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Mercury May Have Molten Hot Magma at its Core
mattatwork writes "According to ScienceDaily, NASA has come to the conclusion that the planet Mercury may have a molten core after all, based on high-precision planetary radar readings. You may (or may not) remember the Mariner 10 probe making 3 passes by Mercury between March 29th, 1974, September 21st 1974 and March 16, 1975."
Mercury May Have Molten Hot Magma at its Core
Excellent. This means they'll be able to serve McDonald's apple pies when they put the first restaurant on Mercury.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Buy the new Mercury Bar, with a molten caramel core!
No more hard frozen Mars Bars. Let the chocolatey warmth flow through you.
As opposed to solid, cold magma?
if its not, im not buyin.
Read radical news here
"Magma: Molten rock beneath the surface of the earth." http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+magma "Molten hot magma" If it's magma, it's molten, molten rock is pretty much definately hot.
it is quite odd that mercury has a liquid metal core but a very weak magnetic field- planetary magnetic fields form when currents flow through a liquid core- the rotating core sustains the field as on earth, the sun and jupiter but mercury's is very weak- apparently it isn't rotating much
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
This is compared with the recent discovery of mud-like sludge in the core of Uranus.
You know, Scott. I've been a frickin' evil doctor for 30 frickin' years, OK? Cut me some "frickin'" slack. You forget Scott. We're in a volcano. We're surrounded by liquid hot magma.
What is magma but liquid rock?
What is water but liquid ice?
If I was on a planet far awa frmo the sune, all the ice would be no different then rock. In fact, On that planet the rock could be magma at 0 Centigrade.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Love 'em. Love 'em soo much! Please keep them coming. Er, if magma is molten rock under the surface of the Earth, how the hell did it get to Mercury?!
Shouldn't the title be, "Mercury May Mask a Molten Middle"?
It appears the moderators are a bit young for Austin Powers and Dougie... hmmm how long ago was it now? *reaches over to his DVD collection*
Mag-ma!
I am quite surprised that this article wasn't taged "frickin lasers" or "sharks".
Couldn't stand the weather
No orbits are circular, unless one of the objects were to have no mass. Where you been since Kepler yo!
elliptic baby, orbits are elliptic.
A blog about stuff.
Certainly not to "Molten Hot Magma". An oxymoron is a compound phrase consisting of two or more components that are opposite in meaning, like "Jumbo Shrimp".
Molten Hot Magma gets the Award of Triple Redundancy Award.
Let's hold Mercury ransom for... one million dollars!
of course it is hot inside, it is, as are all other planets, growing from the inside. (!)
http://www.continuitystudios.net/clip00.html
http://www.nealadams.com/nmu.html
http://www.wincom.net/earthexp/n/navback.htm
This may change some of the basic assumptions we have regarding planet formation and tectonic activity. Terrestrial/rocky planets start out molten due to heat of accretion and differentiate as they cool. In a way, the Earth and now apparently Mercury are actually still forming because they are partially molten.
An example of a completely cooled-off, solidified planet would be Mars. It was generally thought that Mars is no longer tectonically active - no long molten in the middle - because it is smaller than the Earth and thus cooled off faster. But Mercury is smaller than both planets and still tectonically active. Perhaps size doesn't matter after all.
Tidal forces should have little effect on Mercury since it's already tidally locked. The same side always faces the sun. The locking occurred because Mercury was once rotating, and tidal forces mostly affect rotating planets. They stretch the planet out like an egg pointing at the sun and Mercury is probably a little egg-shaped.
When the planet is rotating, the tidal force axis swings around all longitudes during the day and it's as if the sun were rolling the planet between its fingers. It gets squashed and stretched every day. Eventually the interior of the planet absorbs all of the rotational energy as heat through this mechanism. The same thing is happening on Jupiter's innermost moon Io, which is not yet tidally locked. Io is covered with volcanoes because its rotational energy is still being converted into internal energy by tidal forces from Jupiter, and there is no hydrosphere to absorb the energy.
If there are no oceans then the solar torque gets applied directly to rock with no cushion in the way. If the planet has oceans, they absorb almost all of it since they give more easily than rock and the sun will apply its torque to the planet via the water, so that the energy loss mechanism occurs at the surface. Either waves crash onto beaches, or if there are no continents, a standing wave circles the planet every day and heats up the water a little bit, so the heat mostly radiates away.
I don't know offhand whether Mercury got its molten interior from its ancient rotational energy or just from radioactivity.
You're a pretty good example of how not teaching basic logic and how to avoid fallacious reasoning in school are so desperately needed. I can't imagine how you came to think the above argument (such as it is) has any meaning, but I truly pity anybody who has to rely upon your reasoning to reach any sound conclusion.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...that a trailing slash crept into the Mercury 10 link. Oops.
Don't listen to this guy. Mercury is not tidally locked with the sun, but rotates very slowly at about 3 rotations for every 2 revolutions around the sun. And even more, an ocean does not act as any sort of a buffer against gravitational forces from the sun. There's just not a significant enough amount of water even on Earth to do so.
The corrected link to the Wikipedia article: the Mariner 10 probe
Mercury is not tidally locked with the sun, but rotates very slowly at about 3 rotations for every 2 revolutions around the sun.
I forgot my Mercury trivia; they used to think it was locked before they found the 3/2 resonance. Since the resonance is stable, rotational energy is not being affected anymore. But then that means tidal forces are still heating Mercury over a 1400 hour cycle. The heat loss from friction is probably coming out of the orbital energy making the orbit unstable.
And even more, an ocean does not act as any sort of a buffer against gravitational forces from the sun. There's just not a significant enough amount of water even on Earth to do so.
OK, so the water transmits zero torque until there's how much of it then?
Most of the torque being applied to slow the earth down is transmitted at two hydrosphere/lithosphere boundaries: the one between the inner and outer core, and the one between the crust and the oceans. This is because unlike solid rock, fluids are free to slosh around horizontally. The outer core has more mass but the moment arm and surface area are both bigger for the oceanic boundary.
Tagged at as such...
The value of Mercury-based real estate has sky-rocketed today,
as evil geniuses the world over vie for the best plots on what seems
likely to become the solar systems new secret evil lair 'hot spot'.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
I can't find the paper anywhere.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I'm just wondering.
does it have a Blackwing Lair?
mercurial?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I would imagine its proximity to the sun plays a part in it; hot objects in cooler areas cool off faster than hot objects in warmer areas, after all. It's true that mercury is considerably smaller than mars, but its proximity to the sun, and all of its heat, is considerably closer than mars is. After all, the surface temperature of Mercury is, what, 400 some degrees when facing the sun?
Even if this is true, however, intuitively speaking, it kinda doesn't seem like it would be enough to keep the core active. Perhaps the composition of the planet plays a part? I seem to remember Mercury having a very high concentration of metals, for example, whereas Mars has a smaller concentration (percentage wise). Would this have anything to do with it?
Thats one hot core.
I wonder, would it be less hot, if Mercury had dual core???
You may (or may not) remember the Mariner 10 probe making 3 passes by Mercury between March 29th, 1974, September 21st 1974 and March 16, 1975."
Sure I remember young whipper snappers! And then the talkies came and Vaudeville was dead..
I'm pretty sure I'm an "old man" here and I was less than a year old then so I can't say I remember.
I remember those Mariner missions very well. I remember them just as well as the last time I got laid. Better, actually, since the Mariner missions were more recent.
The memories are a lot alike for me. I was like a little spacecraft, looking for my target in the darkness of the space under the blankets. My goal was huge. Literally, she was the size of Mercury. And she was hot too. Sweaty hot. Uncomfortable and slippery sweaty hot. I snuck a little camera in there and took some blurry low resolution pictures of something that looked like a crater. At least I didn't enter a permanent solar orbit.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I'm very dissapointed by this news. I was hoping that it had a nougat core or was full of toys and candy.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
damn you're geek !
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
OK, so the water transmits zero torque until there's how much of it then?
Oh come on, you made a stupid claim. There's no "cushion" to solar torque (well perhaps a couple of minor ones). The bedrock experiences as much tidal force as before. And since it is around 8000 miles thick and about a factor of five denser than ocean, the counterforce from the slightly higher water levels isn't relevant. The other effect is that the rotation is slowed somewhat more than it would otherwise be which reduces the frequency of tidal force expansions and contractions.Hmmm, maybe I'm wrong. I still don't like how you explained it though.
...thinking to myself "What could possibly lie at Mercury's core". I went through a mental checklist. Cheese? No. Highly compacted fluffy bunnies? No. A sphere of pure neutronium? No. And then I got to hot molten magma and I thought "yup, it's gonna be pretty hot down there and Mercury is probably made of rock, so that sounds right." And guess what, now some scientists are saying the same thing. Amazing how far you can get just thinking in your armchair.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Tidal forces are the driving factor for maintaining a liquid core. Europa, Io, Earth, Titan, and now Mercury illustrate this. Mars is larger and closer to the sun than all these moons, but has no tidal forces. 1. Our own moon violates this rule (it should be heated by the tidal force of the earth). When all is said and done I think we'll find that the moon's core is, if not molten, certainly heated. 2. Venus has a liquid core I believe, and it has no companion, no tidal forces. Yes, I realize these statements contradict. Just throwing them out for discussion.