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Green Meteorite Found In Morocco May Be From Mercury
An anonymous reader writes in with news that a meteorite found in Morocco might be from Mercury. "The green rock found in Morocco last year may be the first known visitor from the solar system's innermost planet, according to meteorite scientist Anthony Irving, who unveiled the new findings this month at the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The study suggests that a space rock called NWA 7325 came from Mercury, and not an asteroid or Mars."
I'd guess it was "Straight Outta Compton"
My guess is it's a snot rocket from God.
Lets break up the inevitable flood of cheesy Kryptonite jokes... I am no expert in astrogeology but I can still see how it is possible to tell that a rock dropped to Earth from space, it will have signs of being heated during entry into the Earth's atmosphere etc... I can also see how there might be a difference between planetary rocks formed during geological processes under the influence of gravity and objects that formed in space. But how is it possible to prove beyond a doubt that a rock came from a particular planet/moon in the solar system?
"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it."
"Green life? Ok, Bones, leave the ... diplomacy to me!"
Mercury's gravity is rather weak (1/20 Earth's mass), and it has no atmosphere to speak of. A rock getting enough kinetic energy to escape Mercury's gravity isn't that hard to imagine.
The tricky part of this scenario is getting the rock enough kinetic energy to boost it from Mercury's orbit out to Earth. I'd guess a slingshot around the sun was probably needed.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Apparently there are very few green-colored mercury compounds*; most of them tend to be reddish or white. So if the mercury you left in the fridge is turning green, because you've got a bunch of chromate ions floating around inside, you've got at least two problems in your fridge... and you don't usually see that kind of behaviour in a major appliance.
(* That's based on Google/Wikipedia searches; it's been a while since I've done real chemistry, and it's possible there's also some green organometallic mercury compound, but most of the ones I could find were reds or whites. It's also possible that you've got some mercury-tolerant molds growing on the organic debris floating on top of your bowl of mercury, but I'm still not gonna eat anything from your fridge.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You're obviously not from a rural town. Whenever an older woman who never appeared pregnant magically shows up with a baby, that means her 16 year-old daughter who went to "California" for a year got knocked up. "Krypton" ain't nothing but the back seat of Jed's Camaro; coincidentally on his "hey y'all watch this" night down at that abandoned nuclear silo.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
any high speed impact in which the ejecta achieves escape velocity. Fairly easy to do, if you have either a large enough impactor or one moving fast enough (28,000mph is fairly slow yet fast enough to achieve escape velocity even in Earth's gravity influence).
BTW, there are other bodies in the solar system, other than Earth, with active volcanoes. Two examples: Venus and Io. In fact, Io is the most geologically active body in the entire solar system, due solely to its proximity to Jupiter and the fact that there is a thirty Terawatt polar torus connecting the two. Io's volcanoes regularly throw debris into orbit.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I'd guess a slingshot around the sun was probably needed.
It's got to be something massive moving relative to the Sun, probably Mercury and/or Venus.
Well, there's only one way, really. You go to that planet or moon, pick up a rock, and bring it home. We can prove beyond a doubt that the moon rocks the astronauts brought home did, in fact, come from Earth's moon. At least, that's where they most recently came from before coming to Earth.
However, in "Science Journalism" which is something loosely inspired by sloppy research and egregious overstatements made by scientists while pumping for grants and attention, if a rock has characteristics that resemble the characteristics of rocks found on some other planet or moon, we confidently state that it came from there. It's called "leaping to conclusions", and misrepresenting hypotheses in this way is a big industry that forms the basis of Science Journalism.
Take the Big Bang theory for an example. We have a working theory, based on a real observation (that all matter we can detect appears to be expanding outwards from a point) and nobody has come up with a better explanation (yet) so in the world of Science Journalism it's an incontrovertible fact that all matter was once contained in a single point. See how that works? You just jump straight from "this is an idea that represents a possibility, which we can work with" to "this is absolute truth that only heretics and savages don't worship".
It's this kind of abandonment of logic and reason, and the substitution of pseudo-scientific dogma for true skepticism or conditional belief, that allows stuff like global warming denialism to prosper. You deflect the conversation from what's reasonable and logically provable to a discussion of the relative stature of the priests, er, I meant scientists, and their religious, er, I meant political affiliations. Evidence be damned, I have magazines.