A Geophysical Research Letters study led by Gaku Nishiyama finds Mercury’s cooling core is shrinking the planet up to 30% faster than earlier estimates, by as much as 14.5 miles—nearly 1% of its 1,516-mile radius—versus a few miles before.

The estimate comes from surface wrinkle ridges; the author notes interior contraction may be faster and harder to see.

The column uses that cooling, plus spinal-disc compression and osteoporosis, as a joke about human height loss, not as a claim that people and planets shrink by the same process.

I’ve always felt a certain affinity for Mercury. Maybe that’s because Mercury is by far the smallest planet in our solar system — about 1/29th the width of Jupiter and just one-third the width of Earth — and I’m not a giant myself.

Mercury is becoming even smaller — it’s actually shrinking.

Apparently, when Mercury formed about 4.5 billion years ago in the primordial collisions of the early solar system, it was much hotter than it is now. Over many millennia since then, its metallic........

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