Mercury: The Scorched Planet | The Planets | Earth Science

The fate of Mercury could have been very different, had it not been for one gigantic clash.

The Planets (2019)
This stunningly ambitious series brings to life the most memorable events in the history of the solar system, by using groundbreaking visual effects to tell the thrilling story of all eight planets. Transporting you to the surface of these dynamic worlds to witness the moments of high drama that shaped each one, The Planets reveals how the latest science allows us to unlock their past lives. It pieces together clues of magnificent lost waterfalls on Mars, the mass planetary migrations as they jostled for position early in their history, and even the distant fate of Saturn as one of its moons awakens to form a beautiful water world.

[fyedaniels]

This is so fascinating. Id rather spend my whole life studying about our solar system than rotting at my desk doing accounts 😩

[seraph]

When I woke up this morning, I was not expecting to feel bad for the planet Mercury. Yet here we are.

[Atlacamania]

Let's take a moment to appreciate the beautiful animations used in this documentary. IT'S AWESOME, also the narration fit so wonderfully.

[derekwarr]

I learned more about Mercury in this 10 minute video than I have in a lifetime

[WishMount]

I can’t wrap my head around how we built something that can just detect chemicals, perform 8-9 year missions and withstand and survive the harshness of space and just magically know how planets were created, what it’s core looks like from millions of light years away etc. truly baffling, yet planet Earth’s ocean is still the greatest mystery of our solar system

[HiroariHourai]

They fr narrates Mercury's story like the backstory of a main character in a drama show

[NightDocs]

Please give your VFX team more money. That animation of Mercury colliding with another planet was astounding

[usazar]

The experts, the animations, the narration... All top notch.

[christophermarshall]

I feel like Zachary Quinto narrating this makes me feel like it's Spock teaching some Starfleet cadets about the planets

[tomthai]

this the most beautiful documentary that I've ever seen.
please accept my thanks for posting this.
MOREEE

[Pauly]

I could watch planets smashing into each other in this epic detail ALL DAY it's so cool!

[sourkoyote]

Am I smarter than a 5th grader if the 1st thing I thought of when they said "how did it end up so close to the sun & made almost entirely out of metal?" was, "it probably collided with another planet." ?

[Suburp]

Kudos to the camerateam capturing the impact of the probe in Mercury.

[alaskajdw]

Great work. Make more like this please

[nikkoracela]

Only 50, 000 views? Dude, this is the most educational, interesting, simplest best thing right now

[utahcornelius]

This is beautiful and it does give you a sense of scale of the eight planets. Putting the asteroid belt there, and indicating the incredible width of that belt between Mars and Jupiter, would have been nice. Also, the suggestion that Neptune is the edge of the Solar System is incorrect. The distance from the Sun to Earth is 1 Astronomical Unit (AU). The distance from the Sun to Neptune is 30 AU. At Neptune begins the Kuiper Belt of comets. It's very wide, too. All that stuff orbits the Sun on a fairly flat plane. A bit beyond the Kuiper Belt is the Heliopause. This is where the Solar Wind ends. The solar wind is plasma emitted from the Sun's Corona, its outermost layer. That solar wind stretches about 123 AU from the Sun, another 90 AU beyond Neptune, at 30 AU. Then you enter interstellar space, which is still not the end of the Solar System. You cross that space for somewhere between another 880-1, 880 AU. That's right, 1 AU to Earth. 30 AU to Neptune. 123 AU to Interstellar Space. And another 880-1, 880 AU to...the Oort Cloud.

The Oort Cloud is a collection of more comets which are out there in a sphere around the entire solar system. The Oort Cloud is hypothetical, but pretty much all astrophysicists and astronomers agree that it's there, because Oort Clouds exist around other socarl systems, and because you need an Oort Cloud to feed the Kuiper Belt, which in turn sends comets into the inner planet space inside the Asteroid Belt. Like the comets that pass or fall into Earth. Without the Oort Cloud feeding the Kuiper Belt, the Kuiper Belt would have run out of comets long, long ago. And it didn't. Well, that Oort Cloud then extends another 50, 000 to 100, 000 AU farther out into space.

The outside of the Oort Cloud is where the SOLAR SYSTEM ENDS. That's where the Sun's gravitational pull runs out. So, from the Sun to Earth is 1 AU, to Neptune is 30 AU, and out of the Solar System is 50, 000 to 100, 000 AU THAT'S how big the Solar System is. And 1 AU from the Sun to the Earth is 93 million miles. I haven't done the math, but that map of the Solar System isn't 7 miles. It's about the size of the U.S. And that's just our tiny little solar system in a galaxy witha hundred billion stars. As Douglas Adams said in "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, " "space is really big."

[NeroHobbit]

Could you guys by any chance tell us what music you use in the background, it sounds like a lovely piece

[darthex]

It makes sense to me that a planet would form closer to the sun with a higher proportion of the heavy elements. The t tauri phase would have had more effect on the volatiles by percentage. I cannot explain the orbit though.

[mrgrillz]

I’m truly in love with this channel now

[doomscyte]

huge respect for the cameraman that risked his life to record the last moment of Messenger while standing on a scorching planet