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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick. And we're back with the fourth

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Speaker 2: and for now final part in our series on the

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Speaker 2: planet Mercury. In the previous episodes, we've talked about the

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Speaker 2: extremes of Mercury. It's the innermost planet in the solar system,

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Speaker 2: the smallest, the fastest moving, not the hottest planet, but

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Speaker 2: quite hot. And the one with the biggest difference between

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Speaker 2: day and night temperatures, very roasting hot in the day,

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Speaker 2: deep freeze at night. We talked about Mercury's density, its

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Speaker 2: lack of a moon and its lack of substantial atmosphere,

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Speaker 2: as well as its sodium tail. It's got the salty

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Speaker 2: tail going into space. We talked about the Roman god

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Speaker 2: Mercury and his many jobs and associations, the god of messengers, travel,

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Speaker 2: trade and commerce, thievery, and other stuff, gleaming wrestling. In

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Speaker 2: part two, we talked about past and current missions to Mercury,

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Speaker 2: getting into the subject of why it is so difficult

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Speaker 2: to travel there and why it's hard to get into

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Speaker 2: orbit around the planet. I talked about a giant impact

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Speaker 2: basin on Mercury called the Caloris Basin and a fascinating

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Speaker 2: feature inside it called the Pantheon Fosse or the spider,

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Speaker 2: which is this huge star-shaped pattern of troughs in the ground.

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Speaker 2: And we talked about the different hypotheses for how those

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Speaker 2: are formed. In that episode, Rob, you also talked about

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Speaker 2: the idea of life on Mercury, both in reality, and

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Speaker 2: in that case, the prospect is highly doubtful, but also

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Speaker 2: in science fiction, where it has been explored many times

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Speaker 2: by authors like Isaac Asimov and Clark Ashton Smith. In

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Speaker 2: part three, we talked about why Mercury is so banged

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Speaker 2: up by impact craters and about these creepy hollows in

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Speaker 2: its surface that look like glowing acid burns. And after that,

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Speaker 2: we talked briefly about Mercury's origins, something we're going to

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Speaker 2: revisit today, as well as its doomed future as our

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Speaker 2: sun billions of years from now will expand and become

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Speaker 2: a red giant and swallow up the planet. And finally,

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Speaker 2: we talked about proposals people have made for using Mercury

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Speaker 2: for future space-based projects, like as a launching platform for

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Speaker 2: solar sail vehicles or as raw material to be transformed

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Speaker 2: into a Dyson swarm or something of that sort. And

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Speaker 2: we're back today to finish up our discussion.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, real quick, I want to bridge two things that

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Speaker 1: I discussed in the past episodes on Mercury. Just a

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Speaker 1: quick side note regarding the MESSENGER probe and solar sails.

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Speaker 1: So MESSENGER didn't depend on solar sails as a key

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Speaker 1: part of its design. It did not have like exclusive

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Speaker 1: solar sails, but it was able to use its solar

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Speaker 1: panels as solar sails. It got to go solar sailing

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Speaker 1: for a little bit of the journey in order to

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Speaker 1: save on propellant, and ultimately extend mission operation. So I

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Speaker 1: thought that was interesting.

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Speaker 2: Kind of like how I'm sure people on boats on

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Speaker 2: Earth have discovered anything large enough on your boat kind

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Speaker 2: of becomes a sail, whether you want it to be

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Speaker 2: or not.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: A sail is a fungible concept. Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: And again, it goes back to just, we briefly touched

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Speaker 1: on this, just the intense ingenuity that goes into the

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Speaker 1: operations of any of these probes, the recent ones, and

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Speaker 1: even the older ones of just like squeezing every last

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Speaker 1: bit you can out of it and figuring out all

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Speaker 1: these little workarounds, like going just right up to the

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Speaker 1: very limitations of what the technology, uh, will allow you

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Speaker 1: to do.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Ring in that turnip. Um, so Rob, uh,

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Speaker 2: You talked last time about a couple of the main

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Speaker 2: theories for why Mercury is the way it is today.

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Speaker 2: So we briefly touched on how we, in broad strokes,

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Speaker 2: know how Mercury formed. Like all of the other planets,

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Speaker 2: it was part of the planetary accretion disk that surrounded

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Speaker 2: the Sun as it was formed by gravity. And so

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Speaker 2: this disk began as gravitationally attracted dust and scattered material.

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Speaker 2: drawn into orbit around a newly forming star. And over time,

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Speaker 2: that spinning disk of material begins to form clumps. Things

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Speaker 2: clump together due to gravity and other factors. And that's

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Speaker 2: how we get the planets over time. And the planets

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Speaker 2: gradually clear the area of their orbit. They attract everything

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Speaker 2: they can. And they become balls instead of just a

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Speaker 2: disk of dust and stuff. Mercury somehow certainly emerged from

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Speaker 2: this process like everything else in the solar system. But

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Speaker 2: from there, The questions about how Mercury formed and got

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Speaker 2: the way it is today become a lot more curious.

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Speaker 2: How did Mercury end up in the place that it

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Speaker 2: did with the chemical and mineral composition it did? You

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Speaker 2: mentioned a couple of broad ideas here addressing how Mercury

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Speaker 2: may have been essentially stripped of lighter materials, leaving only

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Speaker 2: this dense, heavy metal planet behind. So one idea you

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Speaker 2: discussed was that lighter materials were blown away by the

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Speaker 2: sun and And another idea was that there may have

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Speaker 2: been some kind of giant impact with another protoplanetary object,

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Speaker 2: and this impact smashed a lot of the lighter materials

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Speaker 2: away and left behind this Terminator endoskeleton planet. I was

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Speaker 2: actually reading a really interesting article related to this subject,

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Speaker 2: so I wanted to come back today and revisit this

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Speaker 2: topic in a little more detail.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, more on the tragic origin story of Mercury. As

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Speaker 1: Batman has taught us, there's always more tragedy you can

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Speaker 1: you can dig into in the origin story.

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Speaker 2: Though in this case, many questions remain. Though I guess

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Speaker 2: as with Batman, you know, you'll get a lot of

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Speaker 2: versions of the Batman origin story. Sometimes the broad contours

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Speaker 2: are the same, but a lot of the texture is different.

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Speaker 2: Maybe much, that's the case here as well. We know

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Speaker 2: it comes out of the accretion disk somehow, but the

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Speaker 2: question of how it becomes the planet it is today,

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Speaker 2: there are a lot of different ways of getting there.

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Speaker 2: And none of them really answers all of the outstanding questions.

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Speaker 2: But anyway, this article that I got interested in was

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Speaker 2: for BBC Future called Mercury, The Planet That Shouldn't Exist,

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Speaker 2: published December 2025 by Jonathan O'Callaghan. And what does it

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Speaker 2: mean in the title by saying the planet that shouldn't exist?

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Speaker 2: This is not making a moral judgment. It's not like,

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Speaker 2: you know, Lovecraftian, the thing that should not be.

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Speaker 1: Or we have a moral obligation to turn it into

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Speaker 1: a dice and swarm at this point.

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Speaker 2: No, it's talking about how Mercury defies a lot of

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Speaker 2: our expectations about how planets form. It seems to be

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Speaker 2: smaller and closer to the sun than it should be,

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Speaker 2: based on our models of how planets in a system

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Speaker 2: like ours take shape. And I should mention the context

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Speaker 2: of this article is the ongoing and soon arriving BepiColombo mission,

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Speaker 2: which launched in 2018. This is a collaboration between the

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Speaker 2: ESA and JAXA. We talked about it briefly in previous

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Speaker 2: couple of episodes. But this mission may help answer some

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Speaker 2: of these questions when it arrives later this year or

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Speaker 2: after it arrives later this year. It's supposed to insert

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Speaker 2: into orbit in November of 2026. And then I think

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Speaker 2: the active science part of its mission begins a little later.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it gets a little jet lag recovery

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Speaker 1: time there.

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Speaker 2: OK, so a few general facts about Mercury that make

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Speaker 2: it curious. One is something we've talked about already. Mercury

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Speaker 2: is very small. It's something like 20 times less massive

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Speaker 2: than Earth. Its volume is not very big. The article

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Speaker 2: makes a funny comparison, says it's barely wider than Australia.

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Speaker 2: That really puts it in perspective. And as we talked

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Speaker 2: about in part one, Mercury is very dense. It is

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Speaker 2: the second densest planet in the solar system. Only Earth

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Speaker 2: is denser. This is due to the fact that Mercury

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Speaker 2: is all core, baby. It's not literally all, but something

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Speaker 2: like 60 to 70% of its mass is in the

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Speaker 2: huge metallic core. So it's like more core than the

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Speaker 2: other rocky planets by a good margin.

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Speaker 1: I saw some explainer article. I forget where I saw this,

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Speaker 1: and maybe this is more... akin to a meme, but

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Speaker 1: I saw some comparisons online between Mercury and one of

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Speaker 1: those avocados that you get where the pit is really,

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Speaker 1: really big inside. I was like, I'm not going to

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Speaker 1: fact check that, but that feels right.

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Speaker 2: If only you could detect from orbit the avocados that

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Speaker 2: are like that before you actually cut it open. Anyway,

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Speaker 2: so yeah, it's a very small, very dense And it's

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Speaker 2: also very close to the sun. Again, the distance is

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Speaker 2: it's 0.39 AU. It's about 39 percent of the distance

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Speaker 2: from the sun to the Earth. And that means it's

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Speaker 2: about 58 million kilometers from the sun. And these facts

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Speaker 2: together lead to these questions about how Mercury formed. The

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Speaker 2: article quotes a planetary scientist at MIT named Severio Cambione.

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Speaker 2: who makes the intriguing comparison that, quote, Mercury is probably

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Speaker 2: the closest planet that we have to an exoplanet because

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Speaker 2: of these unusual questions about how it formed. So when

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Speaker 2: did these questions about the formation of Mercury arise? In part,

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Speaker 2: after the Mariner 10 flybys, these would have been in

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Speaker 2: the mid-70s, So Mariner 10, remember, it did not go

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Speaker 2: into orbit around Mercury. It stayed in orbit around the Sun,

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Speaker 2: but made multiple flybys of the planet, partially mapped its

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Speaker 2: surface and took some readings. And on these flybys, the

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Speaker 2: probe recorded gravitational measurements about the planet, which provided some

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Speaker 2: clues about Mercury's interior. And it found that Mercury's inside

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Speaker 2: was weird. In the case of Earth, Venus, and Mars,

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Speaker 2: the iron-rich core makes up about half of each planet's radius.

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Speaker 2: By contrast, about 85% of Mercury's radius is core. The

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Speaker 2: rest is a thin, rocky mantle and crust on the outside.

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Speaker 2: So again, it's something like You know, 60 to 70%

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Speaker 2: of it is core by mass and about 85% of

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Speaker 2: the radius by volume is core. By the way, this

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Speaker 2: does lead to a side question that I briefly looked into.

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Speaker 2: And that question is, if a greater proportion of Mercury's

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Speaker 2: mass is its iron-rich core, why is Earth still denser

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Speaker 2: than Mercury is? Wouldn't that make Mercury the densest planet

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Speaker 2: if it's the most metallic planet? And the answer is

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Speaker 2: that Earth is bigger than Mercury, so it is more

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Speaker 2: subject to gravitational compression. So Earth has a sizable amount

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Speaker 2: of metal. It's also got this rocky material, but it's

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Speaker 2: much bigger, so there's more gravitational squeezing of the innards

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Speaker 2: of the planet into a tighter space. So it does

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Speaker 2: still end up being even denser than Mercury because it's bigger.

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Speaker 1: The size differences between the planets, I was looking into

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Speaker 1: a lot of this for... section we're going to get

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Speaker 1: to later on, like just the pure size difference between

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Speaker 1: the different planets in our solar system has such an

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Speaker 1: impact on any comparisons you make regarding density or composition.

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Speaker 1: You get into questions of like, well, where do you

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Speaker 1: find the most oxygen on a given world? And you

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Speaker 1: might think, well, maybe right here on Earth because we've

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Speaker 1: got a lot of it and we're always talking about

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Speaker 1: our oxygen. But then you look at the size of

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Speaker 1: a planet like Jupiter and And just by virtue of

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Speaker 1: being so enormous, like any oxygen content it has, it's

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Speaker 1: going to dwarf what we have here.

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Speaker 2: That sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: Doesn't apply to everything, but in certain cases, it really

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Speaker 1: does tip the scale.

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Speaker 2: Now, I haven't looked this up, but it makes me wonder,

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Speaker 2: it's the kind of thing like, are there more Italian

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Speaker 2: restaurants in China than there are in Italy? Just because

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Speaker 2: it's a bigger country.

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Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get into that later. We'll

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Speaker 1: fact check that later.

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Speaker 2: But anyway, coming back to the question, why is Mercury

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Speaker 2: like that? Why this relatively huge metallic core and the

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Speaker 2: thinner upper regions, the very thin mantle and crust? More

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Speaker 2: mysteries to add on the pile. The article mentions that

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Speaker 2: the MESSENGER mission found evidence of volatile elements like potassium

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Speaker 2: on the planet's surface. along with other interesting elemental discoveries

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Speaker 2: like findings about the relative abundance of radioactive thorium to potassium,

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Speaker 2: also the discovery of chlorine and, of course, water ice

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Speaker 2: in these protected pockets in the polar craters, things we

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Speaker 2: talked about in the previous episodes. And the article refers

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Speaker 2: to researchers who really don't think we should expect to

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Speaker 2: see volatile elements like the potassium I mentioned present in

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Speaker 2: the quantities we do. especially for how close Mercury is

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Speaker 2: to the Sun, these elements really should have been boiled

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Speaker 2: away eons ago. So what explains the abundance of things

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Speaker 2: like potassium? There's just more of it than there should be,

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Speaker 2: given how close to the Sun. Also, based on our

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Speaker 2: current best models of how planetary accretion disks work, you

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Speaker 2: shouldn't expect to see a planet like Mercury in the

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Speaker 2: place where Mercury is. it seems to be farther from

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Speaker 2: Venus than we would expect it to be. So the

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Speaker 2: article talks about researchers trying to put together these different

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Speaker 2: physical models, and it's just very hard to make one

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Speaker 2: that puts Mercury where we actually find it. It would

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Speaker 2: tend to form closer to Venus or somewhere else. So

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Speaker 2: how do you reconcile all of these outlying data points,

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Speaker 2: the huge iron core, the presence of volatiles that should

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Speaker 2: have already been lost, the orbital distance that isn't what

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Speaker 2: our best accretion models predict? And so there are different

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Speaker 2: hypotheses that might explain some of these, though often not

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Speaker 2: all of these factors at once. One model is the

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Speaker 2: idea of a big Mercury. Rob, this is going to

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Speaker 2: get into sort of what you were talking about in

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Speaker 2: the last episode. This idea posits that long ago, Mercury

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Speaker 2: was much bigger than it is today. Maybe it once

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Speaker 2: had about twice the mass that it does now, making

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Speaker 2: it somewhere near as massive as Mars. In this state,

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Speaker 2: it may also have had a wider orbit around the Sun,

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Speaker 2: so it may have been farther away. So perhaps it

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Speaker 2: wasn't always within reach of that dreadful sort of the Sun.

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Speaker 2: O'Callaghan writes that this is supported by those potassium and

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Speaker 2: thorium levels that were mentioned earlier, which are more similar

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Speaker 2: to what you find on Mars than what you would

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Speaker 2: expect to find on a planet in Mercury's orbit. According

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Speaker 2: to this hypothesis, Mercury would have initially formed as a

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Speaker 2: larger object, maybe roughly Mars-sized. But sometime early on, say

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Speaker 2: within the first 10 million years of its life, it

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Speaker 2: suffered a massive impact from another object of roughly the

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Speaker 2: same size. So as you were talking about last time, Rob,

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Speaker 2: the thinking is that if this impact occurred, it would

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Speaker 2: have stripped off most of the planet's rocky outer mantle

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Speaker 2: and crust. but left the iron-rich core mostly intact. The

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Speaker 2: article cites a planetary dynamicist working in France named Alessandro Morbidelli,

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Speaker 2: who says that this theory is probably favored by most

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Speaker 2: researchers in the field at this point. So you're going

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Speaker 2: to get more subscribers to this among experts than any

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Speaker 2: of the other hypotheses that we will discuss some others.

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Speaker 2: But there are some big caveats to this explanation. One

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Speaker 2: is that the angle of attack matters. You can't just

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Speaker 2: slam any two planets together and get this kind of result.

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Speaker 2: It would need to be what O'Callaghan calls a grazing impact.

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Speaker 2: If there were a direct hit between two such objects,

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Speaker 2: the protoplanet would more likely have been completely destroyed. Fundamentally disrupted,

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Speaker 2: catastrophic impact, not leaving behind the kind of planet we

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Speaker 2: end up with.

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Speaker 1: To come back to the Terminator analogy, it's like you

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Speaker 1: need a hit that'll take all the flesh off of

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Speaker 1: the T-800, but not actually just blow it to smithereens.

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Speaker 2: Yes. But, and so it needs to be the grazing impact,

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Speaker 2: and probably not a direct hit. But in order to

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Speaker 2: strip off the outer layers and leave Mercury the way

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Speaker 2: it is today, it would also have to be really fast.

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Speaker 2: It would have to be a high energy impact, which

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Speaker 2: is somewhat difficult to account for because... When you think

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Speaker 2: about objects forming together in this planetary accretion disk, they're

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Speaker 2: forming together in a similar region of the disk. They

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Speaker 2: will tend to be going in the same direction at

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Speaker 2: roughly the same speed. So for this impact to work

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Speaker 2: in the model that O'Callaghan explores here, he says that

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Speaker 2: the researchers think it would need to be a hit

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Speaker 2: at more than 100 kilometers per second, which is like

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Speaker 2: faster than the Earth travels around the sun. And to

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Speaker 2: understand this, think about highly destructive collisions between cars. They

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Speaker 2: don't usually occur between cars traveling in the same direction

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Speaker 2: at the same speed. You know, that might be more

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Speaker 2: kind of a bump or a nudge. Terrible high impact

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Speaker 2: collisions are more likely to be head on or from

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Speaker 2: cross traffic because there are greater differences in relative velocity.

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Speaker 2: So you need something like that to have this really

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Speaker 2: powerful effect. to strip off the crust and the mantle.

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Speaker 2: Another caveat to this model, if this impact theory is correct,

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Speaker 2: O'Callaghan reports that scientists think it would probably have stripped

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Speaker 2: Mercury of those elements like potassium and stuff that, you know,

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Speaker 2: the things that were found by messenger in surprising abundance.

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Speaker 2: Though it's apparently difficult to account for those sort of

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Speaker 2: no matter what, like even if Mercury formed in the

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Speaker 2: place it is now with the mass it has now,

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Speaker 2: It should not be rich in volatiles. Forming so close

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Speaker 2: to the sun should also have driven them off. So

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Speaker 2: that's just a big question mark.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to bring it back to Terminator again, because

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Speaker 1: now I'm imagining we have the T-800 endoskeleton, but it

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Speaker 1: has ears and a nose. Like all the rest of

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Speaker 1: the flesh is burned off, but it has ears and

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Speaker 1: a nose. Why does it still have ears and a nose?

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Speaker 1: It got hit with a grazing blow with a rocket launcher.

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Speaker 1: Those should be gone.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, very good comparison. Yeah, so questions no matter how

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Speaker 2: the rest of it got burned off. So there's another idea.

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Speaker 2: What if Mercury was not the victim of a giant impact,

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Speaker 2: but the perpetrator? This is a good variation. As put

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Speaker 2: in the abstract of a 2014 conference presentation by Sered, Stewart,

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Speaker 2: and Leinhart called Mercury the Impactor, quote, Mercury, the most

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Speaker 2: peculiar terrestrial planet, may have played the role of the

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Speaker 2: significantly deformed and disrupted projectile that in an early hit-and-run event.

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Speaker 2: So under this model, Mercury formed farther out away from

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Speaker 2: the Sun, then it smashed into another planet, like, for example,

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Speaker 2: Venus or another protoplanet. It smashed into that planet, during

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Speaker 2: this impact was stripped of its outer rocky layers, and

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Speaker 2: then fell down into the lower orbit that it occupies today.

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Speaker 2: And you can note here the parallel to the leading

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Speaker 2: theory of the formation of Earth's moon, in which the

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Speaker 2: Earth was hit by a Mars-sized object called Theia. And

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Speaker 2: by the way, if you're wondering... you know, okay, well,

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Speaker 2: wait a minute. So in this mercury hypothesis, it hits

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Speaker 2: something maybe like a Venus type object or another proto planet,

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Speaker 2: it moves on and, you know, goes on to live

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Speaker 2: a further life. What happened to Thea? Where did it go? Uh,

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Speaker 2: mostly nowhere. According to the conventional giant impact hypothesis, it

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Speaker 2: was destroyed by the collision and parts of it were

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Speaker 2: absorbed into both the earth and the mass that would

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Speaker 2: become the moon. So Thea just sort of becomes the

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Speaker 2: earth and the moon mostly.

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Speaker 1: Okay. Two becomes three and three become two or something

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Speaker 1: like that. Oh yeah.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah. That's good. Um, so, but yeah, by contrast,

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Speaker 2: if Mercury did something like this, if the early Mercury

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Speaker 2: functioned as a feel like impactor on a planet, kind

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Speaker 2: of like Venus, it would have been a glancing blow

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Speaker 2: that stripped Mercury of much of its outer mantle and crust,

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Speaker 2: but left the core of the planet intact. and allowed

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Speaker 2: it to sort of bounce off and continue on its way,

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Speaker 2: becoming the Mercury that we know today. But there's another

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Speaker 2: caveat to this theory. Why didn't the debris knocked away

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Speaker 2: eventually fall back down to the planet or become a moon?

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Speaker 2: Not exactly clear. O'Callaghan talks about some ideas for what

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Speaker 2: could have happened here. Like one possible explanation is what

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Speaker 2: is known as collisional grinding. And he explains this is

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Speaker 2: where the debris keeps grinding itself up into smaller and

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Speaker 2: smaller pieces. The debris is in orbit around the object.

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Speaker 2: It's smashing into itself and grinding down until it is

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Speaker 2: basically dust, which in Mercury's low orbit can more easily

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Speaker 2: be blown away into space by the sun, you know,

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Speaker 2: by the radiation pressure and the solar wind and I

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Speaker 2: think other mechanical factors. So that's one family of hypotheses there,

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Speaker 2: these different versions of impacts. There's an alternate theory with

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Speaker 2: no impact, which is Mercury forms in place within its

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Speaker 2: current orbit. This leaves many questions unanswered, of course. It

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Speaker 2: would require the material that Mercury formed out of to

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Speaker 2: be unusually iron rich. Basically, this region of the early

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Speaker 2: solar system would have to have a lot more iron

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Speaker 2: than we would have expected it to. And then O'Callaghan's

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Speaker 2: article cites a scientist named Anders Johansson of the University

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Speaker 2: of Copenhagen and also of Lund University in Sweden. And

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Speaker 2: this guy argues that in the early solar system, the

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Speaker 2: hot region around the sun was subject to outbursts of

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Speaker 2: energy from the young sun, which evaporated lighter elements and

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Speaker 2: blew them away, leaving a higher proportion of iron-rich material behind.

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Speaker 2: But this invites questions too, like, If this happened, researchers

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Speaker 2: wonder why Mercury would be as small as it is today. Like,

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Speaker 2: why didn't it just keep accumulating more and more iron

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Speaker 2: and become a really big iron-dominated planet? Because if we

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Speaker 2: look at other solar systems and exoplanets, this is what

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Speaker 2: we often see. The galaxy seems to be full of

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Speaker 2: things that are called supermercuries, dense planets with huge iron

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Speaker 2: cores close to their stars. But as you might guess

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Speaker 2: from the name, they're much bigger than our Mercury is. However,

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Speaker 2: there's one note I want to put on that. The

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Speaker 2: fact that we don't see a lot of little planets

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Speaker 2: like Mercury is not proof that those planets don't exist.

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Speaker 2: There is like a sampling or imaging bias in our

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Speaker 2: surveys of exoplanets. So smaller exoplanets are harder to detect.

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Speaker 2: We don't know how many are out there. It's easier

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Speaker 2: to detect the bigger ones. So it might superficially look

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Speaker 2: like the bigger ones are more common.

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Speaker 1: Makes sense.

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Speaker 2: But we do know that however many little mercuries there

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Speaker 2: are out there, that's a question mark. We do at

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Speaker 2: least know that there are tons of supermercuries. They're all

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Speaker 2: over the place. And we don't really know how supermercuries form, apparently.

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Speaker 2: But the article also mentions a few other ideas about

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Speaker 2: where mercury came from. none of which seem to answer

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Speaker 2: all of the outstanding questions it raises. It seems a

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Speaker 2: lot of these theories might explain one or two weird

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Speaker 2: aspects of Mercury, but leave the others untouched or introduce

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Speaker 2: new contradictions of their own. O'Callaghan mentions one model where

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Speaker 2: not only Mercury, but basically all of the inner rocky

408
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Speaker 2: planets moved around and have different orbits than they used to,

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Speaker 2: like maybe Earth and Venus and formed closer to where

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Speaker 2: Mercury is now, and then they migrated farther out. These models, again,

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Speaker 2: can answer some questions, but not others. One that I liked,

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Speaker 2: it does not seem to be favored by many researchers.

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Speaker 2: So I think this is not a strong contender for

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Speaker 2: the best explanation, but it is certainly evocative. And this

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Speaker 2: is the idea that Mercury was originally not a rocky

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Speaker 2: planet at all, that it is the exposed remnant core

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Speaker 2: of a former gas giant. So what was once a

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Speaker 2: hot Jupiter got its gas atmosphere stripped away somehow and

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Speaker 2: left only the nub. You've only got the, you know,

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Speaker 2: the iron core left behind. The article cites researchers pointing

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Speaker 2: out several reasons that this is probably not a good explanation.

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Speaker 2: For one thing, it's very difficult to remove the atmosphere

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Speaker 2: of a gas giant. Gas giant has a lot of

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Speaker 2: gravity and that gravity keeps the atmosphere locked down. Um,

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Speaker 2: so as narratively tantalizing as the idea is, it's not

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Speaker 2: very physically plausible, but it has been put forward. And

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Speaker 2: then the article goes on to talk about the, uh,

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Speaker 2: the BepiColombo mission again. Uh, again, this is arriving later

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Speaker 2: this year, may help answer some of these questions. And,

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Speaker 2: you know, it could be a good excuse once the,

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Speaker 2: the first science starts coming back in, uh, from that, uh,

432
00:25:56,630 --> 00:25:59,270
Speaker 2: to return to the subject of Mercury and see what

433
00:25:59,310 --> 00:26:03,250
Speaker 2: we find out. Uh, A couple more interesting things that

434
00:26:03,290 --> 00:26:05,379
Speaker 2: are discussed in the back half of this article I

435
00:26:05,410 --> 00:26:08,540
Speaker 2: just wanted to talk about. One is that, of course,

436
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:11,859
Speaker 2: we would really love to directly study a sample of

437
00:26:11,940 --> 00:26:17,060
Speaker 2: Mercury's crust. So there have been talks about putting a

438
00:26:17,100 --> 00:26:20,160
Speaker 2: lander on Mercury, getting crust samples, and trying to find

439
00:26:20,220 --> 00:26:23,400
Speaker 2: a way to return it. As we discussed last time,

440
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:25,980
Speaker 2: putting a lander on Mercury with soft landing would be

441
00:26:26,180 --> 00:26:29,350
Speaker 2: really hard to do. You would also have to add

442
00:26:29,410 --> 00:26:34,050
Speaker 2: into that a successful return to Earth. So you might think, well,

443
00:26:34,190 --> 00:26:38,410
Speaker 2: getting a sample of Mercury, I don't know, that's borderline impossible.

444
00:26:38,430 --> 00:26:41,130
Speaker 2: It's going to be really hard to do. But there's

445
00:26:41,170 --> 00:26:43,590
Speaker 2: another possibility of how we could have a sample of

446
00:26:43,650 --> 00:26:47,670
Speaker 2: Mercury to look at, and that would be it's already here.

447
00:26:48,650 --> 00:26:52,869
Speaker 2: So we find meteorite chunks of Mars on Earth all

448
00:26:52,890 --> 00:26:54,490
Speaker 2: the time. There are a bunch of There are a

449
00:26:54,490 --> 00:26:56,990
Speaker 2: bunch of pieces of Mars on earth that we didn't

450
00:26:57,050 --> 00:26:59,810
Speaker 2: have to bring back. They were brought here for us by, by,

451
00:27:00,410 --> 00:27:03,270
Speaker 2: you know, things happen on Mars, pieces of the planet

452
00:27:03,310 --> 00:27:05,609
Speaker 2: get blown off into space and they end up landing

453
00:27:05,670 --> 00:27:12,580
Speaker 2: on earth. We might conceivably find meteorite chunks of mercury

454
00:27:12,780 --> 00:27:16,420
Speaker 2: or proto mercury, the planet before it's hypothetical giant impact.

455
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:19,640
Speaker 2: And so we don't know for sure, but it's quite

456
00:27:19,740 --> 00:27:24,150
Speaker 2: possible that there are already chunks of Mercury or proto-Mercury

457
00:27:24,430 --> 00:27:26,649
Speaker 2: on Earth. And it would just be a question of

458
00:27:26,950 --> 00:27:30,250
Speaker 2: finding them and knowing what we're looking at. Identifying them

459
00:27:30,290 --> 00:27:32,530
Speaker 2: as like, oh yes, this is a piece of Mercury

460
00:27:32,570 --> 00:27:37,149
Speaker 2: or proto-Mercury we're looking at. For example, the article mentions,

461
00:27:37,260 --> 00:27:40,680
Speaker 2: I think this is widely considered pretty doubtful by experts,

462
00:27:40,780 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 2: but the article mentions a type of meteorite called an aubrite.

463
00:27:45,420 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 2: which is usually considered to be a type of asteroid,

464
00:27:49,100 --> 00:27:53,720
Speaker 2: but has been speculated to possibly be pieces of proto-Mercury.

465
00:27:53,740 --> 00:27:58,530
Speaker 2: There's some ongoing work to establish whether you could have

466
00:27:58,609 --> 00:28:01,830
Speaker 2: evidence for or against this hypothesis. Again, I think the

467
00:28:01,950 --> 00:28:05,129
Speaker 2: more favored explanation is that this is a type of asteroid.

468
00:28:05,150 --> 00:28:08,970
Speaker 1: This is fascinating. It sounds more and more like, the

469
00:28:09,010 --> 00:28:11,730
Speaker 1: more we get into it, like a murder mystery. You know,

470
00:28:11,790 --> 00:28:16,470
Speaker 1: it's like, is Mercury the survivor or is Mercury the perpetrator?

471
00:28:17,390 --> 00:28:20,060
Speaker 1: What evidence do we have to tie Mercury to the

472
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:23,439
Speaker 1: murder of itself or the planet that was there before?

473
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:28,379
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. But another murder thriller-like twist is that maybe

474
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:30,860
Speaker 2: the Mercury samples are coming from inside the house. I mean,

475
00:28:31,119 --> 00:28:34,060
Speaker 2: they could already be here and we just haven't found

476
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:35,740
Speaker 2: them or known what we were looking at. They could

477
00:28:35,760 --> 00:28:40,050
Speaker 2: literally be in meteorite collections and just haven't been identified properly.

478
00:28:40,970 --> 00:28:55,830
Speaker 1: Yeah, fascinating stuff. All right. Well, this is part four

479
00:28:56,110 --> 00:28:58,850
Speaker 1: in a four-part series. So as is often the case,

480
00:28:59,170 --> 00:29:01,870
Speaker 1: we will get a little more into the weeds by

481
00:29:01,910 --> 00:29:04,210
Speaker 1: this point. And that's exactly what I'm going to do next.

482
00:29:04,970 --> 00:29:08,550
Speaker 1: I have a series of silly Mercury questions to consider

483
00:29:08,610 --> 00:29:11,239
Speaker 1: here that I came up with. Um, nothing wrong with

484
00:29:11,260 --> 00:29:13,980
Speaker 1: silly questions to, to quote Allie Ward, uh, the great

485
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:17,780
Speaker 1: science podcaster, uh, smart people ask silly questions. You can

486
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:19,140
Speaker 1: get a lot of good out of them. So I've

487
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:21,570
Speaker 1: got some really silly ones here. Uh, I mean, some

488
00:29:21,610 --> 00:29:24,070
Speaker 1: are maybe not so silly. They're just kind of very

489
00:29:24,110 --> 00:29:26,330
Speaker 1: straightforward or they might be, they might sort of come

490
00:29:26,370 --> 00:29:28,110
Speaker 1: to your mind and then you dismiss them because there's

491
00:29:28,150 --> 00:29:32,030
Speaker 1: more serious stuff to consider concerning mercury. But let's go

492
00:29:32,070 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 1: ahead and jump in. The first one, this first silly question,

493
00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 1: I found very difficult to research. This one, I actually

494
00:29:40,900 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 1: ended up hating it, even though I thought it was

495
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:46,959
Speaker 1: just kind of like a lark to consider. And that is,

496
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:52,150
Speaker 1: is there elemental Mercury, the element Mercury, on the planet Mercury?

497
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 2: Do you have a threshold of mass you're talking about?

498
00:29:57,160 --> 00:29:59,900
Speaker 2: I mean, I would think if you're asking, is there

499
00:30:00,140 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 2: any at all, the answer would have to be yes.

500
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:05,270
Speaker 2: Surely there's at least a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

501
00:30:05,490 --> 00:30:08,450
Speaker 1: And there's an important thing to acknowledge here as well,

502
00:30:08,490 --> 00:30:10,650
Speaker 1: and that is that the fact that the planet is

503
00:30:10,690 --> 00:30:16,650
Speaker 1: named Mercury and the element is named Mercury, they're just

504
00:30:16,690 --> 00:30:19,810
Speaker 1: both named after the Roman god. They don't have any direct...

505
00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:23,300
Speaker 1: relationship between the two of them, though I'm going to

506
00:30:23,340 --> 00:30:27,110
Speaker 1: keep going back to the planet Mercury whenever possible in

507
00:30:27,130 --> 00:30:31,530
Speaker 1: this section, even when I'm talking about elemental Mercury. Elemental Mercury,

508
00:30:31,590 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 1: or Quicksilver, is of course so named because it is

509
00:30:36,470 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 1: liquid at standard room temperature and pressures.

510
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:39,580
Speaker 2: It flows.

511
00:30:39,660 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 1: It's therefore fast-moving and compares nicely to the swift Roman

512
00:30:43,700 --> 00:30:47,040
Speaker 1: god as do the movements of the planet Mercury in

513
00:30:47,060 --> 00:30:49,540
Speaker 1: the sky one night to the next. It seems like

514
00:30:49,580 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 1: it's really zipping around for reasons we discussed early in

515
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:52,620
Speaker 1: the series.

516
00:30:53,140 --> 00:30:56,790
Speaker 2: Wait, I have a question about elemental mercury or quicksilver.

517
00:30:57,330 --> 00:30:59,450
Speaker 2: If you soak your body in it, are you wet?

518
00:31:01,270 --> 00:31:05,690
Speaker 1: You know, there were funeral practices involved soaking a corpse

519
00:31:05,990 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 1: in mercury, but I didn't read anything about whether it

520
00:31:09,860 --> 00:31:10,720
Speaker 1: made them wet or not.

521
00:31:11,610 --> 00:31:15,230
Speaker 2: That's a good question. Does liquid metal make you wet?

522
00:31:15,550 --> 00:31:16,350
Speaker 2: What is wetness?

523
00:31:17,050 --> 00:31:20,590
Speaker 1: Do not test this out, people. As we've said before,

524
00:31:20,630 --> 00:31:24,870
Speaker 1: and we'll drive home here, mercury is toxic. Don't handle

525
00:31:24,910 --> 00:31:29,190
Speaker 1: it unless you are an expert using all the right protocols. Yeah,

526
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:34,540
Speaker 1: so basically, you're correct. There definitely is some elemental mercury

527
00:31:34,780 --> 00:31:38,760
Speaker 1: on the planet Mercury. And saying how much, though, that's

528
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 1: what seems to be a little bit more difficult to

529
00:31:40,500 --> 00:31:44,750
Speaker 1: nail down. Um, back in 1980, the estimate, I did

530
00:31:44,790 --> 00:31:47,990
Speaker 1: find some, some estimates again, you know, again, we haven't

531
00:31:48,030 --> 00:31:50,670
Speaker 1: landed on there on, on mercury. We don't have chunks

532
00:31:50,710 --> 00:31:53,730
Speaker 1: of mercury to analyze. We don't have like, uh, you know,

533
00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:57,140
Speaker 1: drill core samples or anything like that. Uh, but I

534
00:31:57,320 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 1: was looking at a particular 1980 source chemical composition of earth,

535
00:32:01,540 --> 00:32:05,300
Speaker 1: Venus and mercury by John W. Morgan and Edward Anders. Uh,

536
00:32:05,380 --> 00:32:08,940
Speaker 1: this is of course, you know, before some of those key, um,

537
00:32:09,050 --> 00:32:11,940
Speaker 1: studies that we've mentioned, some of those, uh, those, certainly

538
00:32:11,960 --> 00:32:18,290
Speaker 1: before Messenger. So, you know, these are not valid estimates now.

539
00:32:18,390 --> 00:32:22,750
Speaker 1: But at the time, they were considering that, let's see,

540
00:32:22,790 --> 00:32:26,030
Speaker 1: it would have been something like 0.09 parts per billion

541
00:32:26,290 --> 00:32:30,430
Speaker 1: in the planet's bulk compared to a then-cited estimate of

542
00:32:30,430 --> 00:32:36,820
Speaker 1: 7.9 for Earth and 8.3 for Venus. So it's, again,

543
00:32:36,860 --> 00:32:39,100
Speaker 1: those numbers aren't anything you can take to the bank now.

544
00:32:40,460 --> 00:32:43,660
Speaker 1: I think likely, What we've discovered since then indicates that

545
00:32:43,700 --> 00:32:46,820
Speaker 1: there'd be more mercury than that on the planet Mercury.

546
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: But we also have to acknowledge it's already a very

547
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:53,220
Speaker 1: rare metal here on Earth. And again, we don't have

548
00:32:53,300 --> 00:32:57,180
Speaker 1: any way to directly study the surface of the contents

549
00:32:57,220 --> 00:32:59,980
Speaker 1: of the planet Mercury to see how much elemental mercury

550
00:33:00,020 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: there may be there.

551
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:05,270
Speaker 2: Okay. But roughly, according to this estimate, a couple of

552
00:33:05,370 --> 00:33:08,450
Speaker 2: orders of magnitude less mercury here than, or sorry, on

553
00:33:08,490 --> 00:33:09,390
Speaker 2: Mercury than on Earth.

554
00:33:10,460 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would seem to be the case. It's a

555
00:33:12,140 --> 00:33:14,880
Speaker 1: silly enough question that not enough people were asking it,

556
00:33:14,940 --> 00:33:17,550
Speaker 1: I guess. Uh, but I think the safe answer is,

557
00:33:17,690 --> 00:33:20,570
Speaker 1: is there Mercury on the planet Mercury? Yes, there is.

558
00:33:21,010 --> 00:33:24,230
Speaker 1: How much? Uh, it's not really a question we can answer,

559
00:33:24,270 --> 00:33:26,850
Speaker 1: but there it's, it's there. Uh, it's there for sure.

560
00:33:27,950 --> 00:33:28,190
Speaker 2: Okay.

561
00:33:28,430 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: Let's try some other questions. Uh, this one, this one's

562
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:33,160
Speaker 1: a fun one is we already said it asked if

563
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 1: there is elemental Mercury on the planet Mercury. Well, is

564
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:38,520
Speaker 1: there Freddie Mercury on the planet Mercury? Yes.

565
00:33:38,660 --> 00:33:39,610
Speaker 2: Um, There's got to be.

566
00:33:39,630 --> 00:33:44,630
Speaker 1: There's not, sadly. No, there was actually a 2020 campaign

567
00:33:44,670 --> 00:33:48,870
Speaker 1: to rename the planet Freddie Mercury. This was a Change.org

568
00:33:48,930 --> 00:33:53,210
Speaker 1: thing via BBC radio presenter Simon Ross. This was obviously

569
00:33:53,310 --> 00:33:57,890
Speaker 1: a pandemic era bit of fun and distraction as we

570
00:33:57,910 --> 00:34:01,150
Speaker 1: were all engaging in stuff like this at the time

571
00:34:01,230 --> 00:34:04,500
Speaker 1: to just try and make it through. Right. Um, so

572
00:34:04,660 --> 00:34:06,320
Speaker 1: it seemed like a, just a bit of fun. I've,

573
00:34:06,700 --> 00:34:09,450
Speaker 1: you know, nobody's actually arguing that we should rename any

574
00:34:09,489 --> 00:34:12,250
Speaker 1: of the planets, uh, or at least not so far.

575
00:34:12,270 --> 00:34:14,350
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe it'll happen tomorrow and it'll be

576
00:34:14,390 --> 00:34:18,410
Speaker 1: the news that somebody wants to call Mercury, um, you know, um, um,

577
00:34:18,469 --> 00:34:21,049
Speaker 1: you know, hot America planet number one or something, but

578
00:34:21,450 --> 00:34:26,460
Speaker 1: for now it seems safe. Um, Now, related, Freddie Mercury was,

579
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:29,779
Speaker 1: of course, the lead singer of Queen. And most of

580
00:34:29,820 --> 00:34:32,439
Speaker 1: you probably know that Queen lead guitarist Brian May earned

581
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:36,320
Speaker 1: a Ph.D. in astrophysics. But his area of initial study

582
00:34:36,860 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 1: didn't have really anything directly to do with Mercury. He

583
00:34:39,370 --> 00:34:43,009
Speaker 1: was instead concerned with interstellar space dust. And I could

584
00:34:43,050 --> 00:34:45,629
Speaker 1: be wrong, but I don't think any of his other

585
00:34:45,710 --> 00:34:48,049
Speaker 1: scientific pursuits that he's, you know, dipped in and out

586
00:34:48,130 --> 00:34:51,450
Speaker 1: of over the years have involved the innermost planet in

587
00:34:51,530 --> 00:34:56,170
Speaker 1: our solar system. Hmm. However, I think you could easily

588
00:34:56,250 --> 00:35:00,830
Speaker 1: say that various qualities of the Roman god Mercury can

589
00:35:00,870 --> 00:35:04,850
Speaker 1: be found in Freddie Mercury's persona. Certainly some of his costumes,

590
00:35:04,930 --> 00:35:06,549
Speaker 1: such as the, I was looking up some of the,

591
00:35:06,930 --> 00:35:08,730
Speaker 1: he had so many different costumes he wore on the stage,

592
00:35:08,790 --> 00:35:11,250
Speaker 1: but there's one that's often referred to as the winged

593
00:35:11,390 --> 00:35:17,190
Speaker 1: Mercury catsuit that is very clearly inspired by the Roman god.

594
00:35:17,230 --> 00:35:20,680
Speaker 1: You see like little wing tips, certainly at the heels

595
00:35:20,739 --> 00:35:26,239
Speaker 1: and then also at the wrist. So, yeah, and I

596
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:29,420
Speaker 1: and I think sometimes in interviews when asked about it,

597
00:35:29,460 --> 00:35:33,090
Speaker 1: Freddie Mercury would at least acknowledge some connection between choosing

598
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:36,489
Speaker 1: this name, the stage name to the Roman God. But

599
00:35:36,750 --> 00:35:38,350
Speaker 1: I think also there was a more direct link to

600
00:35:38,730 --> 00:35:41,169
Speaker 1: a bit of poetry that he wrote early on. So

601
00:35:41,410 --> 00:35:45,069
Speaker 1: not necessarily a situation where he named himself after the

602
00:35:45,110 --> 00:35:47,790
Speaker 1: Roman God, but it was maybe in the equation somewhere.

603
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:51,799
Speaker 2: Wouldn't it, though, be a great delight to, once you

604
00:35:51,860 --> 00:35:55,529
Speaker 2: have passed this mortal realm, discover that Freddie Mercury is

605
00:35:55,550 --> 00:35:56,339
Speaker 2: your psychopomp?

606
00:35:57,260 --> 00:35:59,230
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Maybe he'd be the one to take you

607
00:36:00,150 --> 00:36:04,350
Speaker 1: to the afterlife, or to Mercury, which leads to another

608
00:36:04,390 --> 00:36:07,810
Speaker 1: sort of side question. Have anyone's remains ever been sent

609
00:36:07,850 --> 00:36:11,930
Speaker 1: to Mercury? No. For reasons that we've already detailed, very

610
00:36:11,950 --> 00:36:15,379
Speaker 1: difficult to get anything to Mercury, but you know, pretty

611
00:36:15,420 --> 00:36:17,700
Speaker 1: much the only thing we've done is, is crash messenger

612
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:20,580
Speaker 1: into the surface of Mercury and nobody's remains were aboard that.

613
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:22,080
Speaker 2: As far as we know.

614
00:36:22,780 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 1: I mean, unless they smuggle it, but I think the,

615
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:29,049
Speaker 1: I think the, um, I think, I think they were

616
00:36:29,090 --> 00:36:31,009
Speaker 1: very limited on what could go on board. I don't

617
00:36:31,030 --> 00:36:34,730
Speaker 1: think there were any like little, uh, unauthorized bits of art, um,

618
00:36:35,030 --> 00:36:36,549
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, we, we did get those on

619
00:36:36,870 --> 00:36:39,250
Speaker 1: smuggled onto the moon, onto the moon. Yeah. Then the moon,

620
00:36:39,270 --> 00:36:42,450
Speaker 1: we have, um, there's the, what's it called? The, the

621
00:36:42,489 --> 00:36:45,560
Speaker 1: lunar museum where we have, um, A few different little

622
00:36:45,660 --> 00:36:48,420
Speaker 1: doodles on there. In fact, there's a phallic doodle, I believe,

623
00:36:48,500 --> 00:36:54,430
Speaker 1: from Andy Warhol. So there is a dick on the

624
00:36:54,469 --> 00:36:57,549
Speaker 1: moon for any of you keeping score out there. And

625
00:36:57,570 --> 00:36:59,589
Speaker 1: there are a few other little curios like that, but

626
00:36:59,670 --> 00:37:03,610
Speaker 1: nothing on Mercury as far as I know. There's not

627
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 1: a Banksy piece on Mercury.

628
00:37:05,219 --> 00:37:05,860
Speaker 2: That would be quite an.

629
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 1: Achievement. Okay, but this is a related question. You already

630
00:37:11,040 --> 00:37:13,319
Speaker 1: know the answer is going to be no, but is

631
00:37:13,340 --> 00:37:15,340
Speaker 1: there a statue of the Roman god Mercury, or at

632
00:37:15,380 --> 00:37:17,660
Speaker 1: least a bust of the Roman god Mercury, on the

633
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:22,140
Speaker 1: surface of the planet Mercury? No. Again, pretty much the

634
00:37:22,160 --> 00:37:25,100
Speaker 1: only thing we've done, the only physical contact we've made

635
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:28,800
Speaker 1: with the world was crashing Messenger into it back in 2015.

636
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:31,960
Speaker 1: But this does lead to an interesting extended question, and

637
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:35,060
Speaker 1: that is, what aspects of the Roman gods have we

638
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:39,180
Speaker 1: sent into the cosmos? And, you know, I was thinking

639
00:37:39,219 --> 00:37:42,910
Speaker 1: about this one, and if we're certainly... You get a

640
00:37:42,950 --> 00:37:47,089
Speaker 1: more complicated answer if you're considering things that are not

641
00:37:47,190 --> 00:37:50,770
Speaker 1: straight up physical, direct physical representations of the Greek or

642
00:37:50,810 --> 00:37:51,490
Speaker 1: Roman gods.

643
00:37:51,989 --> 00:37:52,390
Speaker 2: Oh, sure.

644
00:37:52,530 --> 00:37:55,719
Speaker 1: You know, you can get into things on, for instance,

645
00:37:56,719 --> 00:37:59,080
Speaker 1: the pioneer plaques and say, well, like, okay, it's this

646
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:02,000
Speaker 1: likeness of male and female. Are they relatable to like

647
00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:05,160
Speaker 1: classical images of different deities? And you can say, okay,

648
00:38:05,180 --> 00:38:09,380
Speaker 1: maybe sort of. The golden discs of Voyager contain religious audio.

649
00:38:10,739 --> 00:38:14,600
Speaker 1: But in terms of what are some actual representations of

650
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:17,300
Speaker 1: Earth deities that we've sent out, as far as I

651
00:38:17,340 --> 00:38:21,310
Speaker 1: can tell, the clearest answer that we have, and certainly

652
00:38:21,350 --> 00:38:24,210
Speaker 1: the answer of what has been sent out the farthest,

653
00:38:24,910 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 1: we have to look to the Juno spacecraft that is

654
00:38:30,300 --> 00:38:34,900
Speaker 1: currently orbiting the gas giant Jupiter. This was sent up

655
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:40,259
Speaker 1: with a trio of specially manufactured Lego figures. This was

656
00:38:40,300 --> 00:38:44,170
Speaker 1: part of an educational outreach thing. But we have Lego

657
00:38:44,230 --> 00:38:49,110
Speaker 1: figures aboard this orbiting spacecraft of the Roman god Jupiter,

658
00:38:49,730 --> 00:38:55,460
Speaker 1: his wife Juno, and mortal astronomer Galileo. And you can

659
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:58,820
Speaker 1: look up images of these guys. They are standard Lego size,

660
00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:02,989
Speaker 1: and they are bonded to Juno's propulsion bay. And they're

661
00:39:03,010 --> 00:39:08,169
Speaker 1: made out of flight-grade aluminum. Yeah, and you think you see,

662
00:39:08,489 --> 00:39:12,020
Speaker 1: we have seen the lightning bolt in Jupiter's hands, of course.

663
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:16,300
Speaker 1: And then Juno has a magnifying glass, you know, curiosity

664
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:19,980
Speaker 1: and wisdom. And then Galileo has, what, a telescope and

665
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:21,400
Speaker 1: a globe, I believe.

666
00:39:21,860 --> 00:39:24,569
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry. But when I looked at it, I

667
00:39:24,630 --> 00:39:27,650
Speaker 2: read Juno's magnifying glass as a frying pan that she

668
00:39:27,670 --> 00:39:29,450
Speaker 2: was going to bash Jupiter over the head with.

669
00:39:29,469 --> 00:39:31,739
Speaker 1: Oh, well. you know, she would be very forgiven for

670
00:39:31,780 --> 00:39:34,180
Speaker 1: doing that. Yeah. A lot of drama. A lot of

671
00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:36,739
Speaker 1: drama there as well. But they're getting along well enough,

672
00:39:36,780 --> 00:39:38,740
Speaker 1: the three of them. Galileo didn't even ask to be

673
00:39:40,219 --> 00:39:42,350
Speaker 1: part of this trouble, but they seem to be doing

674
00:39:42,410 --> 00:39:44,210
Speaker 1: well in orbit as far as we know.

675
00:39:44,550 --> 00:39:47,150
Speaker 2: Well, in reality now in the trio, Jupiter is the

676
00:39:47,210 --> 00:39:49,219
Speaker 2: odd man out because he's the only one without a

677
00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:50,450
Speaker 2: magnification device.

678
00:39:51,260 --> 00:39:51,800
Speaker 1: That's true.

679
00:39:51,820 --> 00:39:54,400
Speaker 2: Galileo's got the telescope, she's got the magnifying glass, and

680
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:56,219
Speaker 2: he's just got a big old bent thunderbolt.

681
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:04,420
Speaker 1: All right. Here's another one. This one is less involved

682
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 1: with the surface of Mercury at this point, but you

683
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:09,560
Speaker 1: might be wondering, or maybe you haven't wondered this, but

684
00:40:10,110 --> 00:40:13,230
Speaker 1: Has a statue of the god Mercury ever been made

685
00:40:13,370 --> 00:40:18,509
Speaker 1: out of frozen elemental mercury? I thought this was a

686
00:40:18,530 --> 00:40:22,910
Speaker 1: really silly question, but also a weirdly fascinating one. The answer,

687
00:40:22,969 --> 00:40:26,710
Speaker 1: of course, is that it has not. And I'm sure

688
00:40:26,730 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 1: I'm not the first to think about the possibility of it,

689
00:40:29,489 --> 00:40:33,830
Speaker 1: but execution would be very difficult. So getting a little

690
00:40:33,850 --> 00:40:38,390
Speaker 1: bit more into elemental mercury, it freezes solid or becomes

691
00:40:38,510 --> 00:40:45,270
Speaker 1: solid at negative 38.83 degrees Celsius or negative 37.89 degrees Fahrenheit.

692
00:40:45,810 --> 00:40:48,609
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone has ever attempted to create art

693
00:40:48,750 --> 00:40:52,510
Speaker 1: out of this form of Mercury, though it apparently did

694
00:40:52,630 --> 00:40:57,270
Speaker 1: factor into a, to be clear, purely fictional art heist

695
00:40:57,790 --> 00:41:01,480
Speaker 1: on an episode of the 1970s TV show The Magician

696
00:41:01,580 --> 00:41:02,720
Speaker 1: starring Bill Bixby.

697
00:41:03,780 --> 00:41:05,299
Speaker 2: I don't know this show at all.

698
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 1: Bill Bixby, you know, of course, he was on The

699
00:41:08,020 --> 00:41:11,969
Speaker 1: Incredible Hulk. The Magician, I don't know if I ever

700
00:41:12,010 --> 00:41:14,650
Speaker 1: actually watched an episode, but I think there were reruns

701
00:41:14,770 --> 00:41:16,469
Speaker 1: of it that they showed. Maybe they showed it on

702
00:41:16,530 --> 00:41:19,189
Speaker 1: SyFy or some other channel. I remember seeing ads for

703
00:41:19,230 --> 00:41:24,060
Speaker 1: it and thinking, okay, that looks mildly interesting. But there

704
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:27,560
Speaker 1: was a 1970 or 74 episode titled The Illusion of

705
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:30,779
Speaker 1: the Cat's Eye. All the episodes had titles like this.

706
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:34,910
Speaker 1: It co-starred actress Claudette Nevins, who was in the 1961

707
00:41:34,910 --> 00:41:37,390
Speaker 1: film The Mask, which we watched on Weird House Cinema.

708
00:41:37,410 --> 00:41:37,810
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

709
00:41:38,550 --> 00:41:40,730
Speaker 1: And I couldn't find a stream of the episode that

710
00:41:40,770 --> 00:41:43,990
Speaker 1: I felt good about clicking on, but apparently the plot

711
00:41:44,050 --> 00:41:48,240
Speaker 1: involves switching, like they're stealing a statue. So somebody switches

712
00:41:48,300 --> 00:41:52,700
Speaker 1: out the real statue with an identical copy that has

713
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:56,140
Speaker 1: been made out of frozen mercury. And then I guess,

714
00:41:56,719 --> 00:41:59,100
Speaker 1: and then it gets, I guess, very rapidly melts away.

715
00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:03,310
Speaker 1: And then people were like, what happened? Where'd it go? Obviously,

716
00:42:03,350 --> 00:42:06,350
Speaker 1: this is not a very practical heist scheme, but I

717
00:42:06,370 --> 00:42:10,490
Speaker 1: can see what it would make for inventive television. David

718
00:42:10,530 --> 00:42:12,330
Speaker 1: Chase of The Sopranos fame, by the way, was one

719
00:42:12,350 --> 00:42:15,340
Speaker 1: of the writers on this. Oh, okay. I'm going to,

720
00:42:15,700 --> 00:42:18,060
Speaker 1: like I said, I couldn't find footage to watch, but

721
00:42:18,120 --> 00:42:22,540
Speaker 1: the IMDb plot summary includes the following. Quote, the cat,

722
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:25,540
Speaker 1: this is the sculpture of a cat, put into the

723
00:42:25,580 --> 00:42:29,049
Speaker 1: case was a replica made out of frozen mercury. When

724
00:42:29,070 --> 00:42:31,710
Speaker 1: they tore up the floor to install the pressure plates,

725
00:42:31,830 --> 00:42:34,330
Speaker 1: it gave Ford, I'm assuming Ford is the villain here,

726
00:42:34,750 --> 00:42:38,319
Speaker 1: the opportunity to install a cooling line from the museum's

727
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:41,960
Speaker 1: AC unit to the case. That let him keep the

728
00:42:42,020 --> 00:42:46,600
Speaker 1: temperature within the case at 35 degrees below zero. When

729
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:49,660
Speaker 1: an accomplice turned off the coolant, the mercury melted and

730
00:42:49,700 --> 00:42:52,719
Speaker 1: ran down the sides into a catch basin inside of

731
00:42:52,760 --> 00:42:56,089
Speaker 1: the pedestal the case was on. So think about that.

732
00:42:56,489 --> 00:42:58,149
Speaker 2: Wait, is that a heist then?

733
00:42:58,730 --> 00:43:01,109
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, they did this so that I guess

734
00:43:01,130 --> 00:43:04,890
Speaker 1: they could steal the real statue and then it looks

735
00:43:04,930 --> 00:43:07,670
Speaker 1: like there's still a statue there, but then it disappears. Look,

736
00:43:07,750 --> 00:43:09,670
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the episode. I can't answer all the questions.

737
00:43:10,270 --> 00:43:15,540
Speaker 1: But this plot does seem to involve somebody creating a

738
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:21,020
Speaker 1: duplicate of a statue out of frozen mercury and then

739
00:43:21,260 --> 00:43:25,140
Speaker 1: keeping it in its frozen form by rerouting clearly the

740
00:43:25,180 --> 00:43:30,260
Speaker 1: most powerful museum air conditioning system on the planet into

741
00:43:30,340 --> 00:43:32,830
Speaker 1: the chamber in order to keep it at this ridiculously

742
00:43:32,870 --> 00:43:33,450
Speaker 1: low temperature.

743
00:43:33,830 --> 00:43:35,109
Speaker 2: That's impressive. Yeah.

744
00:43:35,430 --> 00:43:40,810
Speaker 1: So I admire the gall of such a plot. Now,

745
00:43:42,030 --> 00:43:45,010
Speaker 1: so yeah, I don't think anyone has ever actually done this. Obviously,

746
00:43:45,310 --> 00:43:49,529
Speaker 1: with mercury being, mercury is not an ideal substance to

747
00:43:49,550 --> 00:43:53,420
Speaker 1: be messing around with for artistic purposes. Anyway, I don't

748
00:43:53,460 --> 00:43:56,270
Speaker 1: think anything like this has ever been done. I've seen

749
00:43:56,290 --> 00:43:59,790
Speaker 1: plenty of artists work in frozen mediums or mediums intended

750
00:43:59,810 --> 00:44:02,830
Speaker 1: to decay or melt, obviously. You know, we have butter

751
00:44:02,870 --> 00:44:06,010
Speaker 1: sculptures from way back. I think if you've been to

752
00:44:06,070 --> 00:44:08,350
Speaker 1: a number of art museums, you've seen this sort of thing.

753
00:44:18,790 --> 00:44:21,280
Speaker 1: There are some cases, though, of artists who have worked

754
00:44:21,300 --> 00:44:24,960
Speaker 1: with liquid mercury. And there's actually a pretty famous example.

755
00:44:26,770 --> 00:44:31,629
Speaker 1: And it involves a fountain of mercury. Now, we've talked

756
00:44:31,690 --> 00:44:34,529
Speaker 1: about this. Yeah, we've we've talked about about this. There's

757
00:44:34,570 --> 00:44:36,569
Speaker 1: a there's a more recent example I'm going to get to.

758
00:44:36,670 --> 00:44:40,690
Speaker 1: But we, of course, discussed the in a past episode,

759
00:44:40,730 --> 00:44:44,370
Speaker 1: the mausoleum of of Qin Shi Huang, the first sovereign

760
00:44:44,390 --> 00:44:47,469
Speaker 1: Chinese emperor, founder of the Qin dynasty during the third

761
00:44:47,530 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 1: century BCE. Basically, the idea being that his unsealed mausoleum,

762
00:44:54,380 --> 00:44:58,570
Speaker 1: his unsealed tomb is is said to contain like rivers

763
00:44:58,650 --> 00:45:04,520
Speaker 1: or lakes, like a water feature using this liquid mercury.

764
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:09,580
Speaker 1: And so I wanted to revisit that briefly here. I

765
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:12,620
Speaker 1: ran across a paper. I honestly cannot remember off the

766
00:45:12,660 --> 00:45:14,590
Speaker 1: top of my head if we sourced this paper in

767
00:45:14,620 --> 00:45:15,650
Speaker 1: our original discussion.

768
00:45:16,050 --> 00:45:17,230
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think we talked about this.

769
00:45:17,250 --> 00:45:17,380
Speaker 1: We did.

770
00:45:17,390 --> 00:45:17,989
Speaker 2: We talked about this.

771
00:45:18,050 --> 00:45:20,770
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Philip Ball wrote a 2015 piece on the

772
00:45:20,810 --> 00:45:27,380
Speaker 1: subject for Chemistry World titled Flowing Rivers of Mercury. So, again,

773
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:31,540
Speaker 1: an as yet unsealed tomb. According to Han Dynasty historian

774
00:45:32,180 --> 00:45:36,630
Speaker 1: Sima Qin, quote, Mercury was used to fashion the Hundred Rivers,

775
00:45:37,050 --> 00:45:40,390
Speaker 1: the Yellow River and the Anzi River and the seas

776
00:45:40,550 --> 00:45:42,910
Speaker 1: in such a way that they flowed. So the idea,

777
00:45:43,070 --> 00:45:48,209
Speaker 1: a model of the empire flowing with liquid mercury. Now,

778
00:45:48,370 --> 00:45:52,640
Speaker 1: quick planetary science note. While rivers of elemental mercury might

779
00:45:52,780 --> 00:45:55,820
Speaker 1: sound on the surface like exactly the sort of strange

780
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:59,319
Speaker 1: and hostile thing you'd read about regarding another planet or

781
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:03,560
Speaker 1: another moon, because you hear things about, oh, it's clouds

782
00:46:03,580 --> 00:46:08,520
Speaker 1: of sulfuric acid or oceans of potassium, whatever the case

783
00:46:08,560 --> 00:46:12,680
Speaker 1: may be. But these don't actually occur in nature so

784
00:46:12,700 --> 00:46:15,470
Speaker 1: far as we know, in large parts because heavy liquid

785
00:46:15,510 --> 00:46:18,410
Speaker 1: metal mercury sinks down and or wouldn't retain its liquid

786
00:46:18,469 --> 00:46:22,890
Speaker 1: form on the surface of many bodies anyway. So coming

787
00:46:22,930 --> 00:46:26,090
Speaker 1: back to the planet Mercury, elemental mercury on the surface,

788
00:46:26,130 --> 00:46:29,450
Speaker 1: if we're just like straight up just laying on the

789
00:46:29,489 --> 00:46:33,210
Speaker 1: surface of Mercury, it would be vaporized in the sun

790
00:46:33,310 --> 00:46:36,330
Speaker 1: and it would freeze in the dark. And so we

791
00:46:36,370 --> 00:46:39,450
Speaker 1: also never see pools or streams of liquid mercury on Earth.

792
00:46:39,590 --> 00:46:42,670
Speaker 1: At most, I think we see maybe like beads of Uh,

793
00:46:42,830 --> 00:46:44,469
Speaker 1: so this is not the kind of thing that we're

794
00:46:44,510 --> 00:46:47,450
Speaker 1: going to encounter in the natural world, pretty much on

795
00:46:47,510 --> 00:46:50,509
Speaker 1: any planet that we know of. Yeah. But humans are

796
00:46:50,530 --> 00:46:52,750
Speaker 1: inventive and they find ways to, to make this sort

797
00:46:52,790 --> 00:46:55,319
Speaker 1: of thing, uh, to make this sort of thing happen.

798
00:46:56,280 --> 00:46:58,240
Speaker 1: So back to the tomb of the first sovereign emperor,

799
00:46:58,300 --> 00:47:00,820
Speaker 1: as Ball discusses, historians long thought that this was a

800
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:04,820
Speaker 1: bit fantastical. Uh, it's difficult to imagine this being true.

801
00:47:04,900 --> 00:47:09,200
Speaker 1: This was surely an exaggeration and a bit of myth-making, um, uh,

802
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:14,089
Speaker 1: that this unseen, unseen tomb area contained a scale model

803
00:47:14,110 --> 00:47:16,680
Speaker 1: of China with rivers of quicksilver. And so it was

804
00:47:16,980 --> 00:47:20,399
Speaker 1: largely dismissed. But then in the 1980s, Chinese researchers found

805
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:23,920
Speaker 1: a great deal of mercury contamination in the surrounding area,

806
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:26,779
Speaker 1: which made them rethink all of this and realize, well,

807
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:28,810
Speaker 1: it seems like there's a lot of mercury here and

808
00:47:28,830 --> 00:47:29,910
Speaker 1: it's sort of leached out.

809
00:47:30,790 --> 00:47:35,610
Speaker 2: So that doesn't tell us necessarily about the design or

810
00:47:35,670 --> 00:47:39,010
Speaker 2: geography of what's inside the tomb, which still remains unsealed.

811
00:47:39,070 --> 00:47:41,500
Speaker 2: But we at least have a good idea that there's

812
00:47:41,540 --> 00:47:43,560
Speaker 2: some kind of mercury content in there.

813
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:45,899
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, there's good reason to believe there's a lot

814
00:47:45,940 --> 00:47:50,379
Speaker 1: of mercury in there. Now, just the idea of there

815
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:53,040
Speaker 1: being a tomb full of mercury, this is actually not

816
00:47:53,120 --> 00:47:57,650
Speaker 1: something that you just find in China. And it's actually

817
00:47:57,730 --> 00:47:59,670
Speaker 1: enough of an issue that I was looking at an

818
00:47:59,910 --> 00:48:04,430
Speaker 1: article titled Mercury Exposure to Archaeologists, Cultural Specialists, and Historians.

819
00:48:04,469 --> 00:48:08,750
Speaker 1: This was by Bernard L. Fontaine, Jr., pointing out that

820
00:48:09,290 --> 00:48:12,830
Speaker 1: various cultures, especially in Mexico, Central America, and in China,

821
00:48:13,350 --> 00:48:18,070
Speaker 1: made use of mercury and mercury-containing substances, you know, maybe cinnabar,

822
00:48:18,570 --> 00:48:23,230
Speaker 1: in their funeral or religious practices. And that means that

823
00:48:23,250 --> 00:48:27,689
Speaker 1: a lot of specific protective protocols are going to be

824
00:48:28,530 --> 00:48:32,109
Speaker 1: highly encouraged when you're dealing with these areas because there's

825
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:34,420
Speaker 1: just a higher probability that there's going to be some

826
00:48:34,460 --> 00:48:37,799
Speaker 1: sort of mercury contamination in some of these artifacts and

827
00:48:39,030 --> 00:48:40,270
Speaker 1: and or like tombs.

828
00:48:40,870 --> 00:48:45,589
Speaker 2: So if you're doing excavations yourself or handling artifacts from them,

829
00:48:45,630 --> 00:48:47,850
Speaker 2: you may have increased exposure to mercury.

830
00:48:48,050 --> 00:48:52,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So again, the high levels of mercury in

831
00:48:52,560 --> 00:48:55,840
Speaker 1: the area around Qin Shi Huang's tomb added new credence

832
00:48:55,860 --> 00:48:58,560
Speaker 1: to this idea. And as Paul discusses, given what we

833
00:48:58,620 --> 00:49:01,500
Speaker 1: know and what was practiced at the time, the mercury

834
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:05,170
Speaker 1: in the tomb was likely neither funerary nor protective in

835
00:49:05,230 --> 00:49:10,370
Speaker 1: any particular way, But it would have been a novel

836
00:49:10,469 --> 00:49:13,590
Speaker 1: mercury water system. It seems like, why would all that

837
00:49:13,630 --> 00:49:16,750
Speaker 1: mercury be there? Well, because it was novel to look

838
00:49:16,830 --> 00:49:19,430
Speaker 1: upon or it had symbolic meaning, but not because it

839
00:49:19,469 --> 00:49:21,600
Speaker 1: was like some sort of of a mercury-based death trap,

840
00:49:22,060 --> 00:49:24,560
Speaker 1: and not because there was like a, you know, mercury

841
00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:27,540
Speaker 1: soaking of cadavers, which is, I think, something that comes later.

842
00:49:29,469 --> 00:49:32,229
Speaker 1: But how much mercury? I'm going to read a quote

843
00:49:32,250 --> 00:49:36,230
Speaker 1: from the article. He discusses this and says, based on

844
00:49:36,250 --> 00:49:39,400
Speaker 1: the estimates of mercury production from the Song era, and

845
00:49:39,440 --> 00:49:43,580
Speaker 1: allowing for the imperfections of the earlier refinement process, he,

846
00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:45,780
Speaker 1: and I'll get to who he is in just a second,

847
00:49:46,140 --> 00:49:49,700
Speaker 1: thinks the chamber might have contained at most 100 tons

848
00:49:49,820 --> 00:49:51,360
Speaker 1: of the liquid metal. What?

849
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:54,000
Speaker 2: 100 tons?

850
00:49:54,580 --> 00:49:57,620
Speaker 1: I reread this multiple times to make sure it was right.

851
00:49:58,719 --> 00:50:00,950
Speaker 1: And we'll probably check it again in the QA, because

852
00:50:00,969 --> 00:50:05,569
Speaker 1: that sounds like a lot. Even given how heavy it is,

853
00:50:05,810 --> 00:50:08,410
Speaker 1: if my figures are correct, this is what? 45 oil

854
00:50:09,010 --> 00:50:11,920
Speaker 1: barrels worth of liquid mercury. Like, it's a lot of mercury.

855
00:50:12,020 --> 00:50:15,020
Speaker 2: I don't know what a barrel weighs, but yeah, that's

856
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:17,460
Speaker 2: a lot of liquid mercury, more than I would have

857
00:50:17,780 --> 00:50:21,210
Speaker 2: imagined a pre-modern process could produce.

858
00:50:21,310 --> 00:50:25,310
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, it's a small fortune in mercury today, to

859
00:50:25,330 --> 00:50:25,709
Speaker 1: be clear.

860
00:50:26,790 --> 00:50:26,890
Speaker 2: Wow.

861
00:50:27,450 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 1: The he in this quote is Chinbo Duan of Northwest

862
00:50:32,580 --> 00:50:37,069
Speaker 1: University and Xian who led the mausoleum excavations from 1998

863
00:50:37,070 --> 00:50:40,130
Speaker 1: through 2008. So it is an estimate.

864
00:50:40,170 --> 00:50:43,239
Speaker 2: It is an estimate. It's not like we've measured. We

865
00:50:43,300 --> 00:50:45,940
Speaker 2: know there's that much there, but that's, yeah.

866
00:50:46,500 --> 00:50:46,700
Speaker 1: Yeah.

867
00:50:47,380 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 2: If that's true, that's a lot. Yeah.

868
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:54,220
Speaker 1: Now, again, it's not just China where you have situations

869
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:58,280
Speaker 1: where the tombs contain mercury. Large quantities of liquid mercury

870
00:50:58,340 --> 00:51:01,790
Speaker 1: were also found in a chamber beneath the pre-Aztec Temple

871
00:51:01,810 --> 00:51:05,279
Speaker 1: of the Feathered Serpent back in 2003. unsealed for the

872
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:10,720
Speaker 1: first time after like 1,800 years. This is the third

873
00:51:11,100 --> 00:51:14,800
Speaker 1: largest of the pyramids in the ancient city of Teotihuacan.

874
00:51:15,380 --> 00:51:19,200
Speaker 1: And it's suspected that the mercury here was also used

875
00:51:19,239 --> 00:51:21,489
Speaker 1: in some sort of essentially a water feature meant to

876
00:51:21,530 --> 00:51:26,770
Speaker 1: resemble like rivers or lakes. I don't think, based on

877
00:51:26,790 --> 00:51:29,469
Speaker 1: what I was reading, nowhere near as much mercury as

878
00:51:29,510 --> 00:51:32,840
Speaker 1: we're talking about potentially being in the Chinese tomb. But

879
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:38,530
Speaker 1: still pretty fascinating. Mercury, like this, shows up in various

880
00:51:38,610 --> 00:51:42,870
Speaker 1: Mesoamerican sites where it's thought that it was used to

881
00:51:42,930 --> 00:51:47,490
Speaker 1: signify the rivers of the underworld. And its reflective aspects

882
00:51:47,739 --> 00:51:51,920
Speaker 1: were also key as well. Because mirrors, like black obsidian mirrors,

883
00:51:51,960 --> 00:51:56,460
Speaker 1: were considered potential portals to the underworld. Mica was also

884
00:51:56,620 --> 00:52:00,250
Speaker 1: used in various ritual objects. Paul Lady wrote a good

885
00:52:00,370 --> 00:52:06,130
Speaker 1: update article about this particular dig for the Temple of

886
00:52:06,150 --> 00:52:10,150
Speaker 1: the Feathered Serpent back in 2017, mentioning that these would

887
00:52:10,170 --> 00:52:12,790
Speaker 1: have been pools of mercury, as far as we can tell,

888
00:52:13,290 --> 00:52:19,160
Speaker 1: alongside other reflective features like powdered pyrite that was infused

889
00:52:19,180 --> 00:52:21,560
Speaker 1: in the walls that would have given everything kind of

890
00:52:21,600 --> 00:52:27,000
Speaker 1: a glittering aspect, kind of like a starscape. Hmm. So, yeah, highly.

891
00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 1: And then also describe things that were kind of like

892
00:52:29,920 --> 00:52:32,620
Speaker 1: disco balls described as being kind of like mirror balls.

893
00:52:33,989 --> 00:52:36,750
Speaker 1: And we don't understand necessarily what all of it is,

894
00:52:36,850 --> 00:52:40,469
Speaker 1: but we understand that the reflective aspect of everything is

895
00:52:40,510 --> 00:52:42,650
Speaker 1: just going to be, of course, interesting to humans in general.

896
00:52:42,989 --> 00:52:45,149
Speaker 1: But then on top of that, there are these connotations,

897
00:52:45,170 --> 00:52:48,250
Speaker 1: these connections to the underworld and rivers in the underworld

898
00:52:48,830 --> 00:52:52,890
Speaker 1: that need to be need to be represented in these tombs.

899
00:52:53,270 --> 00:52:53,450
Speaker 2: Wow.

900
00:52:54,270 --> 00:52:57,910
Speaker 1: Also interesting is that robots were used to explore this

901
00:52:57,989 --> 00:53:02,239
Speaker 1: area beneath the pyramid. Not unlike planetary probes, you know,

902
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:03,839
Speaker 1: they look very much like the kind of thing you'd

903
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:06,720
Speaker 1: expect to see rolling around on the surface of Mars.

904
00:53:07,520 --> 00:53:09,440
Speaker 2: I hope this did not end with them having to

905
00:53:09,500 --> 00:53:13,300
Speaker 2: slam any of the robots into the temple after its

906
00:53:13,380 --> 00:53:14,460
Speaker 2: mission has been fulfilled.

907
00:53:16,010 --> 00:53:19,330
Speaker 1: Yeah, they didn't send any cyber ninjas in. These are

908
00:53:19,370 --> 00:53:25,319
Speaker 1: chunkier looking guys here. They're all business. Now, just, this

909
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:28,450
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that, uh, mercury water features are just, um,

910
00:53:28,700 --> 00:53:31,520
Speaker 1: you know, something, uh, you know, from the ancient world. Um,

911
00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:34,910
Speaker 1: more recently, uh, much more recently, you have this, uh,

912
00:53:35,200 --> 00:53:39,469
Speaker 1: very interesting case where American artist, Alexandra Calder, uh, created

913
00:53:39,510 --> 00:53:42,609
Speaker 1: a mercury fountain that was displayed at the Spanish Republican

914
00:53:42,670 --> 00:53:47,250
Speaker 1: pavilion for the 1937 world's fair in Paris. And I

915
00:53:47,290 --> 00:53:51,009
Speaker 1: believe it's still on display in Barcelona though, uh, I

916
00:53:51,050 --> 00:53:52,859
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in person, but I understand it has.

917
00:53:52,880 --> 00:53:55,700
Speaker 1: I was reading an Atlas Obscura article about it, about

918
00:53:55,739 --> 00:53:59,719
Speaker 1: visiting it. It has protective features up now. But this

919
00:53:59,780 --> 00:54:03,480
Speaker 1: is apparently playing on concepts that date back to Islamic Spain.

920
00:54:04,260 --> 00:54:06,700
Speaker 1: And I included a couple of pictures here for you, Joe.

921
00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:09,020
Speaker 1: One is an historic photo of it, and I believe

922
00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:11,400
Speaker 1: that's Calder standing in the background. And then also a

923
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:14,950
Speaker 1: photograph with some sketches, design sketches behind it.

924
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:18,070
Speaker 2: Is that Guernica in the background behind it?

925
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:18,520
Speaker 1: It is.

926
00:54:18,540 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 2: Yeah.

927
00:54:20,450 --> 00:54:24,009
Speaker 1: So, yeah, it would have been very impressive to see

928
00:54:24,030 --> 00:54:27,670
Speaker 1: that original exhibit for sure. I've seen some of Calder's

929
00:54:27,690 --> 00:54:31,469
Speaker 1: work before. If you go around to enough museums, these

930
00:54:31,489 --> 00:54:35,380
Speaker 1: days art museums and modern art museums, you'll see Calder's work.

931
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:38,279
Speaker 1: He's especially well known for his kinetic art, such as

932
00:54:38,380 --> 00:54:42,680
Speaker 1: complex mobiles hanging from the ceiling. And this does have

933
00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:44,279
Speaker 1: a bit of that flair to it.

934
00:54:46,040 --> 00:54:46,239
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

935
00:54:46,790 --> 00:54:49,170
Speaker 1: A lot of curves, a lot of beams. It looks like,

936
00:54:49,190 --> 00:54:52,250
Speaker 1: you know, it's designed to move. And, of course, involves

937
00:54:52,290 --> 00:54:55,230
Speaker 1: movement since it is a fountain. All right. I've got

938
00:54:55,330 --> 00:54:57,650
Speaker 1: one more here. I want to tie everything together, everything

939
00:54:57,670 --> 00:55:00,190
Speaker 1: that we've learned so far. And I'm going to ask

940
00:55:00,290 --> 00:55:04,180
Speaker 1: one last question. Could we make a statue of frozen

941
00:55:04,340 --> 00:55:09,100
Speaker 1: elemental mercury and have that statue be of Freddie Mercury

942
00:55:09,420 --> 00:55:12,259
Speaker 1: dressed as the Roman god Mercury? And then could we

943
00:55:12,300 --> 00:55:16,170
Speaker 1: position it safely? within the eternally dark depths of a

944
00:55:16,230 --> 00:55:18,290
Speaker 1: crater on the planet Mercury.

945
00:55:18,630 --> 00:55:22,370
Speaker 2: Now you're thinking, yeah, using those hidden pockets along with

946
00:55:22,410 --> 00:55:24,259
Speaker 2: the water ice. This is where it belongs.

947
00:55:24,340 --> 00:55:28,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems reasonable. I mean, ridiculous, but it seems reasonable.

948
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:31,970
Speaker 1: It seems tempting. But when I was looking into it,

949
00:55:32,040 --> 00:55:34,660
Speaker 1: I realized, okay, there are a couple of key things here.

950
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:38,839
Speaker 1: So even though you would be in the darkness here

951
00:55:38,860 --> 00:55:43,240
Speaker 1: at the bottom of these craters, protected from direct light,

952
00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:47,299
Speaker 1: You would still have the possibility of reflected radiation and

953
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:50,760
Speaker 1: also some degree of vaporization of the statue would apparently

954
00:55:50,820 --> 00:55:54,940
Speaker 1: still take place. Again, not that this is a question

955
00:55:54,960 --> 00:55:58,089
Speaker 1: that anyone is really giving a lot of direct consideration to,

956
00:55:58,890 --> 00:56:00,910
Speaker 1: but that seems to be the case based on just

957
00:56:00,950 --> 00:56:05,009
Speaker 1: how we know Mercury behaves and also given what we

958
00:56:05,050 --> 00:56:09,270
Speaker 1: know about the just very rough and hostile surface of Mercury,

959
00:56:09,390 --> 00:56:13,580
Speaker 1: even within the atmosphere. even within the protection and the

960
00:56:13,620 --> 00:56:17,160
Speaker 1: comfort of those craters. Though I guess this is also

961
00:56:17,239 --> 00:56:19,870
Speaker 1: kind of an open question, so I think we can

962
00:56:20,050 --> 00:56:23,130
Speaker 1: throw it to listeners. Do you think this would be possible?

963
00:56:23,150 --> 00:56:25,550
Speaker 1: Do you think the statue would remain in one piece

964
00:56:25,630 --> 00:56:29,290
Speaker 1: or would it just sort of like quickly degrade and

965
00:56:29,310 --> 00:56:32,610
Speaker 1: just be a lump of mercury, frozen mercury or something?

966
00:56:34,050 --> 00:56:36,100
Speaker 1: I don't think in any case that it's going to

967
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:41,370
Speaker 1: remain altogether. But I guess the The only possibility would

968
00:56:41,390 --> 00:56:44,970
Speaker 1: be if we had a climate-controlled environment within the crater,

969
00:56:45,510 --> 00:56:49,160
Speaker 1: and that's where we could safely house the statue of

970
00:56:49,200 --> 00:56:52,500
Speaker 1: what I think we can safely call the Mercury, Mercury,

971
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:57,740
Speaker 1: Mercury of Mercury. Or, if you'd rather, the Mercury, Mercury, Mercury, Mercury.

972
00:56:59,469 --> 00:57:00,770
Speaker 2: Bravo. Yeah.

973
00:57:01,130 --> 00:57:02,290
Speaker 1: So write in if you have thoughts.

974
00:57:03,110 --> 00:57:05,390
Speaker 2: Do you think we could have the Mercury, Mercury doing

975
00:57:05,430 --> 00:57:06,470
Speaker 2: some gleaming wrestlings?

976
00:57:08,120 --> 00:57:11,860
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would hope so. Yeah, yeah. Now, who would

977
00:57:12,120 --> 00:57:16,180
Speaker 1: the Mercury, Mercury, Mercury, Mercury wrestle? I'm not sure. That's

978
00:57:16,220 --> 00:57:18,780
Speaker 1: another open question that we'll have to throw out there

979
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:19,380
Speaker 1: for the listeners.

980
00:57:19,980 --> 00:57:20,780
Speaker 2: The Venus, Venus?

981
00:57:21,640 --> 00:57:23,480
Speaker 1: There you go. We'll have to bring that over, though,

982
00:57:23,760 --> 00:57:27,280
Speaker 1: after we've established that on the surface. Yeah, that's another

983
00:57:27,320 --> 00:57:30,820
Speaker 1: good one. We don't have elemental Venus, but there's got

984
00:57:30,840 --> 00:57:33,439
Speaker 1: to be at least a Venus, Venus, Venus that's possible, right?

985
00:57:34,280 --> 00:57:34,860
Speaker 2: Yeah.

986
00:57:36,040 --> 00:57:38,970
Speaker 1: You tell us, listeners. All right. Well, is that it

987
00:57:39,010 --> 00:57:39,490
Speaker 1: for Mercury?

988
00:57:40,040 --> 00:57:41,720
Speaker 2: I think so. I don't have anything else.

989
00:57:41,980 --> 00:57:44,140
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anything else comes in, you know, we can talk

990
00:57:44,160 --> 00:57:47,340
Speaker 1: about it in a Lister Mail episode. Or certainly when

991
00:57:47,360 --> 00:57:50,920
Speaker 1: we start getting some new data in from the innermost planet,

992
00:57:51,640 --> 00:57:53,440
Speaker 1: we're just going to be open ears on that and

993
00:57:53,480 --> 00:57:54,300
Speaker 1: see what comes together.

994
00:57:54,720 --> 00:57:57,840
Speaker 2: Totally. Yeah. Write in about what interests you when it

995
00:57:57,860 --> 00:57:58,280
Speaker 2: comes out.

996
00:57:58,700 --> 00:58:02,650
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, we'll just remind everyone out

997
00:58:02,710 --> 00:58:05,490
Speaker 1: there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a

998
00:58:05,610 --> 00:58:08,240
Speaker 1: science and culture podcast. Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

999
00:58:08,260 --> 00:58:10,700
Speaker 1: Short form on Wednesdays. On Fridays, we set aside most

1000
00:58:10,720 --> 00:58:12,460
Speaker 1: serious concern to just talk about a weird film on

1001
00:58:12,500 --> 00:58:14,720
Speaker 1: Weird Al Cinema. But then we turn right back around

1002
00:58:14,740 --> 00:58:16,900
Speaker 1: and we do more science and culture episodes. But at

1003
00:58:16,960 --> 00:58:19,860
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1004
00:58:20,060 --> 00:58:23,620
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1005
00:58:23,660 --> 00:58:26,490
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1006
00:58:26,510 --> 00:58:28,830
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1007
00:58:28,990 --> 00:58:32,530
Speaker 1: watch us do the podcast as well as listen. Give

1008
00:58:32,550 --> 00:58:34,710
Speaker 1: us a couple of thumbs up. Ask to be reminded

1009
00:58:34,750 --> 00:58:37,330
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1010
00:58:38,070 --> 00:58:41,740
Speaker 2: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway.

1011
00:58:42,180 --> 00:58:43,520
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1012
00:58:43,560 --> 00:58:46,100
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1013
00:58:46,160 --> 00:58:48,100
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,

1014
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:52,050
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

1015
00:59:00,100 --> 00:59:02,520
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1016
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:05,720
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1017
00:59:06,060 --> 00:59:08,630
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