The Closest Planet to Our Sun Is Shrinking at Impossible Speed

Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is slowly shrinking as its interior cools and contracts, leaving enormous cliffs and deep scarps across its battered surface. Scientists have discovered that this tiny world has been changing for billions of years, and its ancient landscape reveals just how violent its transformation has been. As Mercury loses internal heat, sections of its crust buckle and thrust over one another, creating towering geological features that stretch for hundreds of miles. But the real mystery is how much the planet has shrunk, whether its surface is still changing today, and what these clues reveal about the fate of worlds orbiting close to their stars. Mercury may look like a dead, lifeless rock, but its surface tells a far more dramatic story about a planet that is still cooling, contracting, and evolving.

Credit:
KSC-04-S-00216: by NASA Kennedy Space Center https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KSC-04-S-00216_(ksc_070704_messprev).webm https://www.nasa.gov/kennedy/
Colors of the Innermost Planet: by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colors_of_the_Innermost_Planet.webm
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