Here is an absolutely spectacular picture of Mercury from a new NASA space probe. It pretty much confirms that Mercury is not a place anyone would want to live, and it is an amazing example of technology in action. The physics of getting a space probe to travel across hundreds of millions of miles to be in exactly the right place at the right time is exacting and difficult; it's nice to know, in midst of this economic downturn, that we still have the capacity to get some very hard stuff done and done right.