Mystery Rising Within Mercury 120
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."
Arrogance of geomodelers? (Score:5, 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.
Re:just guessing (Score:3, Insightful)
You're thinking of software engineering.
Computer scientists are to software engineers like mathematicians are to ... regular engineers.
Re:just guessing (Score:4, Insightful)
- Stan Kelly-Bootle