Mercury: The Planet That Shouldn’t Exist
It’s way too close to the Sun, has a giant core.
The Underdog of the Solar System
Poor Mercury. It’s often skipped over in science books, overshadowed by flashy neighbors like Mars and Jupiter. But this little gray rock near the Sun is more than just a cosmic afterthought.
In fact, Mercury might be one of the weirdest planets we know and scientists can’t fully explain why it even looks the way it does.
A Planet with a Giant Core
One of Mercury’s biggest mysteries? Its massive iron core.
For a planet that’s so small (barely bigger than our Moon), Mercury has a core that makes up 85% of its radius. That’s huge compared to Earth, where the core is only about 55%.
So what happened?
Was Mercury once a much bigger planet that got smashed apart in a collision?
Did the Sun’s gravity strip away its outer layers early on?
Or is it the leftover core of a failed planet?
Whatever the cause, Mercury is like a planetary puzzle—and the pieces don’t quite fit.
It Has Ice, next to the Sun?
Yes, seriously.
Even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and reaches temperatures over 800°F (430°C), it has frozen water at its poles. How?
Mercury barely tilts, so some craters near the poles never see sunlight.
These shadowed regions are cold enough to preserve ice, possibly delivered by comets.
It’s like finding snow inside a furnace.
A Magnetic Field That Shouldn’t Be There
Here’s another plot twist: Mercury has a magnetic field.
That’s weird because it’s small, cools fast, and should’ve had its magnetic dynamo shut down long ago. But no — it still hums with magnetic activity, defying what we thought we knew about planetary cores.
And it’s not just any magnetic field. It’s off-center, strangely weak, and might even mess with solar wind in unexpected ways.
So Why Does Mercury Matter?
Because every oddity in space is a clue.
Mercury challenges our assumptions about how planets form and evolve. Studying it might help us:
Understand Earth’s own core and magnetic field
Learn how rocky planets behave around other stars
Rebuild the solar system’s early history
In a way, Mercury is a survivor—a planetary relic, still holding secrets billions of years old.
Final Word
It might not have rings like Saturn or clouds like Jupiter. It doesn’t have Martian dust storms or Venusian volcanoes.
But Mercury?It’s strange. It’s extreme. And it just might be one of the most important planets we’ve barely begun to understand.