Planet Mercury is Slowly Shrinking

by
in space on (#3G5)
story imageAccording to a research published by Nature Geoscience, but not yet online, the planet "Mercury shrunk by more than 7 kilometers in radius over past 4 billion years". Using analysis of NASA's Messenger probe , researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science say the planet lost seven kilometers (more than four miles) of elevation in some areas, over the course of four billion years. Scientists first suggested the phenomenon in the mid-1970s, when the Mariner 10 probe passed the planet in three flybys.

Re: If only (Score: 4, Informative)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-03-17 15:32 (#MB)

Interesting, I didn't know any of this stuff. Relevant clip:

"Mercury, on the other hand, has only one solid shell for a crust, rather than Earth's many plates that shift about. As Mercury's molten iron core has cooled over the billions of years since the planet formed, it has contracted and the shell of rock surrounding it has cracked and shifted to accommodate the smaller size. Today, the signs of those changes are written all over the face of Mercury. "Some of these things are really, really big," said Paul Byrne of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Lunar and Planetary Institute. "There are some truly gargantuan cliffs on Mercury." Bryne is the lead author of a paper presenting the results in the March 16 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. The greater shrinkage corresponds to a model of the planet with a much larger iron core, said McKinnon."


I'd love to see an artist's rendering of what those gargantuan cliffs must look like, says the guy who's afraid of heights.
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