As Planet Mercury Is More Interesting Than We Knew, Maybe The Same Holds True For People In Our Lives

A NASA probe says the planet Mercury is more lively than people imagine.

It’s more than just a dusty black and white place. That’s been the image of Mercury over the years. Now we know that there is blue stuff (Above) on Mercury and that it was once a volcanic hotbed—

“Astronomers used to dismiss Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, as mere “dead rock,” little more than a target for cosmic collisions that shaped it, said MIT planetary scientist Maria Zuber. “Now, it’s looking a lot more interesting,” said Zuber, who has experiments on the Messenger probe. “It’s an awful lot of volcanic material.” New images of filled-in craters — one the size of the Baltimore-Washington area and filled in with more than a mile deep of cooled lava — show that 3.8 to 4 billion years ago, Mercury was more of a volcanic hotspot than the moon ever was, Zuber said. But it isn’t just filled-in craters. Using special cameras, the probe showed what one scientist called “the mysterious dark blue material.” It was all over the planet. That led Arizona State University geologist Mark Robinson to speculate that the mineral is important but still unknown stuff ejected from Mercury’s large core in the volcanic eruptions.”

Maybe as we learn that Mercury is more than we imagined, there are people in our lives that we need to reconsider. People may have previously unknown talents or insights that we have simply missed over the years.

Think about somebody you know and give them a new look. 

Here is the web home of the Messenger mission to Mercury. 

Here is information about Mercury.

Please Think Before You Vote—Galveston Voters Rejected Seawall in 1886

 

The great new book Galveston–A City On Stilts is about the building of the famous seawall (above) and other steps to make Galveston more safe from hurricanes.

This all took place in the years after the terrible Hurricane of 1900. The 1900 hurricane killed many thousands of people.

In Galveston  it says this—“In 1886, a commission of city leaders considered building a seawall to protect Galveston Island.  Citizens rejected this proposal because it seemed costly and unnecessary.”

When folks are voting this year on the absurd idea to do away with the income tax in Massachusetts, or voting for McCain because they just can’t accept a black President, think about the folks in Galveston in 1886. If they had been a bit more forward looking they would have likely escaped a great tragedy.

Please think before you vote.

(Below–Galveston in 1900)