What's shiny,
liquid,
conducts electricity,
and is also the surname of a legendary rock star?
You guessed it, mercury.
This naturally occurring element has a lot of uses,
but it's also quite dangerous.
Even a tiny amount can be poisonous.
So what if we had oceans of it?
This is WHAT IF and here's what would happen if
Before we go diving into a pool of mercury,
we'd better learn about its properties.
Mercury is the only metal that exists
as a liquid at room temperature.
Both water and mercury
turn into gas or vapor at higher temperatures,
yet as a basic element,
mercury doesn't break down like water.
It merely changes state.
This makes it toxic to ingest
and especially volatile,
as it often ends up accumulating
in our soil,
oceans,
and in many sea creatures we like to eat.
A lot of this is as a result
of human-made mercury emissions,
from the burning of fossil fuels,
gold mining,
or the mineral extraction of cinnabar (HgS).
Mercury works especially well as an amalgam,
or metal alloy,
making it great for extracting gold from rocks,
forming tooth fillings with silver,
or extending battery life by bonding with zinc.
It also expands and contracts
with changes in temperature,
making mercury
a key ingredient in thermometers.
Although it's incredibly useful,
what would a whole ocean of mercury
do to our planet?
Perhaps the most immediate change we'd notice
is a whole lot of objects
floating up to the surface,
which may be great
for treasure hunters
or cryptozoologists.
Hey, look. Is that Nessie over there?
Oh, wait, never mind.
Just another log.
Literally anything sunken throughout history
would come flying up to the surface,
making the ocean a massive floating dump.
This is because mercury
is 13.5 times denser than water,
making it incredibly buoyant.
According to Archimedes Principle,
the upward buoyant force
exerted on a body immersed in a fluid
is equal to the weight
of the fluid that is displaced.
Like salt water,
mercury has a higher density than freshwater,
so most objects will float to the top
but be unable to find equilibrium.
Even an anvil.
So brace yourselves, fearless sea travelers.
Your boats are going to lose balance
and tip right over.
And if you happen to fall into the ocean,
you'd make a little splash
and bob around like a human buoy.
In fact, if you had a good set of flippers
or incredible balance,
you could try to walk across the ocean.
But enough of the antics,
we've got a looming problem
concerning the basic necessities.
With no water left in the ocean,
we'd have to produce it artificially in a lab.
We likely wouldn't have enough energy
to produce enough water
for the entire global population.
We might end up waging war over the stuff
in post-apocalyptic desert battles.
Okay, that's if we manage to endure
any of the planetary effects.
Surprisingly, changing our oceans to mercury
would only increase Earth's mass by 0.26%.
Thankfully, this wouldn't be enough to cause
any drastic changes to our orbit or gravity,
but the added weight on the Earth's mantle
would put a lot more pressure on tectonic plates.
This would trigger catastrophic earthquakes
and volcanoes all over the world,
killing billions, if not every living thing, on Earth.
Sorry to burst your mercury bubble.
Even if you managed to survive,
the atmosphere could kill you.
Clouds of mercury would form
and the air we breathe
would contain poisonous mercury vapor,
causing severe neurological problems
like anxiety,
memory problems
and tremors.
We'd have to wear masks 24/7
and also a whole lot of sunscreen.
With its shiny metal surface,
mercury has a higher albedo,
or reflectivity, than snow,
meaning we'd have a lot more
solar radiation to contend with.
All this increased radiation
could lead to a cooling effect,
significantly lowering
the overall global temperature of the Earth.
I guess the silvery lining here is that
we might actually solve global warming.
Only briefly though.
Humankind probably wouldn't survive very long
in the severe toxicity of a liquid mercury planet,
but back in the real world,
maybe we could at least learn
practical ways of staying afloat
and surviving on a sinking ship.
It's all here in our new series, How to Survive.