Marvellous Mercury Trivia Quiz

Answer: First planet closest to the Sun

Mercury is indeed the closest planet to the Sun, and as a result is one of the most difficult to observe. It is also the fastest moving and smallest planet in the Solar System, and has almost no atmosphere. As for the order of the planets, they are: Mercury; Venus; Earth; Mars; Jupiter; Saturn; Uranus and Neptune. One of the easiest ways to remember the order of the planets is by using a mnemonic such as 'My Violent Evil Monster Just Scared Us Nuts'.

Answer: Its speed

The planet Mercury shares a great deal with its Roman namesake. Indeed the Roman god Mercury is known for his speed, making him the perfect namesake for the fastest moving planet in the Solar System. Moreover he is also known as the messenger of the Roman gods (his Greek equivalent being Hermes), which fits well with the planet's ability to travel quickly, and thus be seen in both the morning and evening. What's more, at one stage in history, this led to the misunderstanding that the planet was actually two different heavenly bodies.

Answer: No

As Mercury is one of five planets that can be seen with the naked eye (the others being Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), it is impossible to know when it was first 'discovered', or who the individual was who made the 'discovery'. Humankind has been aware of the planets for thousands of years, and the early belief was that they were connected to the heavens, and were divine beings that moved across the skies.

The earliest known record of Mercury was made by the Babylonians around 2000BC, who referred to the planet as 'Nabu'.

Answer: 0

A moon is a natural satellite, and six of the planets in the Solar System have at least one. These planets are Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, leaving Mercury and Venus as the only two planets without a single moon. However there was a time when astronomers believed there was a moon on Mercury, as the Mariner 10 space probe once detected a considerable amount of unexplainable ultraviolet radiation. Yet though this initially led to the belief that there was a moon somewhere on the planet, overnight the radiation disappeared, leading astronomers to conclude that its source was actually a distant star.

Answer: Black

Despite its close proximity to the Sun, unlike planet Earth, Mercury has no real atmosphere to scatter the Sun's rays, and so its sky appears black. Indeed the planet has the thinnest atmosphere of all of the planets that make up the Solar System, with most of the particles that make up its thin atmosphere stemming from the Sun.

Answer: True

Mercury's temperature varies so dramatically due to its lack of atmosphere. During the daytime it can reach temperatures of up to 450 Celsius, but as its atmosphere is not conducive to trapping the heat, at night temperatures can plummet to an astonishing minus 170 Celsius. Yet despite the extraordinary daytime temperatures experienced on Mercury, as a result of its proximity to the Sun, it is not the hottest planet in the Solar System. On the contrary, it is its neighbour, Venus, which holds that honour, reaching a phenomenal average temperature of around 460 Celsius.

Answer: Mercury has a magnetic field

NASA's Mariner 10 was a robotic space probe that was launched on the 3rd of November, 1973, with the intention of taking certain measurements of both Mercury and Venus. Though it is widely known that it was the first mission to Mercury, the probe was also the first probe to visit two planets as part of one single mission. During one particular flyby, Mariner 10 detected that Mercury had a magnetic field, a fact that was previously unknown.

As for the incorrect answers, it is Neptune that has the strongest winds and is the coldest planet in the Solar System, while Mars has the longest and deepest canyon.

Answer: Messenger

NASA's Messenger spacecraft, which is an acronym for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging, was first launched in 2004, with the aim of exploring the planet Mercury. By March, 2013, Messenger had accomplished another first, by mapping 100% of the surface of Mercury, something that Mariner 10 had only managed to complete 50% of, nearly forty years earlier.

Answer: It could permanently damage the telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that first entered orbit in 1990, and while it has observed some of the furthest away galaxies to ever be seen, it is unable to view Mercury, Venus or the Sun. The reason for this is that the rays of the Sun are so powerful that viewing it would likely cause irreparable damage to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Moreover as Mercury and Venus are so close to the Sun, viewing either of these would have the same, catastrophic consequences, and so the Hubble Space Telescope is always pointed away from the Sun.

Answer: Albert Einstein

Mercury's orbit of the Sun is relatively complex, as it traces a rosette pattern in space (similar to a spinning top). This seemingly bizarre pattern baffled astronomers for a long time, so much so that it took Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity for astronomers and physicists to understand Mercury's movements.

Indeed Einstein's theory correctly claimed that Mercury slowed down when it moved away from the Sun, only to speed up as it approached it. Moreover its complicated lurches resulted in an orbit that contradicted Newton's Gravitational Theory.