For many years, scientists viewed Mercury as a world that no longer had an active geological history. The planet appears to be almost completely uniform, dry, barren, and mostly unchanged for the past 10 billion years. However, new evidence from Dr. Valentin Bickel and his colleagues suggests that this view of Mercury may be inadequate and that Mercury is actually continuing to release materials from its interior today. An international collaboration led by Dr. Valentin Bickel at the Center for Space and Habitability, University of Bern, together with participants from the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS and the Astronomical Observatory of Padua, Italy, has produced the first complete survey of slope streaks on the planet Mercury, also known as “lineae.” This study revealed that these bright streaks, which appear as very narrow, elongated stripes running down steep slopes within impact craters, are the result of the escape of volatiles from beneath the surface of Mercury. The findings demonstrate that the planet is still more active than previously thought. To conduct a worldwide census …