The Planet Mercury Appears to Have Shrunken Drastically, "Like a Balloon Left Out in the Cold"

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Scientists say that the planet Mercury has been actively shrinking over the billions of years that it’s orbited the Sun, a process that’s leaving cracked-up wrinkles behind like an old apple .

At just one-third the size of Earth, it’s already the smallest planet in our solar system — it’s larger than Pluto, but Pluto is no longer classified as a planet — in a title it’s bound to hold on to as its continues to diminish in physical size.

Now, as detailed in a new paper by a team of scientists from the German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) Institute of Space Research, the oddball planet’s shrivelling could be occurring at an even faster-than-expected rate, losing up to 14.5 miles of total diameter since it formed billions of years ago. That’s anywhere from ten to 30 percent more than previously thought.