Ice Water Found on Mercury and Possible Alien Organic Life

December, 01 2012

Mercury, the closest planet to the sun thought by many to be nothing but an extremely hot wasteland (426 degrees Celsius) where no life could possibly live, has now been proved wrong with the existence of ice and possible alien organic compounds.

NASA released findings that Mercury has between 100 billion and 1 trillion metric tons of water ice on its poles hidden away from the suns extreme rays.

NASA'S Messenger probe that was sent out from Earth on Tuesday August 3, 2004, was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a mission to explore the secrets of Mercury. It hitched a ride on a Boeing Delta II rocket and traveled 4.9-billion miles slingshotting around planets to study the planet. (Messengers Mission Design)

Well years later it has found that there are huge deposits of water ice on the planet and very possibly the existence of an alien organic compound.

"The more we examine the solar system, the more we realize it's a soggy place," Jim Green, the director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said during a press conference on November 30th, 2012.

So where did this water come from? Well, it turns out that as of now most scientists agree that comets and asteroids most likely carried huge amounts of water to Mercury when crashing into the planet millions of years ago. Although they are still unsure at this time.

According to a report from Discovery the ice is, in some spots, covered by an unknown organic material of enormous size. This is the building blocks of life, and although Mercury has pretty much no atmosphere, it is possible that life there may exist.

While there is more and more water being found around the universe this is a huge discovery that is changing how scientists think about how much life there is in the universe.