Despite its nearly 800 degrees Fahrenheit daytime temperature and close -300 degrees at night, Mercury, although it is the nearest planet to the center of the solar system, could have supported life by a small chance as a new study suggests.
Planet's surface is not caused by quakes' result, instead, it is "volatiles" which can easily switch its elemental states according to research published in the Journal Scientific Reports.
As written in the abstract of the study, researchers considered for nearly half a century that these terrains are formed due to catastrophic quakes and ejects fallout as produced by the antipodal Caloris basin impact.
In addition, Mercury's hollows, which are shallow, flat-floored, irregular, rimless depressions with bright interiors, and halos are the currently documented evidence of modifications.
With their origin thought to represent minor mass losses produced by the local sublimation of near-surface geologic material that includes large volumes of volatile (i.e., volatile-rich compounds), researchers found out that the features are very relatively small, showing just an average depth of 24 ± 16 m13.
Jeffrey Kargel, one of the study's co-authors initially thought that the idea of his co-researcher Alexis Rodriguez is so outlandish and wrong however when he further reviewed the idea, it wasn't, as he shared with The New York Times.
Kargel also added, that there's a big possibility of the idea, as long as there was water, for the temperatures would be appropriate for the survival and possibly the origin of life.
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As a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, Alexis Rodriguez spends a big chunk of his time studying "areas of interest are related to the study of the Martian subsurface hydrology."
Orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015, the NASA MESSENGER or its backronym "MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging" and also referenced to the messenger god 'Mercury' in Roman mythology, the MESSENGER, in 2014 took the first-ever photos of water ice, the planet's north pole and it continued orbiting the planet to study its chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field.
According to an August 2019 study on the topic, it is believed that the planet Mercury's icy regions are slightly different from those seen on the Moon.
Instrument Scientist for MESSENGER's Mercury Dual Imaging System, Nancy Chabot discussed in August that they showed Mercury's polar deposits to be dominantly composed of water ice and extensively distributed in its north and south polar regions and the planets' ice deposits appear to be much less patchy than those on the moon, perhaps emplaced or refreshed within last tens of millions of years.
