NASA: There’s enough ice on Mercury to encase Washington, D.C.

New evidence suggests Mercury's north polar region contains large deposits of ice. (NASA/Johns Hopkins Univers …NASA's Messenger spacecraft has discovered evidence that the planet Mercury has enough ice on its surface to encase Washington, D.C., in a block two and a half miles deep.

"For more than 20 years the jury has been deliberating on whether the planet closest to the Sun hosts abundant water ice in its permanently shadowed polar regions," writes Sean Solomon of the Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the principal investigator of the Messenger mission. The spacecraft "has now supplied a unanimous affirmative verdict."

via ca.news.yahoo.com