While Mercury may be the closest planet to the Sun and is hotter than we can imagine, surprisingly it has icy poles.

Now a new study says that the Sun’s intense heat could be a cause of Mercury’s icy glaciers.

How is this even possible?

• Unlike Earth, which is tilted enough for sunlight to reach its poles, Mercury has very little tilt. This means that its poles hardly ever get any sunlight.
• Minerals in Mercury’s surface soil contain what are called hydroxyl groups (consisting of oxygen and hydrogen).
• The Sun’s extreme heat helps to free up these hydroxyl groups and then energizes them to smash into each other.
• This produces water molecules (H20) and hydrogen (H) that lift off from the surface and drift around the planet. Some of these water molecules are broken down by sunlight and disappear.
• However, other molecules land near Mercury’s permanently cold poles. The molecules get trapped there and become a part of the permanent, growing glacial ice.

The researchers say that this process would have happened over 3 million years and account for about 10% of the ice.

The data used for their study comes from the MESSENGER spacecraft. It orbited Mercury between 2011 and 2015. It studied the planet’s chemical composition, geology and magnetic field.

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