countries currently are seeing it. Hopefully I will see it tonight and take some pictures. My neighbors are showing me pictures and with little effort they are amazing and different I found myself in the difficult position of trying explain it. It is not an easy task
That sounds like a truly tragic origin for the planet Mercury. As we are informed, Earth also suffered a catastrophic collision in its own origin, but instead of having its outer layers stripped away, Earth increased in mass and gained the benefit of a sizeable moon.
@@sluggo3slug Tragic covers calamitous and disastrous. Repeated sounds like the first part of a word as with "truly tragic" and "catastrophic collision" often improve readability.
Maybe Mercury was once part of a planet between mars and Jupiter, and that planet got destroyed, leaving the astroid belt, and Mercury. Whatever destroyed the original planet is also what sent Mercury to a different orbit.
If so we'd have to see something that looks like Mercury's crust in the asteroid belt. We do not. We do see things that look like Vesta's crust, by contrast.
It’s a fun thought - and given what Anton said I can see the logical leap. But, I don’t know if the mass calculations or if rock types are similar enough. Of course, we don’t know for sure what Mercury’s outer regions cmwrre comprised of. There’s also parts of the belt, some asteroids which are higher in volatiles - Ceres for example.
Food for thought, what IF mercury was the core of planet nine, once it wrecked havoc through out the solar system it collided with something and slowed down enough to be captured in the orbit it's currently in, since theoretically it migrated from somewhere around mars... Which ironically would of been kinda around where planet nine would of been. 🤷
Not possible, reason, the orbits of the objects in the outer solar system are too young to been made at the the time when we think Mercury moved towards the current position.
@@marcoflumino correct, but it takes time to develop orbital trajectories. Its original path may have set things in motion where we are beginning to see the results. On a solar scale especially with things on the further reaches it would take a long time, IF mercury was a core of a destroyed planet,that mass has to be somewhere.. on its way around our plain it probably nudged alot of remnants from the development stage of our solar system, or caused an imbalance and changed the orbital vector of another planet as it migrated. Alas, it was just a theory with very little knowledge invested. A fun thought, perhaps even the beginning of a answer of solar enquiries and origins.
From the price of textbooks we know that textbook publishers do everything they can to raise the cost of their product, thus it would make sense for them to be lobbying for lots and lots of space missions and other scientific investigations so that students have to buy new editions all the time instead of using the books their older siblings or parents used.
And what is your point? The reason for space missions has nothing to do with textbooks! The only thing you can prove or correctly say, is that the publishers take advantage of space missions discoveries to make new books, not the opposite.
@@marcoflumino Evidently you have not been blessed by the humor fairy. I was using sarcasm and satire in positing a conspiracy of textbook publishers pushing scientific discovery as a way of self-enrichment at the expense of the rest of us. It was referencing how the powerful so often do take advantage of their positions, and that scientific investigations often have to fit into the expectations of funders in order to be funded, as well as the plethora of active conspiracy theories about some really whacky things. Does it help now that I've explained it?
Curse you! You figured out the real reason that Pluto was redesignated a "Dwarf Planet". Now the black helicopters will come for you and take away your birthday!
As long as the orbits are not highly eccentric, I don't buy the collision migration theory fully.. it's not like the orbits would stabilize themselves with time, it would be more likely the other way around
And why not? You need to think like you are playing a pool or billiard game, every time you hit a ball you get an angle of deflection, it happens in any environment, so your "not buying" is baseless.
@@marcoflumino Apparently you are not real big on orbital mechanics, are you. The OP made an excellent point. At the bare minimum you would need two collisions. The first to drop the perihelion, and the second to drop the aphelion.
@@marcoflumino we live in a world with n body problems. So other things like Jupiter would draw an eccentric orbit even more eccentric. What you describe is either a stupid way to troll someone or you don't have any idea about the exchange of kinetic energy to potential energy and back. Nothing will flatten out an eccentric orbit, if there is no impulse put in at exactly the right place.
It was once between Mars and Jupiter. But it was not alone, a couple of small planetary bodies, in separate occasions, were ripped from theyr orbit by Jupiter’s gravity: one sent on a collision trajectory with Mecury, front ended the plantet so hard that dis-mantled it and the impactor disintegrated but the core remained quite intact and bounced back with low energy. That created the asteroid belt and the planetoid core could be Psyche or Davida. Meanwhile the lighter Mercury whit so low orbital velocity begins to fall to the Sun finally reaching a stable orbit as first from the star. The second body was called Teia… Damn, those were goood times…
We have no hints or prove that Theia and Mercury were the same object, plus we find out that Theia core reside inside our planet, so your theory is busted! For info, look at previous videos of Anton.
@marcoflumino One thing I definitely think is possible is that a chunk of the asteroid belt could be remnants if Mercury after a collision sent it hurtling inward. I also like the idea that Mercury was a gas giant or ice giant at one time, and it would explain a bit as well.
@@marcoflumino hi, sorry Marco, I never said they were the same body, actually I said that two object in different times were disturbed enough by Jupiter to enter in collision course one with Mercury and the other with proto Earth.🤓
What 9000?! Oh wait he a different number for some reason! Why not use tbe iconic line? How would i know? I'm still trying to figure out why im having a conversation with myself!!
@@Tripskull I have conversations all the time and it's just a number that sounded good. We've come a long way since the 90's I'm sure Kurosawa would approve of my tenacity. If not I shall go the way of the samurai 💡🪢☠️
11:11 That instantly got me thinking.... How cool would it be if Mercury was the planet that smashed into earth, and perhaps it was less of a planets merging and more of earth stealing a large part of mercury but mercury's core was going so fast it just kept going. Of course that sounds highly improbable, but would be very cool.
What if Gaia’s impact with Theia had a third chunk that flew off and got captured by the Sun? (In an orbit parallel to the solar system’s orbital plane since that’s the plane Gaia and Theia had momentum on).
Yeah, I was wondering about that. Could Mercury be some remnant of a collision that formed the Earth and the Moon? Or what about the fact that it has thorium levels similar to Mars? Could Mars and Mercury therefore have some common origin? Could they both have emerged from some collision?
@@manofsan Many scenarios may have played out when the solar system contained protoplanets forming from the hot disc. It’s plausible that an impact could have formed Mars and thrown the remnant of Mercury into a closer orbit.
Very unlikely - our simulations of the moon’s formation aren’t perfect, but it’s pretty definitive that no giant planet sized chunk of core went flying off into an eccentric solar orbit. It’d also just be too convenient.
@@oberonpanopticon I’m pretty sure those simulations began with the parameter of “how could the present-day result emerge from two objects impacting” without including a planet size chunk becoming Mercury in the mandated output. Changing the required output might change the derived input.
Moho is cool, I don't know why it's so underrated. Because technically, it's the closest planet on average, you can launch stuff to it often (provided you have the dv). Also the Sun ought to be huge there, so kind of very impressive. I really wish we could send a robot mission to Mercury (a rover!), it would be so cool. Now I desperately want to play KSP and check on my Moho expedition. I really liked the comet-Mercury from the video, that was pretty spectacular.
hmm.. could it be that mercury is the remnant core of the planet the ricocheted off earth back in the day that settled into it's current orbit?... seeing the structure in our outer core does kinda look like the giant peels.. maybe most of the surface and upper mantle on the collision side stripped off and plunged into the core and still there.. and the remaining cores and inner mantle went into a orbit that resulted it recently getting into tight orbit of the sun?.. possible influence of the large object out in the kuiper belt
Me personally, I think Mercury is a remnant of a collision between an object from around Mars knocking into Venus when it was smaller taking out it's core. I think this because of mercury's large core and evidence for having been stripped of outside material. This could also explain Venus's lack of solid core.
Asteroid belt consists of stony stuff up to Vesta, carbonaceous stuff out to Ceres, and icy stuff which migrated in (including Ceres itself). Only the S type asteroids would be candidates. And I think they formed in-place. They'd have to demonstrate evidence of differentiation (depletion of metals) to be considered an "outer shell". Where we have found "outer shell" meteors they track with the surface of Vesta, not Mercury.
Doubt it, since the core of Mercury is nearly twice of the Mars one and Mars has no evidence of any weird movement during his rotation or travel around the sun.....
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Given the similarities between Mars and Mercury and the idea that they formed around the same distance from the sun I don't see how the cores would be some sort of factor especially since we don't know enough to say how exactly they formed. The mass of Mars is 64200000 × 10^22 KG and the mass of Mercury is 33 × 10^22 KG so Mercury is very much smaller and may have lost a considerable amount of surface mass over the years being so close to the sun. We don't know why it migrated from the region around Mars or how long it has been close to the sun, that's why Mercury is our strangest planet more than just having a strange orbit and there are a lot of unanswered questions. Mercury's core is about 2017km in diameter and Mar's core is 3300km in diameter so clearly somehow a lot of Mercury's outer mass has been removed and there are many ways that could have happened but right now we don't have and might never have all the answers.
As others have pointed out - Mercury would have been far more massive than Mars. They’d have been a dual planet system - like Pluto-Charon - or we’d consider Mars the “Moon’.
The accumulator bet would be that an ice covered super earth-sized planet (Theia) that existed beyond mars got driven inwards by Jupiter, grazed Mars (leaving Valles Marineris), heavily glanced off Earth (supplying our moon and a large percentage of our oceans), dropped off most of it's atmosphere with Venus, and arrived at it's current location as Mercury! I'd put a fiver on it!
A least 2 problems, first Valles Marineris is too small in with to be made by a planet of the size of Mercury, second Theia is inside our planet we know that, look at previous videos of Anton.
When he mentioned Mercury starting somewhere other than its current location; it reminded me of the damage a passing rouge planet or star could do to a solar system's orbit. Just one reason why humanity needs to develop into a multi-silar aystem civalization, so humanity as a species can survive even such a disaster. I have considered the feasability of attaching a colony to a commit; either directly ro it's surface, buried deep inside it, or teathered far behind it, which of xourse would bw a one way trip unless the in commit ia one like Haley's Comit, which orbit takes 75.84 years. Imagine if we could place radio telescopes on it's aurface that could survive such a journey; and how using images taken along it's journey could show us more than we can aee from earth orbit.
Mass of the belt is a fraction of what Mercury was. More likely that the Belt is a former moon of Mercury left over from the cataclysm that sent Mercury towards the Sun.
It's not Mercury's speed, it's the even so much faster speed of any object plunging down from an high orbit to such a close orbit, requiring breaking to plunge down at all, and then more breaking to get a round instead of highly elliptical orbit.
Saturn is beautiful and as a gas giant my favorite BUT Mercury is my favorite of the rocky planets. I love the fact it laughs at the Sun. It rotates/orbits so fast not all the ice has melted. I love that, so close to the Sun and yet ice exists. I also love the colors the filters can produce when taking photos of it. It's beautiful and any planet that has a tail......yea gotta love it.
Eveyone speculates, but no one ever asks Anton directly! So, Anton, do you have a team of (wonderful) people who help you make these astonishing daily videos? Do you accomplish all of this by yourself? However you do it, thank you!
If a sun forms by a spinning double vortex collapsing dominantly upon the poles then there is an centrifuge escape velocity built into the forming stars disc with heavy elements tending to be captured by nearer planetary discs explaining the presence of thorium, and many other elements. Once these discs have enough mass they can also compete for gas capture via their respective vortex's. The central Star is more dominant at this in the inner solar system, but the outer planets can call on more relative volume of gas from the star forming region.
Anton, great video. This got me to thinking about who would live longer a) a man standing in the immediate blast of a nuclear weapon or b) a man standing on the surface of Mercury?
In the RPG called Space:1889, Mercury is tidally locked, and there is a river the circles the planet right where the day/night line is. Great game, and a lot of fun had exploring the river.
Why we should build a strange heat power plant on Venus: Shortest distance to Earth, frequency: Venus, 23.6 M miles, 584 days. Mercury, 47.8 M miles, 116 days. Mars, 33.9 M miles, 780 days. Venus' surface: dry, 780° F, wind speed only 6.8 mph. Heat power.
Perhaps, Mercury was where the asteroid belt is and it colided with another planet and got knocked to where it is now and the collision formed the asteroid belt?
Mercury honoring it's name..🙏 God of speed, madiator for commerce & financial gain. Often associated with trickster or luck. Patron of travelers, messager of gods ☀️
Mars and Venus also migrated. The myths of the ancients point to a point in time when Mars acted like a comet and came close to Earth causing catastrophic plasma releases and volcanic activity. The current placements of the planets is a recent event and definitely not the way they have always been. Also planet 9/10 may have been involved in these movements
Very interesting video about a planet rarely spotlighted. Perhaps the Caloris Basin reflects a collision from the past which might have changed Mercury's orbit. Planetary migrations were discussed by Velikovsky in his book Worlds in Collision. He may have been wrong in the details, but it's becoming more and more obvious that our early solar system was a very different place than it is today. I look forward to the results of the Beppo-Colombo mission.
The melting ice in the Tundra, creating sink holes also creates a potential for a rift valley to form if opposing techtonic plates rip it apart. I think the greatest cause of plate movements are the result of the sinking power of heavy seafloor vs the shrinking power of the landfills. ( like this? >)
I remember in school they taught us Mercury was just a rock. Very exciting to see all these new discoveries. Dont judge a book (or planet) by its cover.
Hmm, here's my hypothesis on this. Given we "know" (at least accept) that the Moon was formed when a "mars sized object" hit Earth. And given that Mercury seems to have been larger at one point. Finally the presences of the asteroid belt. I posit that Mercury once resided between Mars and Jupiter, where there is now an asteroid belt. This would allow it to build up the volatiles similar to Earth/Mars. Something large came close to it, shedding some crust off both bodies and forming the asteroid belt. This mass change destabilized Mercury's orbit causing it to migrate to where we find it today. The object that went whizzing by, then smashes into Earth and forms the Moon.
I wonder if there would be some sort of chemical signature that could be matched to Mercury's surface. For example, if the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter could be shown to have a chemical signature matching Mercury, then it could be deduced that they are the remnants of it's original crust.
I wonder if Mercury could have received significant mass from earths collision with theia or even be a remnant of theia. While it is unlikely, exploring the destination of hypothetical theia's mass is interesting as the moon certainly does not account for all of it, kind of hard to tell how much the earth kept and how much escaped, as well as how direct or shallow the impact may have been.
Its so crazy how Mercury and Pluto were one paragraph in the solar system books of my childhood, and now we are learning so much about the crazy geochemistry. What we have learned in the last 40 years about the entire solar system is wild.
How does he make an extremely interesting video every single day? I always give the videos a like before it starts because Anton has never made a video that bored me. But it still is amazing that someone can make such interesting content so often yet still calls us mere mortals wonderful.
A team and of course his good work ethic
Science
A source of infinite discoveries and a dedication to share will supply interesting subject matter every day beyond our lifespans.
He IS A.I.
Because he's a great guy and kinda smart of course.
I swear Anton is the David Attonbrough of space. Fantastic work as always.
NO.
Because Anton doesnt lie and use 8 & 12 year old video floor cuttings to build the WEF NWO climate change agenda crap
Can you imagine the interest he would generate if the prime TV channels had him doing documentaries of space like DA?
So anton is just a narrator?
Man FOH, even if you ignore everything else Attenborough has done in his 70-odd year career, he is THE narrator anyone you ask would be able to name.
You mean someone mostly known for his voice?
Anton is simply Anton. A guy who does great science communication.
The cheesy smile at the end makes the video 1000x better.
And the wave.
School pictures type smile 😁. I remember mine 😅😅😅. 🤓😽🦜
Love it.
Yeah, as unpretentious as the universe is infinite
❤❤❤❤❤
One day we're gonna find out Mercury was once a gas giant core or something
Thats what I instinctively thought when I first heard how dense it is
i like your pfp :3 do you have a full res somewhere?
The sun compacts planets that get close to it, so the closer to the sun the more dense a planet becomes, easier that way for the sun to eat the planets
🤯
so how do we deal with the heat..?
If I could only watch one YT channel, I would probably choose Anton's.
Only Anton could cover textbook changing information in 16 minutes.
I am quite sure Anton has a few people helping him. It's not only Anton, he likely has a small team to help him produce the show. Not to mention quite a few people supporting him on patreon. Credit where credit is due.🎉
@@kayakMike1000 this is why you want to discredit Anton himself.
Got it.
@kayakMike1000 Well I don't see why it couldn't be, he's hyper focused on one area & very intelligent. But even if it's 50 ppl you're "giving credit to where credit is due" to imaginary ppl that you don't even know if they even exist or not 🤔, why❓️
Also every content creator of his size has a Patreon but come on you know they don't do the work they pay the bills so he can so he's thankful for that but...REALLY 🙄❓️
@kayakMike1000 if you've been following anton as long as i have you'd know that the quality of his content has always been this good. So your assumption on giving credit to his "team", whether it exists or not, is irrelevant.
@@kayakMike1000 You couldn't have written this comment without the inventor of internet or computer keyboard designers. Your life is nothing special mate, just one of the breeder among billions who have lived and died.
It seems every time we write off a planet as "a dull rock in space," it still has surprises for us.
Another mystery about Mercury that needs to be solved is...if it DID lose most of its mantle in a collision, where did it all go? Future missions to asteroids may shed light on this if any of them share similar composition to Mercury's surface.
One side of the mantle?,No because Mercury is round so it would have to have been several massive hits?,Unless it was molten when formed & got hit?,Getting smaller would mean something is getting colder?
The sun or mercury getting colder?,or both?,Maybe better said not as hot?
Just the oddly large eccentricity of Mercury's orbit suggests it probably had a different, maybe larger orbit in the past, so it may have indeed been brought into the current eccentric orbit by by a large impactor.
Not really, Einstein explain the eccentricity with his relativity, still we cannot exclude that at the moment.
@@marcoflumino Einstein explained the mismatch between observations of Mercury's orbit against Newtonian expectations. Einstein did not explain how Mercury became eccentric in the first place.
@@zimriel You are correct on that!
Thank you for the awesome summary Anton! How you make this material approachable, interesting, and yet so precise.......I have no idea!
Fascinating. Anton is a gifted science communicator
Saw the aurora for the first time in my life last night. Because of the light pollution here it was hard to tell that it wasn't just a cloud or fog lit up by the lights. Still once I knew what it was it was cool. Wish I could have seen it from out in the country.
Congratulations! I've been accosted by clouds the night before last and then wildfire smoke last night. Can't catch a break.
Anton, you must be one of the hardest working educators out there.
Another fantastic informative video that succinctly covers such fresh new understandings, thank you.
As always, great video Anton! And yes, Mercury definitely needs more attention.👍
And I see a lot of people asking if Mercury could be the impactor called Theia that created the Moon. Both Anton and Fraser Cain have made several videos showing why that can’t be true. In fact, Anton has a really great video about how we may have found what remains of Theia within the Earth’s mantle. It’s really great and you should check it out!
Also, computer modeling shows that Theia must have had an orbit that was very similar to Earth’s orbit. Where Mercury is now eliminates it from ever being in an orbit similar to that of Earth’s.
Why doesn’t Mercury take anything seriously?
She doesn’t have enough gravity.
Au contrair, it has too much large core, nearly twice the one Mars had...
I always believed that Mercury was initially a hot Jupiter. Probably why the core is so big and has so much thorium.
Wonderful as always Anton. Thank you. 😁🙂🤘
WoW!! This was very interesting! 😊
They all are!
@@carmenmccauley585 True! 😊
There is a lot of SciFi and some real science speculating that the original 5th planet between Mars and Jupiter either blew up, suffered a cataclysmic collision, or never completely coalesced into one planet; which gives us the present asteroid belt. Although this video doesn't directly suggest this, the notion will probably surface soon. What a provocative video, thanks Anton!
Dude we solved that mystery literally a hundred years ago. It’s just leftovers from the formation of the solar system, there was no 5th planet (between mars and Jupiter, anyways). Never has been, never will be.
Your idea is comically outdated. Take it from me - I read old astronomy books for fun.
Pure speculation
@@grantschiff7544 That's why SciFi is called "speculative fiction" or, sometimes, "Futurology."
@@oberonpanopticon You didn't read what I wrote carefully enough to make a reasonable statement. Try again.
First thing i wondered finishing the video was that, could this be related to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter ? I guess time will tell.
Another day of exciting information.
Wait until Anton finds out about the UAP Disclosure Amendment and the Sol Foundation.
No, you wait IF he finds out. You wont like it.
Thank you, wonderful person.
I almost have to wonder if photo nuclear erosion is a thing due to Mercury's close proximity to the Sun.
This is basically the forced nuclear reactions due to energetic radiation.
Things like absorbing protons and neutrons due to a lack of any mechanism that would keep them slamming into the surface.
The solar wind exists mainly of charged particles mainly protons and electrons with a few heavier ions. Given that neutrons can exist only 15 minutes outside of the atomic nucleus and the solar wind takes 3-4 days to reach Mercury there are essentially no free neutrons reaching Mercury.
Mercury is the only terrestrial planet that hasn’t had a lander on it. I mean even Saturn’s moon Titan had a lander touch down on its surface. Based on these recent findings reported here by Anton, a Mercury lander should definitely be the next planetary mission! I bet it would cost less than 1% the military budget.
Hello Anton there is a massive solar storm hitting the earth Canada and many countries currently are seeing it. Hopefully I will see it tonight and take some pictures. My neighbors are showing me pictures and with little effort they are amazing and different
I found myself in the difficult position of trying explain it. It is not an easy task
I nearly skipped this one. I am so glad I didn’t. Good job Anton & Team.😊
That sounds like a truly tragic origin for the planet Mercury. As we are informed, Earth also suffered a catastrophic collision in its own origin, but instead of having its outer layers stripped away, Earth increased in mass and gained the benefit of a sizeable moon.
What is ”tragic” about it? Strange choice of word.
@@sluggo3slug Tragic covers calamitous and disastrous. Repeated sounds like the first part of a word as with "truly tragic" and "catastrophic collision" often improve readability.
Anton Rocks!!! Love the stuff. Keep on Rockin Anton! Gr8! Peace ☮💜Love
Learned something new. I didn't know mercury had a tail.
Your videos are amazing Your dead eye delivery tells me your more invested in the facts, great work as usual 👏
Maybe Mercury was once part of a planet between mars and Jupiter, and that planet got destroyed, leaving the astroid belt, and Mercury. Whatever destroyed the original planet is also what sent Mercury to a different orbit.
If so we'd have to see something that looks like Mercury's crust in the asteroid belt. We do not. We do see things that look like Vesta's crust, by contrast.
From the wikipedia: "The total mass of the asteroid belt is estimated to be 3% that of the Moon."
So, mass isn't enough even for collision remnants
In school textbooks, they like to draw a belt in all its glory. But seriously, it's not worth even mentioning if you look close on it
It’s a fun thought - and given what Anton said I can see the logical leap. But, I don’t know if the mass calculations or if rock types are similar enough. Of course, we don’t know for sure what Mercury’s outer regions cmwrre comprised of. There’s also parts of the belt, some asteroids which are higher in volatiles - Ceres for example.
Nature is so interesting. I want to stay young for a thousand years 💟🌌☮️
Food for thought, what IF mercury was the core of planet nine, once it wrecked havoc through out the solar system it collided with something and slowed down enough to be captured in the orbit it's currently in, since theoretically it migrated from somewhere around mars... Which ironically would of been kinda around where planet nine would of been. 🤷
Not possible, reason, the orbits of the objects in the outer solar system are too young to been made at the the time when we think Mercury moved towards the current position.
@@marcoflumino correct, but it takes time to develop orbital trajectories. Its original path may have set things in motion where we are beginning to see the results. On a solar scale especially with things on the further reaches it would take a long time, IF mercury was a core of a destroyed planet,that mass has to be somewhere.. on its way around our plain it probably nudged alot of remnants from the development stage of our solar system, or caused an imbalance and changed the orbital vector of another planet as it migrated. Alas, it was just a theory with very little knowledge invested. A fun thought, perhaps even the beginning of a answer of solar enquiries and origins.
You are wonderful Anton! Thank you!
Thanks!
Thanks, Anton!
I really enjoy these types of videos.
From the price of textbooks we know that textbook publishers do everything they can to raise the cost of their product, thus it would make sense for them to be lobbying for lots and lots of space missions and other scientific investigations so that students have to buy new editions all the time instead of using the books their older siblings or parents used.
And what is your point? The reason for space missions has nothing to do with textbooks! The only thing you can prove or correctly say, is that the publishers take advantage of space missions discoveries to make new books, not the opposite.
@@marcoflumino Evidently you have not been blessed by the humor fairy. I was using sarcasm and satire in positing a conspiracy of textbook publishers pushing scientific discovery as a way of self-enrichment at the expense of the rest of us. It was referencing how the powerful so often do take advantage of their positions, and that scientific investigations often have to fit into the expectations of funders in order to be funded, as well as the plethora of active conspiracy theories about some really whacky things. Does it help now that I've explained it?
@@qwertyuiopgarthI don’t blame them - the line between sarcasm and stupidity doesn’t exist in the RUclips comment section. There’s no way of telling.
@@qwertyuiopgarthI've already see some textbooks sold on flash-drives. The student can even subscribe to downloadable updates.
Curse you! You figured out the real reason that Pluto was redesignated a "Dwarf Planet". Now the black helicopters will come for you and take away your birthday!
Long time been listening to anton, finally had some time --> AGAIN, excellent topics. You've my full support from belgium
Danke schon Anton!!
You are not blessed with Umlauts it seems...
Much interesting new information. Thanks, Anton!
You the best!!
Thanks for the great content, Anton!
As long as the orbits are not highly eccentric, I don't buy the collision migration theory fully.. it's not like the orbits would stabilize themselves with time, it would be more likely the other way around
And why not? You need to think like you are playing a pool or billiard game, every time you hit a ball you get an angle of deflection, it happens in any environment, so your "not buying" is baseless.
@@marcoflumino Apparently you are not real big on orbital mechanics, are you. The OP made an excellent point. At the bare minimum you would need two collisions. The first to drop the perihelion, and the second to drop the aphelion.
@@thekinginyellow1744 Incorrect, if the mass of one of the objects (Sun) is large enough the attraction will suffice to correct the orbit.
@@marcoflumino lol. Yeah that's how orbits work
@@marcoflumino we live in a world with n body problems. So other things like Jupiter would draw an eccentric orbit even more eccentric. What you describe is either a stupid way to troll someone or you don't have any idea about the exchange of kinetic energy to potential energy and back. Nothing will flatten out an eccentric orbit, if there is no impulse put in at exactly the right place.
Wow. That's amazing! Can't wait to hear how this develops! Thankyou Anton as always ! ❤😊
It was once between Mars and Jupiter. But it was not alone, a couple of small planetary bodies, in separate occasions, were ripped from theyr orbit by Jupiter’s gravity: one sent on a collision trajectory with Mecury, front ended the plantet so hard that dis-mantled it and the impactor disintegrated but the core remained quite intact and bounced back with low energy. That created the asteroid belt and the planetoid core could be Psyche or Davida. Meanwhile the lighter Mercury whit so low orbital velocity begins to fall to the Sun finally reaching a stable orbit as first from the star.
The second body was called Teia…
Damn, those were goood times…
We have no hints or prove that Theia and Mercury were the same object, plus we find out that Theia core reside inside our planet, so your theory is busted! For info, look at previous videos of Anton.
mercury is a hundred times the mass of the asteroid belt, and thousands of times more massive than psyche
Sorry I missed it.
@marcoflumino One thing I definitely think is possible is that a chunk of the asteroid belt could be remnants if Mercury after a collision sent it hurtling inward.
I also like the idea that Mercury was a gas giant or ice giant at one time, and it would explain a bit as well.
@@marcoflumino hi, sorry Marco, I never said they were the same body, actually I said that two object in different times were disturbed enough by Jupiter to enter in collision course one with Mercury and the other with proto Earth.🤓
My Bachlor refrigerator has the same phenomena !🍀
NO ONE:
VAGETA: ANTONS WONDERFUL PERSON LEVEL IS 23,000 AND CLIMBING. IMPOSSIBLE
Vagita
What 9000?! Oh wait he a different number for some reason!
Why not use tbe iconic line?
How would i know? I'm still trying to figure out why im having a conversation with myself!!
@@Tripskull I have conversations all the time and it's just a number that sounded good. We've come a long way since the 90's I'm sure Kurosawa would approve of my tenacity. If not I shall go the way of the samurai 💡🪢☠️
Fajita
@buildaboiworkshop you spell it with a U?
Anton, you have done another wonderful exploration video! Thank you! 😊
Mercury's got mould on it, quickly put it back into the fridge, we can still save it!
Ha ha ha, it looks like the stuff that grows on old spsghetti sauce.
Meh, just cut off the bad bits, and eat it anyway!
11:11 That instantly got me thinking.... How cool would it be if Mercury was the planet that smashed into earth, and perhaps it was less of a planets merging and more of earth stealing a large part of mercury but mercury's core was going so fast it just kept going. Of course that sounds highly improbable, but would be very cool.
Hit, run, and left us with a moon to take care of! Typical!
Thank you for all of your fascinating posts!!
What if Gaia’s impact with Theia had a third chunk that flew off and got captured by the Sun? (In an orbit parallel to the solar system’s orbital plane since that’s the plane Gaia and Theia had momentum on).
Yeah, I was wondering about that. Could Mercury be some remnant of a collision that formed the Earth and the Moon?
Or what about the fact that it has thorium levels similar to Mars? Could Mars and Mercury therefore have some common origin? Could they both have emerged from some collision?
@@manofsan Many scenarios may have played out when the solar system contained protoplanets forming from the hot disc.
It’s plausible that an impact could have formed Mars and thrown the remnant of Mercury into a closer orbit.
Very unlikely - our simulations of the moon’s formation aren’t perfect, but it’s pretty definitive that no giant planet sized chunk of core went flying off into an eccentric solar orbit. It’d also just be too convenient.
@@oberonpanopticon I’m pretty sure those simulations began with the parameter of “how could the present-day result emerge from two objects impacting” without including a planet size chunk becoming Mercury in the mandated output.
Changing the required output might change the derived input.
No, that core has been found inside our planet, Mercury is not Theia. Mercury core is still intact.
Moho is cool, I don't know why it's so underrated. Because technically, it's the closest planet on average, you can launch stuff to it often (provided you have the dv). Also the Sun ought to be huge there, so kind of very impressive. I really wish we could send a robot mission to Mercury (a rover!), it would be so cool. Now I desperately want to play KSP and check on my Moho expedition. I really liked the comet-Mercury from the video, that was pretty spectacular.
hmm.. could it be that mercury is the remnant core of the planet the ricocheted off earth back in the day that settled into it's current orbit?... seeing the structure in our outer core does kinda look like the giant peels.. maybe most of the surface and upper mantle on the collision side stripped off and plunged into the core and still there.. and the remaining cores and inner mantle went into a orbit that resulted it recently getting into tight orbit of the sun?.. possible influence of the large object out in the kuiper belt
Me personally, I think Mercury is a remnant of a collision between an object from around Mars knocking into Venus when it was smaller taking out it's core. I think this because of mercury's large core and evidence for having been stripped of outside material. This could also explain Venus's lack of solid core.
Nope Theia still reside inside our planet, see previous videos of Anton.
@@marcoflumino I'm talking about a hypothetical third planetoid
Good video thanks Anton
The asteroid belt. Outer shell of mecury that remains in the original orbit?
Asteroid belt consists of stony stuff up to Vesta, carbonaceous stuff out to Ceres, and icy stuff which migrated in (including Ceres itself). Only the S type asteroids would be candidates. And I think they formed in-place.
They'd have to demonstrate evidence of differentiation (depletion of metals) to be considered an "outer shell". Where we have found "outer shell" meteors they track with the surface of Vesta, not Mercury.
Incredible. Thank you
15:02 This smiling in the end so weird 😁
kind of freaky, as though a crazy person grimacing before attacking haha
Maybe Mercury was once a moon of Mars that got kicked out somehow, it's only about 4 times the mass of our moon.
Maybe Mars was once a moon if Mercury?
Doubt it, since the core of Mercury is nearly twice of the Mars one and Mars has no evidence of any weird movement during his rotation or travel around the sun.....
Mars is only nine times the mass of the Moon.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Given the similarities between Mars and Mercury and the idea that they formed around the same distance from the sun I don't see how the cores would be some sort of factor especially since we don't know enough to say how exactly they formed.
The mass of Mars is 64200000 × 10^22 KG and the mass of Mercury is 33 × 10^22 KG so Mercury is very much smaller and may have lost a considerable amount of surface mass over the years being so close to the sun. We don't know why it migrated from the region around Mars or how long it has been close to the sun, that's why Mercury is our strangest planet more than just having a strange orbit and there are a lot of unanswered questions. Mercury's core is about 2017km in diameter and Mar's core is 3300km in diameter so clearly somehow a lot of Mercury's outer mass has been removed and there are many ways that could have happened but right now we don't have and might never have all the answers.
As others have pointed out - Mercury would have been far more massive than Mars. They’d have been a dual planet system - like Pluto-Charon - or we’d consider Mars the “Moon’.
Interesting analysis.
The accumulator bet would be that an ice covered super earth-sized planet (Theia) that existed beyond mars got driven inwards by Jupiter, grazed Mars (leaving Valles Marineris), heavily glanced off Earth (supplying our moon and a large percentage of our oceans), dropped off most of it's atmosphere with Venus, and arrived at it's current location as Mercury! I'd put a fiver on it!
That's a super interesting hypothesis 😁
Thanks for sharing
A least 2 problems, first Valles Marineris is too small in with to be made by a planet of the size of Mercury, second Theia is inside our planet we know that, look at previous videos of Anton.
Maybe only some of Theia is inside our planet!
@@brocnor We have no evidence that mercury has lost some of his core, no mentioning that his current core is massive....
When he mentioned Mercury starting somewhere other than its current location; it reminded me of the damage a passing rouge planet or star could do to a solar system's orbit. Just one reason why humanity needs to develop into a multi-silar aystem civalization, so humanity as a species can survive even such a disaster. I have considered the feasability of attaching a colony to a commit; either directly ro it's surface, buried deep inside it, or teathered far behind it, which of xourse would bw a one way trip unless the in commit ia one like Haley's Comit, which orbit takes 75.84 years. Imagine if we could place radio telescopes on it's aurface that could survive such a journey; and how using images taken along it's journey could show us more than we can aee from earth orbit.
I think it's only appropriate to watch one of Anton's videos while playing X4 Foundations
Outstanding, thanks Anton. Bepi-C will give us a new window on Mercury, a migrant planet.
Mercury was one of the moons of the planet that used to be where the asteroid belt is now.
Mercury is a hundred times more massive than the entire asteroid belt.
Mass of the belt is a fraction of what Mercury was. More likely that the Belt is a former moon of Mercury left over from the cataclysm that sent Mercury towards the Sun.
It's not Mercury's speed, it's the even so much faster speed of any object plunging down from an high orbit to such a close orbit, requiring breaking to plunge down at all, and then more breaking to get a round instead of highly elliptical orbit.
Mercury is the planet that glanced off Earth and got pulled closer to the sun.
NO, Theia the planet that slammed into Earth still reside inside our planet (Theia Core), for reference look at Anton previous videos about Theia.
Thank you.
To tthink I always thought of Mercury as a hot dead place; space never ceases to amaze.
Saturn is beautiful and as a gas giant my favorite BUT Mercury is my favorite of the rocky planets. I love the fact it laughs at the Sun. It rotates/orbits so fast not all the ice has melted. I love that, so close to the Sun and yet ice exists. I also love the colors the filters can produce when taking photos of it. It's beautiful and any planet that has a tail......yea gotta love it.
thank you Anton and team if there is such! You raise the general bar, 🐈⬛
I don't know why but mercury has always been my favorite one
Learning is fun! Thank you Anton!
Eveyone speculates, but no one ever asks Anton directly!
So, Anton, do you have a team of (wonderful) people who help you make these astonishing daily videos?
Do you accomplish all of this by yourself?
However you do it, thank you!
Hi, could Mercury be the remainder of Theia that did not get absorbed into earth or the moon? Very interesting video, thanks for posting.
I had the same thought! Had to scroll down far to find it.
Finding more about the inner core collision history of our planets would really open up early bombardment.
Exciting stuff.
Great presentation as always !
Wow that's very cool new info/theories thank you! ❤
It's absolutely insane how much there is to our solar system! It's planets are far from the giant rocks I once thought they were.
If a sun forms by a spinning double vortex collapsing dominantly upon the poles then there is an centrifuge escape velocity built into the forming stars disc with heavy elements tending to be captured by nearer planetary discs explaining the presence of thorium, and many other elements. Once these discs have enough mass they can also compete for gas capture via their respective vortex's. The central Star is more dominant at this in the inner solar system, but the outer planets can call on more relative volume of gas from the star forming region.
thank you
Anton, great video. This got me to thinking about who would live longer a) a man standing in the immediate blast of a nuclear weapon or b) a man standing on the surface of Mercury?
In the RPG called Space:1889, Mercury is tidally locked, and there is a river the circles the planet right where the day/night line is. Great game, and a lot of fun had exploring the river.
Thank you Anton! Very cool! 👍
That was very interesting. One of your best!
To be precise, the elements would be subliming not evaporating, unless they are in a liquid form underneath somehow.
Why we should build a strange heat power plant on Venus:
Shortest distance to Earth, frequency:
Venus, 23.6 M miles, 584 days.
Mercury, 47.8 M miles, 116 days.
Mars, 33.9 M miles, 780 days.
Venus' surface: dry, 780° F, wind speed only 6.8 mph. Heat power.
Perhaps, Mercury was where the asteroid belt is and it colided with another planet and got knocked to where it is now and the collision formed the asteroid belt?
Mercury honoring it's name..🙏
God of speed, madiator for commerce & financial gain.
Often associated with trickster or luck.
Patron of travelers, messager of gods ☀️
You're losing quite a lot of weight. Hope you're well! We appteciate everything you do so very much. Thank you. Wishing you wellness and successs!
Mars and Venus also migrated. The myths of the ancients point to a point in time when Mars acted like a comet and came close to Earth causing catastrophic plasma releases and volcanic activity. The current placements of the planets is a recent event and definitely not the way they have always been. Also planet 9/10 may have been involved in these movements
Very interesting video about a planet rarely spotlighted. Perhaps the Caloris Basin reflects a collision from the past which might have changed Mercury's orbit. Planetary migrations were discussed by Velikovsky in his book Worlds in Collision. He may have been wrong in the details, but it's becoming more and more obvious that our early solar system was a very different place than it is today. I look forward to the results of the Beppo-Colombo mission.
The melting ice in the Tundra, creating sink holes also creates a potential for a rift valley to form if opposing techtonic plates rip it apart. I think the greatest cause of plate movements are the result of the sinking power of heavy seafloor vs the shrinking power of the landfills. ( like this? >)
Very interesting knowledge, thanks 👍😊
hello wonderful person is what a good intro
I remember in school they taught us Mercury was just a rock. Very exciting to see all these new discoveries. Dont judge a book (or planet) by its cover.
Thank you Anton!!!!
Hmm, here's my hypothesis on this. Given we "know" (at least accept) that the Moon was formed when a "mars sized object" hit Earth. And given that Mercury seems to have been larger at one point. Finally the presences of the asteroid belt.
I posit that Mercury once resided between Mars and Jupiter, where there is now an asteroid belt. This would allow it to build up the volatiles similar to Earth/Mars. Something large came close to it, shedding some crust off both bodies and forming the asteroid belt. This mass change destabilized Mercury's orbit causing it to migrate to where we find it today. The object that went whizzing by, then smashes into Earth and forms the Moon.
Ooooo interesting finds. Can't wait for more science to be done to narrow down the possibilities here.
I wonder if there would be some sort of chemical signature that could be matched to Mercury's surface. For example, if the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter could be shown to have a chemical signature matching Mercury, then it could be deduced that they are the remnants of it's original crust.
I wonder if Mercury could have received significant mass from earths collision with theia or even be a remnant of theia. While it is unlikely, exploring the destination of hypothetical theia's mass is interesting as the moon certainly does not account for all of it, kind of hard to tell how much the earth kept and how much escaped, as well as how direct or shallow the impact may have been.