Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system — it is only slightly larger than Earth's moon. Since it has no significant atmosphere to stop impacts, the planet is pockmarked with craters.

Researchers estimated that before humans started pumping mercury into the atmosphere, it contained on average about 580 megagrams of mercury. However, in 2015, independent research that looked at ...

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs. The amount of mercury in our atmosphere is a little out of hand, and scientists may ...

Mercury (Hg) is a naturally occurring element found across the globe, yet it becomes highly toxic as it accumulates up the food chain. Pollution from human activities has pumped increasing amounts of ...

Researchers found that atmospheric mercury levels have decreased by almost 70% in the last 20 years, mainly because human-caused emissions have been reduced.

The convention's effectiveness is judged partly on the amount of mercury in the atmosphere. Gaseous elemental mercury is also released from its largest natural reservoir, the soil, which might be ...

Mercury pollution levels in the Earth's atmosphere have spiked by seven times since the modern era began around 1500 CE, new research shows. The work, published as a study in the journal ...

But Mercury has proved to be a world of contradictions, a dynamic planet that hides more surprises than scientists initially gave it credit for. A thin “atmosphere,” a magnetic field and a ...

Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM Plus, the situation doesn’t get any easier once you’re near Mercury. There’s no atmosphere to help a spacecraft slow down like there is at Venus or Mars.

The convention’s effectiveness is judged partly on the amount of mercury in the atmosphere. Gaseous elemental mercury is also released from its largest natural reservoir, the soil, which might be ...