Messenger Discovers "Spider" Crater on Mercury 74
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property brings us a Washington Post story which discusses how scientists are finding surprises among the pictures sent back from Mercury by the Messenger spacecraft. In particular, images depicting a crater with over 100 troughs radiating out from it are stumping researchers. The crater is referred to as 'The Spider', and it occupies a basin that has turned out to be larger than once thought. NASA also has a discussion of the crater. The Messenger craft began taking the up-close photos earlier this month. From the Post:
"Scientists were also surprised by evidence of ancient volcanoes on many parts of the planet's surface and how different it looks compared with the moon, which is about the same size. Unlike the moon, Mercury has huge cliffs, as well as formations snaking hundreds of miles that indicate patterns of fault activity from Mercury's earliest days, more than 4 billion years ago."
Cosmic Water balloon (Score:2, Funny)
A comet impacted and splatted its matter all over.
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Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)
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Oops. (Score:1)
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Evidence of Water! (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously at some point Mercury was hollow and covered by an ocean, then an asteroid hits, punctures the surface, and the ocean drains into the center of the planet, creating the channels we see today.
Now, I know there are those who will say "but liquid water cant exist that close to the sun".
Well, to those people I say "Its not called Mercury for nothing".
Evidence of Lava! (Score:1)
Big splash.
Flow back into depression.
Make dimple shape you see.
Photons (Score:1)
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The reason you don't see such effects on the moon is because of the lower gravity preventing pooling, lack of substances to "melt", less atmosphere to heat up the projectile, etc.
--Dan
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What is striking about almost all of the craters is where the material that was gouged out of the surface went. The areas outside of most craters is devoid of material, both from the impacting object, as well as from the planet. It's as if it left the planet entirely. This is true of even the smaller craters presumably made by relatively low energy events that should not have propelled the fragments fast enough for them to escape the planet's gravity.
Even at the
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Space bugs... (Score:2)
It's Just amazing! (Score:3, Insightful)
Faults from extreme tides, etc (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Faults from extreme tides, etc (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Faults from extreme tides, etc (Score:5, Informative)
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Tidally Locked? (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking#Planets [wikipedia.org]
"Until radar observations in 1965 proved otherwise, it was thought that Mercury was tidally locked with the Sun. Instead, it turned out that Mercury has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun; the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit makes this resonance stable. The original reason astronomers thought it was tidally locked was because whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, so showing the same face, which would be also the case if it were totally locked."
Not tidally locked. (Score:2)
So the tidal tug for whatever its effect, is varying.
Don't feel bad. It's only recently that we learned this and in elementary school I learned the whole tidally locked story too.
Probably Moon was formed later (Score:3, Interesting)
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How surprising really? (Score:1)
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Let's celebrate when someone can consistently send us interesting stuff.
I'm not Roland (Score:1, Interesting)
So you might say I'm submitting stories to raise awareness of a cause, not unlike NYCL. I don't make a dime from this like Roland & co. were trying to. Also, you may notice that the name is unregistered. Feel free to submit stories in my name. You could consider it a form of
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Looks less like spider (Score:2, Insightful)
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Ground Control to Major Tom (Score:5, Funny)
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Great. (Score:4, Funny)
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P.S. It's just a name, like the Death Zone or the Zone of No Return. All the Zones have names like that in the Galaxy of Terror. -Professor Farnsworth
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spider planet (Score:5, Funny)
The Shadows are comming. (Score:3, Funny)
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After creating the universe he surely had to stop somewhere for a brief rest. And we all know that since the 1800 there has been an increase in discovering impact craters, colliding galaxies, planets, black holes, cosmic ray bursts, etc. These number of these events are also in inverse correlation to the amount of pirates remaining on earth. Thus this is proof that the 'pirate effec
My Forensic Opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
Obligitory, but slightly modded quote (Score:1)
Whatever you do... (Score:2)
Trust me, it just isn't a good idea.
Spider Critters? (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome our Mercurian Spider Critter Overloads!
That's no spider (Score:2)
My first thought (Score:2)
I'm blaming all the goatse trolls.
Puzzles me too (Score:1)
any geologist woudl call it a volcanic crater (Score:2)
Maybe a large "icesteroid" or comet? (Score:2)
Maybe a large asteroid of ice or large comet hit it on the night side and then melted when Mercury turned the crater to the day side, causing all the runoff to create the crazy channels radiating out from the crater?
Okay, commence ripping this theory to shreds. Ready? Go!
Harmoniums (Score:1)
Don't worry folks, (Score:1)
Mercury Spider Crater and Calderas of Venus (Score:1)
sendinronweasley (Score:2)
Meteorite impact and theory about heavy core. (Score:2)
Crematoria (Score:1)
Reporter not paying attention (Score:3, Informative)
Only eight legs? (Score:2)
Further, the appearance suggests the fracturing of a hard surface. Is the surface glassine in nature?
A deepness in the sky (Score:1)
"Spider"? (Score:2)