Messenger Discovers "Spider" Crater on Mercury

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."

Comments

Evidence of Water!

[ErroneousBee]

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".

Ground Control to Major Tom

[Ranger]

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

Great.

[imnojezus]

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

spider planet

[razorh]

Spiderplanet Spiderplanet does whatever a spiderplanet does...