Other Worlds / Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries

by Garrett Putman Serviss

Messrs. Huggins, Vogel, and others have believed that they found spectroscopic proof of the existence of both air and the vapor of water on Mercury. But the necessary observations are of a very delicate nature, and difficult to make, and some astronomers doubt whether we possess sufficient proof that Mercury has an atmosphere. At any rate, its atmosphere is very rare as compared with the earth's, but we need not, on that account, conclude that Mercury is lifeless. Possibly, in view of certain other peculiarities soon to be explained, a rare atmosphere would be decidedly advantageous.

Being much nearer the sun than the earth is, Mercury can be seen by us only in the same quarter of the sky where the sun itself appears. As it revolves in its orbit about the sun it is visible, alternately, in the evening for a short time after sunset and in the morning for a short time before sunrise, but it can never be seen, as the outer planets are seen, in the mid-heaven or late at night. When seen low in the twilight, at evening or morning, it glows with the brilliance of a bright first-magnitude star, and is a beautiful object, though few casual watchers of the stars ever catch sight of it. When it is nearest the earth and is about to pass between the earth and the sun, it temporarily disappears in the glare of the sunlight; and likewise, when it it is farthest from the earth and passing around in its orbit on the opposite side of the sun, it is concealed by the blinding solar rays. Consequently, except with the instruments of an observatory, which are able to show it in broad day, Mercury is never visible save during the comparatively brief periods of time when it is near its greatest apparent distance east or west from the sun.

The nearer a planet is to the sun the more rapidly it is compelled to move in its orbit, and Mercury, being the nearest to the sun of all the planets, is by far the swiftest footed among them. But its velocity is subject to remarkable variation, owing to the peculiar form of the orbit in which the planet travels. This is more eccentric than the orbit of any other planet, except some of the asteroids. The sun being situated in one focus of the elliptical orbit, when Mercury is at perihelion, or nearest to the sun, its distance from that body is 28,500,000 miles, but when it is at aphelion, or farthest from the sun, its distance is 43,500,000 miles. The difference is no less than 14,000,000 miles! When nearest the sun Mercury darts forward in its orbit at the rate of twenty-nine miles in a second, while when farthest from the sun the speed is reduced to twenty-three miles.

Now, let us return for a moment to the consideration of the wonderful variations in Mercury's distance from the sun, for we shall find that their effects are absolutely startling, and that they alone suffice to mark a wide difference between Mercury and the earth, considered as the abodes of sentient creatures. The total change of distance amounts, as already remarked, to 14,000,000 miles, which is almost half the entire distance separating the planet from the sun at perihelion. This immense variation of distance is emphasized by the rapidity with which it takes place. Mercury's periodic time, i.e., the period required for it to make a single revolution about the sun—or, in other words, the length of its year—is eighty-eight of our days. In just one half of that time, or in about six weeks, it passes from aphelion to perihelion; that is to say, in six weeks the whole change in its distance from the sun takes place. In six weeks Mercury falls 14,000,000 miles—for it is a fall, though in a curve instead of a straight line—falls 14,000,000 miles toward the sun! And, as it falls, like any other falling body it gains in speed, until, having reached the perihelion point, its terrific velocity counteracts its approach and it begins to recede. At the end of the next six weeks it once more attains its greatest distance, and turns again to plunge sunward.

Of course it may be said of every planet having an elliptical orbit that between aphelion and perihelion it is falling toward the sun, but no other planet than Mercury travels in an orbit sufficiently eccentric, and approaches sufficiently near to the sun, to give to the mind so vivid an impression of an actual, stupendous fall!

Next let us consider the effects of this rapid fall, or approach, toward the sun, which is so foreign to our terrestrial experience, and so appalling to the imagination.

First, we must remember that the nearer a planet is to the sun the greater is the amount of heat and light that it receives, the variation being proportional to the inverse square of the distance. The earth's distance from the sun being 93,000,000 miles, while Mercury's is only 36,000,000, it follows, to begin with, that Mercury gets, on the average, more than six and a half times as much heat from the sun as the earth does. That alone is enough to make it seem impossible that Mercury can be the home of living forms resembling those of the earth, for imagine the heat of the sun in the middle of a summer's day increased six or seven fold! If there were no mitigating influences, the face of the earth would shrivel as in the blast of a furnace, the very stones would become incandescent, and the oceans would turn into steam.

Still, notwithstanding the tremendous heat poured upon Mercury as compared with that which our planet receives, we can possibly, and for the sake of a clearer understanding of the effects of the varying distance, which is the object of our present inquiry, find a loophole to admit the chance that yet there may be living beings there. We might, for instance, suppose that, owing to the rarity of its atmosphere, the excessive heat was quickly radiated away, or that there was something in the constitution of the atmosphere that greatly modified the effective temperature of the sun's rays. But, having satisfied our imagination on this point, and placed our supposititious inhabitants in the hot world of Mercury, how are we going to meet the conditions imposed by the rapid changes of distance—the swift fall of the planet toward the sun, followed by the equally swift rush away from it? For change of distance implies change of heat and temperature.

It is true that we have a slight effect of this kind on the earth. Between midsummer (of the northern hemisphere) and midwinter our planet draws 3,000,000 miles nearer the sun, but the change occupies six months, and, at the earth's great average distance, the effect of this change is too slight to be ordinarily observable, and only the astronomer is aware of the consequent increase in the apparent size of the sun. It is not to this variation of the sun's distance, but rather to the changes of the seasons, depending on the inclination of the earth's axis, that we owe the differences of temperature that we experience. In other words, the total supply of heat from the sun is not far from uniform at all times of the year, and the variations of temperature depend upon the distribution of that supply between the northern and southern hemispheres, which are alternately inclined sunward.

But on Mercury the supply of solar heat is itself variable to an enormous extent. In six weeks, as we have seen, Mercury diminishes its distance from the sun about one third, which is proportionally ten times as great a change of distance as the earth experiences in six months. The inhabitants of Mercury in those six pregnant weeks see the sun expand in the sky to more than two and a half times its former magnitude, while the solar heat poured upon them swiftly augments from something more than four and a half times to above eleven times the amount received upon the earth! Then, immediately, the retreat of the planet begins, the sun visibly shrinks, as a receding balloon becomes smaller in the eyes of its watchers, the heat falls off as rapidly as it had previously increased, until, the aphelion point being reached, the process is again reversed. And thus it goes on unceasingly, the sun growing and diminishing in the sky, and the heat increasing and decreasing by enormous amounts with astonishing rapidity. It is difficult to imagine any way in which atmospheric influences could equalize the effects of such violent changes, or any adjustments in the physical organization of living beings that could make such changes endurable.