Polar Ice?

Polar Ice?

That a planet just a stone’s throw away from the blazing sun would have ice on it seems paradoxical, yet there is good evidence for this scenario. Ground-based radar has revealed very reflective material – much like water ice — sitting in deep craters at Mercury’s north pole.

These craters might be deep enough to remain in permanent shadow, allowing them to trap ice within. Recently, the MESSENGER spacecraft measured the length of shadows in these craters to estimate their depth and has found that they are deep enough to remain in permanent shadow. Radar measurements from the probe also corroborate the finding that there is highly reflective material in these impacts.

“We can’t yet confirm this is water ice, but the polar cold trap theory is holding up,” said geophysicist Sean Solomon.

Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Polar Ice?

Backlink: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/mercury-volcanoes/shadowcrater.jpg

BBC documentary foiled by polar bears

It sounds like a great idea at first—"We'll make robot cameras and disguise them as icebergs and piles of snow, so we can film polar bears in the wild without their noticing!"

BBC documentary foiled by polar bears

Backlink: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/eulfcoLWLdk/bbc-documentary-foil.html

Polar Bears Rage On Robot Spycams

To film up close and personal with polar bears, the BBC (who knows a thing or two about making nature shows) decided that it would be kinda cool to deploy an entire fleet of little remote controlled, robotic cameras:

Polar Bears Rage On Robot Spycams

Backlink: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Botjunkie/~3/4Xfq3oHBCvA/