Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet which is closest to our Sun. We see it as an evening or a morning star, close to where the Sun has just set or is about to rise, and observations of Mercury helped Copernicus understand that Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun, so displacing Earth from the centre of our system. In the 20th century, further observations of Mercury helped Einstein prove his general theory of relativity. For the last 50 years we have been sending missions there to reveal something of Mercury's secrets and how those relate to the wider universe, and he latest, BepiColombo, is out there in space now.
With
Emma Bunce Professor of Planetary Plasma Physics and Director of the Institute for Space at the University of Leicester
David Rothery Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the Open University
And
Carolin Crawford Emeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, and Emeritus Member of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production
Reading list:
Emma Bunce, ‘All (X-ray) eyes on Mercury’ (Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 64, Issue 4, August 2023)
Emma Bunce et al, ‘The BepiColombo Mercury Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer: Science Goals, Instrument Performance and Operations’ (Space Science Reviews: SpringerLink, volume 216, article number 126, Nov 2020)
David A. Rothery, Planet Mercury: From Pale Pink Dot to Dynamic World (Springer, 2014)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, |
| 0:07.4 | and this is one of more than a thousand episodes |
| 0:10.0 | you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this |
| 0:14.6 | edition you find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:20.0 | Hello Mercury is the planet closest to our Sun and as it's visible to the naked eye |
| 0:25.2 | it's intrigued humanity for as long as we've been here. |
| 0:28.4 | We see it as an evening or a morning star close to where the Sun has just set or is about to rise and it helped |
| 0:35.3 | Copernicus to understand that we orbit the sun and Einstein to prove his general theory |
| 0:40.4 | of relativity and for the last 50 years we've been sending missions there |
| 0:44.3 | to reveal something of its secrets and how those relate to the wider universe with |
| 0:49.0 | the latest Lepei Colombo out there in space now. |
| 0:53.4 | We need to discuss Mercury are Emma Bunce, Professor of Planetary Plasma Physics and Director of the |
| 0:58.6 | Institute for Space at the University of Leicester. |
| 1:02.1 | David Rotary, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the the University of Cambridge and |
| 1:03.0 | of Planetary Geosciences at the Open University |
| 1:06.1 | and Carolyn Crawford, a Marietas Fellow of Emmanuel College University of |
| 1:09.6 | Cambridge and Emeritus member of the Institute of Astronomy Cambridge. |
| 1:14.4 | Carolyn, before the invention of telescopes, what did we know, I think we knew, about Mercury? |
| 1:20.4 | As one of the five planets that are visible to the anaded eye, Mercury's been known about since ancient times and in fact there are recorded observations of it from the 1st millennium BC on Babylonian clay tablets. |
| 1:34.4 | And it's been observed, it changes in brightness, |
| 1:37.9 | it can be as bright as any of the stars in the sky, |
... |
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