Petri: Mercury has ice! Does Venus have gin?

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NASA announced Thursday afternoon that, after careful study, they had concluded that the substance in the polar regions of Mercury was water ice.

Mercury has ice, and we should come over. It has tons of ice, in fact. Enough ice, Gizmodo says, "to cover the capital of the United States." That's an idea I think we can get behind!

Nothing good comes out of here anyway, except hot air, tangles of regulation and failures to reform the filibuster.

The hot air might cause the ice some problems, but if it can survive on the dark side of Mercury, much closer to big, gassy sources of as much heat as light, it can probably cope.

NASA noted that there was "no other compound" the discovery could be besides ice. And it might even contain the same rich soup of organic substances that led to human existence, probably brought by the same comet collisions!

Sure, the Mars Discovery still has yet to turn up any Radical New Signs of Life to write home about.

But hey, Mercury has ice! This is exactly what Mercury would be expected to bring to the potluck.

It can throw a small, staid party now, assuming someone else brings the whiskey.

Maybe Venus has vermouth or gin, and we can really turn this into something.