Cody from Cody's Lab had 640 pounds of liquid mercury lying around, so he devised an experiment to see if he could stand on it. Read the rest
Watch what it's like to attempt standing on liquid mercury
Watch a super cooled nickel ball freeze a bowl of mercury
Take one nickel ball, a half liter of liquid nitrogen, and a bowl of mercury, and watch what happens when the supercooled nickel sits in the bowl of mercury for a while. Read the rest
Mercury orbiter retired after successful mission
Having generated incredible maps of the tiny world, Messenger is to rendezvous with its surface. Read the rest
A "not insignificant" defense of gleeful scientists
Just a few minutes ago, researchers with NASA's MESSENGER mission announced the publication of data that strongly suggests the poles of Mercury contain significant quantities of frozen water.
On the one hand, this is not exactly new news. The possibility of water on Mercury has been a topic of research for something like 20 years. And scientific discoveries tend to move in little mincing steps, not giant leaps, so there have been lots of previous announcements about evidence supporting the hypothesis of water of Mercury — including very similar announcements from the MESSENGER team in December 2011 and March 2012. Your life will not change in any significant way because there is frozen water on Mercury. You probably won't even make a note to tell your children where you were the day NASA announced that ice most likely existed there.
But that doesn't mean this news isn't damned exciting. And it doesn't mean that the scientists involved shouldn't be giddy about it. We are, after all, talking about a mission that sent a spacecraft into orbit around another planet and has quite likely found frozen water sitting on a landscape that is hot enough to melt lead. What's more, they think that ice is covered in places by a thin layer of some coal or tar-like organic material. That is huge news. It's going to change textbooks. And because the scientists think both the ice and the organic material got to Mercury via collisions with asteroids and comets, it's going to be an important part of our ongoing efforts to understand how life begins on planets like Earth. Read the rest
Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Beating Metal Heart
A simple experiment makes a drop of mercury beat like a nervous, little mouse heart.
Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user SharkeyinColo via CC
