Alex McColgan
speaker
29,301 appearances
104 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 21 Sep
Alex McColgan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 68 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 11.
Appearances
What Mercury's surface is made of and why it's so dark are two of the remaining mysteries Bepi Colomo hopes to solve over the next few years.
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In fact, this unexpected chemistry has far-reaching consequences that might have been easy to overlook initially.
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On Mercury, we see polished-looking lava planes spattered across the surface, and now we think this unusual characteristic could be actually the result of the unique chemistry of the planet itself.
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For example, on Earth, lava is built from silicon oxygen bonds that form long, sticky polymer-like chains, which is why.
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Generally, our lava is so viscous and flow so slowly.
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Longer molecules mean more opportunities for intermolecular forces that can tangle polymers together, reducing flow.
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On mercury, however, since there is a lack of oxygen, sulfur bonds with silicon instead, creating much shorter, less connected structures that flow more like maple syrup than earthly lava.
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This chemically modified, faster flowing lava may explain why Mercury's volcanic planes are so remarkably smooth.
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But there's an even bigger story hidden here.
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If Mercury's ancient volcanism looks fundamentally different at the atomic level, then when we search for signs of volcanic activity on other worlds, including worlds in other planetary systems, we might be scanning for Earth like signatures and walking right past alien geology just because it doesn't match our templates or assumptions.
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Once Bepiclumbo reaches orbit, Murtis will produce a global mineral map of Mercury's surface at 500 meter resolution.
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That map will be unlike anything we've created for any other planet, and may force us to rethink our entire concept of planetary geology entirely.
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But these smooth planes aren't the only mystery left on Mercury's surface.
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Just over a month after the breakthrough mid-infrared images of Mercury's surface, Peppy Colombo approached for one final flyby.
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On the 8th of January 2025, the spacecraft came within 295 kilometers of the planet's surface, flying directly over its north pole, giving us a completely new perspective of the rocky world.
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It looked almost straight down into craters that, despite being closer to the Sun than any other planet, have never seen sunlight.
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The rims of craters like Prokofiev
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Kandinsky.
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Tolkien and Gordimer are nearly five kilometers tall, high enough to permanently block the sun's rays from ever reaching their floors.
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And because Mercury has almost no axle tilt and no atmosphere to redistribute the heat,
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Showing 2401–2420 of 29,301 · page 121 of 1466
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