PLANET POCKMARKS -- Irregular hollows on Mercury's surface appear as odd blue pockmarks in this enhanced-color image from MESSENGER. NASA, JHU APL, Carnegie Institution of Washington
Posted on 11/26/2011 6:03:38 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Hot and heavy little Mercury is warming up to NASA's MESSENGER probe and revealing its true planetary colors -- in enhanced-color images. Among the spacecraft's finds are bizarre landforms (shown here in blue) tucked inside impact craters on the planet's surface.
David Blewett of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and his colleagues report these puzzling scarlike hollows in the Sept. 30 Science, which features seven papers describing the compact world. The pits resemble sunken Swiss cheese holes -- smooth, rimless depressions that vary in size between several meters and a few kilometers across. Irregularly shaped, the clustered hollows don't look purely volcanic in origin, but instead make some areas appear as though the planet's innards are leaking away.
That's exactly what scientists speculate might be happening. They propose that impacts exposed unstable material from Mercury's interior to the planet's harsh surface. Whether baked off by the sun, blasted away by the solar wind, blown skyward by volcanoes or simply burped out, the stuff disappeared, leaving these pits behind.
But that's not all MESSENGER has seen -- another report shows that Mercury's surface itself comprises different ingredients than terrestrial bodies like Earth and the moon. And, the charged planet -- though possessing a magnetic field and surrounded by swirling electrons -- doesn't wear radiation belts like Earth's.
MESSENGER has circled the solar system's smallest planet since March, carrying an array of instruments that peer at and beneath Mercury's surface in an attempt to become more familiar with this dense, mysterious world.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
PLANET POCKMARKS -- Irregular hollows on Mercury's surface appear as odd blue pockmarks in this enhanced-color image from MESSENGER. NASA, JHU APL, Carnegie Institution of Washington
Was Mercury a ‘hit-and-run’ planet?
MSNBC Space News | Jan. 11, 2006 | By Robert Roy Britt
Posted on 01/26/2006 1:26:47 AM EST by Swordmaker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1565199/posts
Mercury’s spin reveals molten, not solid core
Reuters | Thursday, May 3, 2007 | Julie Steenhuysen
Posted on 05/03/2007 10:51:50 PM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1828141/posts
When the four terrestrial planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars - are placed side by side, it's clear their size distribution is close to symmetrical, with the two largest lying between the two smallest (Illustration: NASA)
:’) The blue spots are actually top secret NASA swimming pools.
Thanks cripplecreek.
New horizons is my favorite one so I keep tabs.
“A watched pot never boils” comes to mind.
I’m thinking it’s copper. They need to change the name of the planet to Copper.
:’) That’s apropos.
actually, if you look all the way to the right, there is a upside down face with a head band on it and goatee
Copper boiling just under the surface ready for the taking..
I guess that would mean we’d never take it alive.
Looks more like an upside-down Willendorf Venus to me.
Yeah, either that or Willie Nelson.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
