New Maps of Mercury Show Icy Looking Craters on the Solar System's Innermost Planet
A NASA spacecraft bolsters the case that ice lines the inside of polar craters on Mercury

Martian Water Stuck in Minerals
Significant amounts of water exist on Mars, sequestered within hydrated minerals and stored in the planet's crust

Mars Attacked: Planetary Scientists Vent Frustrations over Proposed Budget Cuts
The field is bristling at cutbacks, proposed last month by the Obama administration, to planetary science and especially to NASA’s program of robotic Mars explorers

Evidence for Flowing Water on Mars Grows Stronger
Liquid remains the leading explanation for newly discovered streaks on Martian slopes

5 Comments

1. 1. jtdwyer 08:38 AM 4/30/12

   Perhaps these frustrated scientists should redirect their efforts to helping humanity improve its potential for surviving the next few decades. Even if we dismiss the possibility that climate change will disrupt agricultural production and lead to enormous urban migrations away from flooding coastal regions and perhaps towards more productive arctic regions, the global population is expected to increase by 2.4 billion people to 9.4 billion during the next 40 years. I think these are the conditions determining the future of this planet.
   
   Coincidentally, the global population never reached 2.5 billion until 1950. I can remember those days... Perhaps one day children now dreaming of living on Mars will remember when life on Earth was this easy...

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2. 2. geojellyroll 04:17 PM 4/30/12

   Forsyth>: "These (politicians) are the very last people who should be determining the future of this country."
   
   So who should be deciding how trillions are spent? Unelected bureacrats?
   
   hint...the USA is over 15 trillion in debt and more IOUs are flowing in to the cookie jar every day. Politicians are not the issue, it's the citizens who choose to ignore the reality that the country is broke...everything is going to be cut back. 'We ain't seen nuthin yet'.

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3. 3. angiras 02:52 PM 6/17/12

   Now that the MESSENGER probe is orbiting Mercury, it would be foolish not to continue the mission. The data being returned to earth is invaluable.
   My objection is to the current Consensus Science by which the data is interpreted, and parroted by scientific journals, and unfortunately by Scientific American.
   For example, Mercury is a solid iron body, formerly (2,700 years ago) the solid core of Mars. Moreover, its perfect dipole magnetic field proves that all planetary magnetic fields are generated by supercurrents in their solid cores, driven by pulses of charged particles from the Sun - and disproves the Dynamo. Please save all the data, but have the nerve to publish alternate interpretations. See acksblog.firmament-chaos.com

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4. 4. danielmoores 02:46 AM 7/19/12

   I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I think I will leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
   http://www.pharmaexpressrx.net/

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5. 5. xucudato 10:27 AM 11/17/12

   Surface temperature of Mercury is at extremes (100 Kelvin at night, 700 Kelvin by day). This planet goes from extremly heat into a freezing cold dark world in one day. Amazing... hard to imagine what's going on in there.
   <a href = "http://solarsystemwiki.org/mercury/">Mercury</a>

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