Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

THE (MOSTLY) HORRIBLY DEADLY PLANETS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM WITH PROFESSOR NOVA NEFARIOUS

WELCOME TO YOUR FIRST CLASS, MY BUDDING EVIL-DOERS! The first item on our dastardly tour of the Universe is a stroll around our cosmic neighborhood: THE SOLAR SYSTEM. There's plenty of havoc to be wreaked with this little collection of planets (if you know where to look. ONWARDS AND UPWARDS! (This is a saying in rocket science ever since the first experimental "DOWNWARDS LAUNCH" mission ended very badly.)

MERCURY The first stop on our tour of the mostly horribly deadly planets in our Solar System is Tiny little Mercury-the closest planet to the Sun. QUICK QUIZ: WHAT'S THE WEATHER LIKE ON MERCURY? If you said "PRETTY HOT"... you're only half right. PLEASE TRY HARDER NEXT TIME. The side of Mercury facing the Sun gets roasted to more than 750°F—about as hot as a pizza oven... mmm, space pizza-but the side facing away from the Sun is colder than winter at the North Pole (around -275°F). There are even some deep craters at Mercury's north pole that have ice in them.

WHY DOES THIS EXTREME TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCE EXIST? It's because Mercury is too puny to hang on to an atmosphere. Here on Earth, it never gets too cold at night because the blanket of air around us traps some of the Sun's heat. But Mercury is NAKED, atmosphere-wise. So at night, there's nothing between it and the freezing darkness of space.

MERCURY IS LUCKY TO EXIST AT ALL. We think the ball of iron we call Mercury might be the leftover core of a MUCH BIGGER PLANET that got its outer layers smashed off by a cosmic collision billions of years ago. Although it's fun to wonder if an alien supervillain was doing some homework for their "explode a planet" course, it was probably a MASSIVE asteroid that did it. HOW LONG COULD YOU SURVIVE ON MERCURY? It depends where you are. On the daytime hot-as-a-pizza- oven side, you'd be chargrilled in less than a minute. On the night-time colder-than-the-North- Pole side, you'd be an icicle in about the same time. But the exact middle point would be just about safe... though you'd have to keep running to stay in the safe zone!