SOLAR SYSTEM:  MERCURY AND VENUS

Get ready.  I'm about to compare and contrast the planets Mercury and Venus.  Sounds boring?  Well, I wouldn't let that happen!
First, let's talk about Mercury.

This is the Roman god Mercury.  Percy Jackson fans, this is all review for you.  Unless you've never read the "Heroes of Olympus" series.  If you only read the original Percy Jackson series, your "Mercury" is the Greek version of the god, named Hermes, and he looks like this:

So what does this have to do with the planet Mercury? The planet was actually named after the god.  Good to know, huh! 
Back to the planet Mercury.  Here's what it looks like:

This may look like a boring chunk of rock, but Mercury is actually a pretty intense and extreme planet. Mercury is the closest planet to the sun.  See . . .

You would think it would be extremely hot on Mercury because it's so close to the sun.  Well, you'd be half right. This is because Mercury rotates very slowly.  So the side facing the side gets extremely hot, while the other side gets extremely cold.
If Earth ever challenged Mercury to a race around the sun, Earth would lose big time.  Mercury speeds around the sun at around 48 kilometers per second.  Our planet can only manage about 30 kilometers per second. 

This is Mercury.

This is Earth.

There is no atmosphere on Mercury.  That means it doesn't have a sky.  It's more like an asteroid floating in space.

An atmosphere like the one on Earth stops asteroids before they hit by burning them up.  Because there's no atmosphere on Mercury, Mercury gets pelted by asteroids every day.

If you were to stand on Mercury, all you'd see is stars.  This would never happen:

I'd choose Earth any day.  Enough about Mercury.

Now on to Venus.

Yep, you guessed it.  This is the Roman goddess, Venus.  For Percy Jackson fans who never kept reading, you know this goddess as Aphrodite:

Do I really have to tell you that the planet Venus is named after the goddess?  No?  I didn't think so.

Venus is second-closest to the sun.  Check this out again . . .

 


It's often been stated that Venus is our sister planet. Untrue. Completely untrue.

Venus is hot to the hottest degree. Way hotter than Mercury even though it's farther away from the sun.

You can thank CO2 for that. Thick clouds block the sun completely, but they lock in the heat, therefore it is never cool.
Also, Venus is naturally volcanic.  Magma and sulfur pits create lots of CO2, which is locked in by the clouds, creating a mega greenhouse effect. 

A day on Venus would feel like a day doing algebra problems.  One day on Venus literally lasts eight Earth-months. 

So that's it, epic scientist.  Now you know everything you need to know about Mercury and Venus. 
See ya, people.