Mystery Rising Within Mercury

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Mystery Rising Within Mercury

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 21, 2012 @04:30PM from the rising-mecury dept.

astroengine writes "Something besides volcanic eruptions and asteroid and comet impacts has sculpted the surface of Mercury — an unknown process, possibly still going on today, that causes the ground to swell from the inside out. The evidence, collected by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft currently orbiting the innermost planet, is scattered all over Mercury, including a dramatic finding that half of the floor of the biggest crater on the planet has been raised above the walls. The MESSENGER team's findings were announced at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston on Wednesday and will be published in this week's Science."

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Mystery Rising Within Mercury? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-21 16:34 · Score: 5, Funny

So it has come to this.
1. Re:Mystery Rising Within Mercury? by The+Snowman · 2012-03-21 17:14 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  So it has come to this.
  Nah, it's just the Slashdot effect...
  No, XKCD.
  
  --
  24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
2. Re:Mystery Rising Within Mercury? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-21 18:55 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  So it has come to this?
  So it has come to this.
  Come to this, so it has.
3. Re:Mystery Rising Within Mercury? by grcumb · 2012-03-21 22:17 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Come to what?
  You. Me. Mercury. The Rising.
  
  --
  Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
4. Re:Mystery Rising Within Mercury? by flyneye · 2012-03-21 23:33 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  In Soviet Union, this comes to it.
  
  --
  *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
space worm/moth metamorphasis by ThorGod · 2012-03-21 16:37 · Score: 5, Funny

I predict the billion year "planet" phase of the great space moth is nearing completion. In another million years, the beautiful space moth will spread its wings and fly away.

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PS: I don't reply to ACs.
It's the Mycon by MichaelusWF · 2012-03-21 16:43 · Score: 5, Funny

This is a special place, filled with Juffo-Wup. But it is not the source
What about this is unusual? by snookums · 2012-03-21 16:50 · Score: 5, Interesting

I didn't see any mention in the linked article about what makes these features particularly odd. It says parts of the crust are tilted and raised by several kilometers in places. This is pretty commonplace geology caused by plate tectonics here on Earth (we call them mountain ranges). If Mercury has a liquid mantle, would we not expect to see similar folding and up-thrusting there? Is this different because of the size, shape, speed of movement?

--
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
1. Re:What about this is unusual? by stuckinarut · 2012-03-21 17:33 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Perhaps try the BBC article: Mercury has been 'dynamic world'
  "Many scientists believed that Mercury was much like the Moon - that it cooled off very early in Solar System history, and has been a dead planet throughout most of its evolution," said Maria Zuber, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
  
  "Now, we're finding compelling evidence for unusual dynamics within the planet, indicating that Mercury was apparently active for a long time."
  
  Dr Zuber and her colleagues used laser measurements from Messenger to map out a large number of impact craters, and found that many had tilted over time. This suggests that geological processes within the planet have re-shaped Mercury's terrain after the craters were created.
  
  A process called polar wander can cause geological features to shift around on a planet's surface.
  
  In theory, the process of convection going on within the mantle could drive such changes. But Dr Zuber said this would be unusual in Mercury's case, because the mantle is so thin.
  
  Another potential explanation could be that features on the surface were distorted as the planet's interior cooled and contracted. This fits in with observations that some surface features on Mercury have been exposed to high levels of stress.
2. Re:What about this is unusual? by Errtu76 · 2012-03-21 19:39 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  You must be new here.
Re:just guessing by The+Snowman · 2012-03-21 17:21 · Score: 3, Informative
Remember, Mercury is very close to the largest gravity well in the solar system.
According to wikipedia:
- Mercury's surface is flexed by significant tidal bulges raised by the Sun - the Sun's tides on Mercury are about 17 times stronger than the Moon's on Earth.
- In the 1880s Giovanni Schiaparelli mapped the planet more accurately, and suggested that Mercury's rotational period was 88 days, the same as its orbital period due to tidal locking.
Seems plausible given I am a computer scientist and not an astrophysicist.
--
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Re:just guessing by c0lo · 2012-03-21 18:10 · Score: 4, Informative

In the 1880s Giovanni Schiaparelli mapped the planet more accurately, and suggested that Mercury's rotational period was 88 days, the same as its orbital period due to tidal locking.
Seems plausible given I am a computer scientist and not an astrophysicist.
Seems plausible that you are a computer geek: there's a bug in your citation (scientists wouldn't do it, they live or die on publishing; nobody would read articles based on old references).
The same source brings some "news" about the rotational period being 58.7 Earth days and the "tidal lock" being actually a spin-orbit resonance with a 3:2 ratio (1 "year" = 1.5 "days").

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Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Why so much core? by MichaelSmith · 2012-03-21 18:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

Makes me wonder if Mercury was once the core of a much larger planet, and rhe mantle got knocked off in an impact.

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http://michaelsmith.id.au
Swelling from the inside out by Swampash · 2012-03-21 22:28 · Score: 3, Funny

As opposed to the other sort of swelling.
Re:just guessing by Lumpy · 2012-03-21 22:36 · Score: 3, Funny

No,no. I'll give him computer scientist. Considering how utterly craptastic software has been, There is very little expectation for computer scientists to actually do anything right.
Computer Science is the only profession next to Meteorology where you can be wrong most of the time and keep your job.

--
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Re:just guessing by Dragon+Bait · 2012-03-21 23:49 · Score: 5, Funny

No,no. I'll give him computer scientist. Considering how utterly craptastic software has been, There is very little expectation for computer scientists to actually do anything right.
Computer Science is the only profession next to Meteorology where you can be wrong most of the time and keep your job.
I don't know. Most senators are re-elected for life.
Arrogance of geomodelers? by gstrickler · 2012-03-22 01:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Our geochemistry colleagues kept sending us back to the showers saying 'Your gravity field can't be right because none of the internal structure models are fitting.' But we do now know that we got the gravity field right. It was very difficult."
If the measurements don't fit your models, it doesn't mean the measurements are wrong. It could be measurement error, but it's more likely that your models are wrong. And they call themselves scientists.

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make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Re:just guessing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-22 01:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

You're thinking of software engineering.
Computer scientists are to software engineers like mathematicians are to ... regular engineers.
Re:just guessing by RenderSeven · 2012-03-22 03:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

COMPUTER SCIENCE: A study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision of the former and the success of the latter.
- Stan Kelly-Bootle