LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Mercury (Planet)
built 627 days ago
The impact that created Mercury's Texas-sized Caloris Basin equaled roughly 1,000,000,000,000 1-megaton hydrogen bombs. The shockwave from the collision was so powerful it created a hilly region the size of Germany and France on the opposite side of the planet.
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Mercury's magnetopause and magnetotail are calculated by combining a previous approach of using the dipole displacement from the planet center with an improved magnetotail field calculation. The fits are obtained using five variable parameters, namely the strength of the compressed dipole field, the tilt of the dipole axis, the displacement of the dipole along the rotation axis, and the displacement of the dipole along the y axis. Results are computed by optimizing the vector standard deviations. The rms deviation of the data is reduced from 10 or 11 gamma to 9.3 gamma. Best fits for a dipole displacement of 0.0285 planet radius (earlier, 0.026) toward the dawn in the magnetic equatorial plane, and 0.17 planet radius (earlier, 0.189) northward along the magnetic dipole axis are obtained.
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It is named after the Roman god Mercury who was the god of commerce, travel and thievery. Originally it was given two names by the Greeks from who the Romans stole their mythology. Apollo ruled as the morning so it is named for that since it moves across the sky during the day. Hermes is the god of evening and Mercury was named after him because of its daily course.[Arnett]
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Additionally, at many sites Mercury takes on different epithets, implying almost a separate identity, notably Artaios [bear], Moccus [pig, boar], and Visucius. Other epithets, denoting shades of differing identity, are Arvernus, Cissonius, and Gebrinius. And despite the lack of a shared epithet, Mercury may ... be linked to Teutates, the Gaulish war-god. Lastly, although never linked directly to Cúchulainn, Gaulish Mercury may find echoes in that hero's first name, Setanta.
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The ancient astronomers named the planet that seemed to them to be moving fastest "Mercury". It makes a revolution of the sun in a mere 88 days. As the messenger god, Mercury was reputed to be among the swiftest of the gods, and as the ancients associated their polytheistic gods with the heavens it was an easy correlation to make.
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There is the added interest that between December 9 and 12 Mercury will appear in close company with Mars and Jupiter. By then the planets will be low in a strongly twilit sky.
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Mercury (Planet)