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".

Faults from extreme tides, etc

[192939495969798999]

I thought the faults and crustal weirdness on Mercury was from the Sun's insane gravity warping and distorting the planet as it rotates and revolves around the sun (also - the super-hot temperature causes expansion on the hot side, compression on the cool side).

Re:Faults from extreme tides, etc

[TripMaster Monkey]

I wouldn't exactly call it "insane"...the Sun's tidal effects on Mercury are only about 17% greater then the Moon's tidal effects on Earth.

Re:Faults from extreme tides, etc

[nusuth]

That is incorrect, Mercury is not tidally locked with Sun. It is in 3:2 spin resonance with Sun, therefore the forces vary slowly (change direction twice for every three orbits) but they are not constant.

Ground Control to Major Tom

[Ranger]

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

Tidally Locked?

[DeeVeeAnt]

Oh no it isn't!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking#Planets
"Until radar observations in 1965 proved otherwise, it was thought that Mercury was tidally locked with the Sun. Instead, it turned out that Mercury has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun; the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit makes this resonance stable. The original reason astronomers thought it was tidally locked was because whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, so showing the same face, which would be also the case if it were totally locked."

Great.

[imnojezus]

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

spider planet

[razorh]

Spiderplanet Spiderplanet does whatever a spiderplanet does...

My Forensic Opinion

[flyneye]

Just from what I can see,it looks as though perhaps Mercury isn't as solid underneath its crust as perhaps thought.It looks to me like it was hit causing compression,sunk,then pressure pushed back up causing the cracks which may or may not have guided lava.Mercury,a bad place to visit and I wouldn't wanna live there.