Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Messenger Discovers "Spider" Crater on Mercury

Posted by Soulskill on from the hey-look-at-that dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property brings us a Washington Post story which discusses how scientists are finding surprises among the pictures sent back from Mercury by the Messenger spacecraft. In particular, images depicting a crater with over 100 troughs radiating out from it are stumping researchers. The crater is referred to as 'The Spider', and it occupies a basin that has turned out to be larger than once thought. NASA also has a discussion of the crater. The Messenger craft began taking the up-close photos earlier this month. From the Post: "Scientists were also surprised by evidence of ancient volcanoes on many parts of the planet's surface and how different it looks compared with the moon, which is about the same size. Unlike the moon, Mercury has huge cliffs, as well as formations snaking hundreds of miles that indicate patterns of fault activity from Mercury's earliest days, more than 4 billion years ago."

9 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Cosmic Water balloon by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 2, Funny

    Its a cosmic water balloon strike.
    A comet impacted and splatted its matter all over.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  2. Hmm... by jwietelmann · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is it the Great Stone Ass of Mars? http://www.gotfuturama.com/Multimedia/EpisodeSounds/3ACV10/09.mp3

    1. Re:Hmm... by audubon · · Score: 2, Funny

      Looks like Uranus.

  3. Evidence of Water! by ErroneousBee · · Score: 3, Funny

    Clearly, those are water channels running into the crater.

    Obviously at some point Mercury was hollow and covered by an ocean, then an asteroid hits, punctures the surface, and the ocean drains into the center of the planet, creating the channels we see today.

    Now, I know there are those who will say "but liquid water cant exist that close to the sun".
    Well, to those people I say "Its not called Mercury for nothing".

    --
    **TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
  4. Ground Control to Major Tom by Ranger · · Score: 5, Funny

    "The spiders are on not on Mars. Get your ass over to Mercury!"

    --
    "You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
  5. Great. by imnojezus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now I get to have nightmares about "Mercurian Crater Spiders". Thanks Slashdot.

  6. spider planet by razorh · · Score: 5, Funny

    Spiderplanet Spiderplanet does whatever a spiderplanet does...

  7. The Shadows are comming. by jellomizer · · Score: 2, Funny

    It is a Shadow Ship. Hiding for thousands of years. Waiting for the year 2268

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:The Shadows are comming. by N1ck0 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Its clearly the impression of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. See for yourself the picture and indentations match perfectly.

      After creating the universe he surely had to stop somewhere for a brief rest. And we all know that since the 1800 there has been an increase in discovering impact craters, colliding galaxies, planets, black holes, cosmic ray bursts, etc. These number of these events are also in inverse correlation to the amount of pirates remaining on earth. Thus this is proof that the 'pirate effect' is clearly not isolated to our planet.