Mercury is as cold as ice. Indeed, Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, possesses a lot of ice - 100 billion to 1 trillion tons - scientists working with NASA's Messenger spacecraft reported on Thursday. Sean C. Solomon, the principal investigator for Messenger, said there was enough ice there to encase Washington, D.C., in a frozen block 2 1/2 miles deep. That is a counterintuitive discovery for a place that also ranks among the hottest in the solar system. At noon at the equator on Mercury, the temperature can hit 800 degrees Fahrenheit. But near Mercury's...
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