InTheNews.co.uk
Breaking News:
Your source for news

Science Story

 30 August 2008 01:18 BST

Messenger spacecraft reveals Mercury secrets

Friday, 04 Jul 2008 08:30
Messenger's fly-bys are revealing secrets about Mercury's make-up

Science In Focus 

  • 50 years of Nasa

    We take a look at the highs and lows of the past five decades of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). Full Story
Scientists believe they have solved questions about the planet Mercury that have been puzzling astronomers for more than 30 years.

The proposed answers are published in the journal Science today and are based on data from recent fly-bys of Mercury by the spacecraft Messenger.

Since 1972 scientists have tried to work out what created Mercury's smooth plains and the source of its magnetic field.

Analysis of the most recent data suggests that volcanoes were involved in the plains' formation and that its magnetic field is actively produced in the planet's core.

Mercury's core makes up at least 60 per cent of its mass, a figure twice as large as any other known terrestrial planet.

The fly-by revealed that the magnetic field, originating in the outer core and powered by core cooling, drives very dynamic and complex interactions among the planet's interior, surface, exosphere and magnetosphere.

Commenting on the importance of the core to surface geological structures on Mercury, principal investigator Sean Solomon at the Carnegie Institution of Washington said: "The dominant tectonic landforms on Mercury, including areas imaged for the first time by Messenger, are features called lobate scarps, huge cliffs that mark the tops of crustal faults that formed during the contraction of the surrounding area.

"They tell us how important the cooling core has been to the evolution of the surface.

"After the end of the period of heavy bombardment, cooling of the planet's core not only fuelled the magnetic dynamo, it also led to contraction of the entire planet. And the data from the fly-by indicate that the total contraction is a least one-third greater than we previously thought."
End of story


More science news... 

Also In The News 

© 2004- 2008 www.inthenews.co.uk. Advertise | Privacy | Terms of Use