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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."
Before I render my highly scientific verdict, I would like to point out that I went to public school, and nearly flunked because I would ignore the teachers and just read the stupid books. Because of this I believe that most "science" is just an assortment of well defined lies that we developed in order to receive government research grants. ; )
Verdict: I say that the hotter a planet, the more likely that it would have a large amount of liquids. After all, a "solid" becomes a liquid at high enough heat. You want an simple example? Here you go... lava is just "liquid" rock!!!!
On the reverse side, ice is just "solid" water! As a matter of fact, Pluto is a solid, but if it was closer to the sun, it would be little more than a large pool of liquid!!!
Now that is science...
P.S. "Scientifically" speaking, all matter, despite its state (solid, liquid, gas, and "maybe" plasma) is nothing but a collection of energy. We have not found anything is which, on a subatomic level, is not composed mostly of nothing. None of the sub-atomic "particles" touch each other (photons, neutrons, and electrons do not touch), so everything, at its base level is simply energy that we interpret as being "solid". Ironically (to me at least) in a world that is completely comprised of energy, we say that there is a finite amount of energy to go around....
P.P.S. (Post Post Script!!!)When it is more on topic, I will rant on the "black matter/energy/big bang theory!!!!