Strange Hollows Discovered on Mercury

[JamesSavik]

Strange Hollows Discovered on Mercury

 

NASA/JPL Press Release

 

Oct 24, 2011: NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has discovered strange hollows on the surface of Mercury. Images taken from orbit reveal thousands of peculiar depressions at a variety of longitudes and latitudes, ranging in size from 60 feet to over a mile across and 60 to 120 feet deep. No one knows how they got there.

 

"These hollows were a major surprise," says David Blewett, science team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "We've been thinking of Mercury as a relic – a place that's really not changing much anymore, except by impact cratering. But the hollows appear to be younger than the craters in which they are found, and that means Mercury's surface is still evolving in a surprising way."

 

 

Hollows inside the Raditladi impact basin. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

 

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted similar depressions in the carbon dioxide ice at Mars' south pole, giving that surface a "swiss cheese" appearance. But on Mercury they're found in rock and often have bright interiors and halos.

 

"We've never seen anything quite like this on a rocky surface."

 

If you could stand in one of these "sleepy" hollows on Mercury's surface, you'd find yourself, like Ichabod Crane, in a quiet, still, haunting place, with a black sky above your head.

 

Another example of hollows in Tyagaraja, a crater 97 km in diameter. Courtesy of Science/AAAS

 

"There's essentially no atmosphere on Mercury," explains Blewett. "And with no atmosphere, wind doesn't blow and rain doesn't fall. So the hollows weren't carved by wind or water. Other forces must be at work."

 

As the planet closest to the Sun, Mercury is exposed to fierce heat and extreme space weather. Blewett believes these factors play a role.

A key clue, he says, is that many of the hollows are associated with central mounds or mountains inside Mercury's impact craters. These so-called “peak rings” are thought to be made of material forced up from the depths by the impact that formed the crater. Excavated material could be unstable when it finds itself suddenly exposed at Mercury's surface.

 

"Certain minerals, for example those that contain sulfur and other volatiles, would be easily vaporized by the onslaught of heat, solar wind, and micrometeoroids that Mercury experiences on a daily basis," he says. "Perhaps sulfur is vaporizing, leaving just the other minerals, and therefore weakening the rock and making it spongier. Then the rock would crumble and erode more readily, forming these depressions."

 

A fresh 15-km-diameter impact crater. Hollows are present on a section of the crater wall that has slid partway down toward the floor. Courtesy of Science/AAAS [larger image]

 

MESSENGER has indeed proven Mercury unexpectedly rich in sulfur. That in itself is a surprise that's forcing scientists to rethink how Mercury was formed. The prevailing models suggest that either (1) very early in Solar System history, during the final sweep-up of the large planetesimals that formed the planets, a colossal impact tore off much of Mercury's rocky outer layering; or (2) a hot phase of the early Sun heated up the surface enough to scorch off the outer layers. In either case, the elements with a low boiling point – volatiles like sulfur and potassium – would have been driven off.

But they're still there.

 

"The old models just don't fit with the new data, so we'll have to look at other hypotheses."

To figure out how the planets and Solar System came to be, scientists must understand Mercury.

"It's the anchor at one end of the Solar System. Learning how Mercury formed will have major implications for the rest of the planets. And MESSENGER is showing that, up to now, we've been completely wrong about this little world in so many ways!"

What other surprises does Mercury hold? The sleepy hollows of the innermost planet may be just the beginning.

 

 

_______________________________

 

Every time we visit a world that thought to be dead, we have found some dynamic process at work.

 

Nature is a great teacher and in this case, its how much more that we have to learn.

[TurtleBoy]

Right on! That's awesome. Also, it means we'll be seeing a sci-fi movie in the near future that's not based on the Red Planet Mars if fun, but it's nice to have variety.

[Cyhort]

I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens.

 

 

See, this is why we need NASA. There's so many interesting things out there in the solar system. Even if we can't afford to send anyone to Mars or back to the moon (which I think is a huge mistake) it's worth the money to find out stuff about how everything began. Answering questions like that is way more important than whining about people being "too rich".

[Former Member]

Even if they did find evidence of direct Alien involvement I very much doubt they'd tell us. I was listening to an interview with a well renowned scientist,Michio Kaku, who said they'd keep it out of the public. People would panic, and there'd be a lot of problems etc.

There are a lot of consipracies out there which could well have some truth in them, such has the apparent giant structures on the moon. Certain artifacts on Mars that have a geographical pattern to them.

I'm a sceptic, naturally, but rule nothing out either. So many billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars contained in them. Each star like our sun, possibly having planets orbiting them. If life could arise once then there's no reason to believe it couldn't again.

[Zombie]

There are a lot of consipracies out there which could well have some truth in them,

 

 

Conspiracies are such great fun! But most turn out to be crazy ideas.  Like the notion that NSA faked the Moon landings.  Strange, that one's gone a bit quiet lately, with recent telescopic images of the landing sites e.g. Moon Rover tracks, the lander base etc

 

... Certain artifacts on Mars that have a geographical pattern to them.

 

 

 

The "face" and "pyramids" were visual artifacts of the original low resolution orbiter imaging. Images from later orbiters with higher resolution cameras showed that these "artifacts" just disappeared.  It's a bit like the "canals" seen on Mars by Giovanni Schiaparelli in the Nineteenth Century and later advocated by Percival Lowell.  Modern imaging has long since shown these just to be an optical illusion caused by low resolution imaging and atmospheric disturbance.

[JamesSavik]

I think its much more likely that a natural process is at work here.

 

Aliens would probably be much more interested in earth and its many trailer parks.

[W_L]

I think its much more likely that a natural process is at work here.

 

Aliens would probably be much more interested in earth and its many trailer parks.

 

Let me get the probe-ulator out (don't worry if it's shape like phallic object, it'll be just a repressed memory afterward.)

 

On a serious note, I do think we are not alone and aliens have more to do than sexual experiments. Sometimes, I do wonder if our ancestors ever met aliens and maybe we are some kind of developmental curve that will one day take us to stars. In the last few hundred years, humanity has developed faster than in the last ten thousand years combined; we have been hitting a stride in development. Maybe, it's like inter-Galactic "pay it forward" program. An older civilization helps a younger civilization develop until they either kill themselves or they become smart enough to join the group as a peer, then they're assigned a civilization. (Don't steal that idea, I am going to use it, it's trade marked W.L )

 

Or, we could all live in the Battlestar Galactica universe and there are no intelligent life forms except humans, human cyborgs, and robots with a bad 1980's sounding voice, plus some unknown entity that acts as he wants and laughs at the mortals for their foolish infidelities and soap opera like lives .

[DragonMando]

I think its much more likely that a natural process is at work here.

 

Aliens would probably be much more interested in earth and its many trailer parks.

 

Leaning toward "natural process" but said process could be non-terran bacteria--aka aliens. I doubt bacteria, no matter where in the universe they hail from, have any interest in us ^^

[JamesSavik]

Leaning toward "natural process" but said process could be non-terran bacteria--aka aliens. I doubt bacteria, no matter where in the universe they hail from, have any interest in us ^^

 

Bacteria, however alien they might be, would indeed be a natural process.

 

They might find us delicious. If they can survive the environment of Mercury, we would find them completely unstoppable.

 

It would make the Black Death look like a sewing circle.

[W_L]

Bacteria, however alien they might be, would indeed be a natural process.

 

They might find us delicious. If they can survive the environment of Mercury, we would find them completely unstoppable.

 

It would make the Black Death look like a sewing circle.

 

There is actually a fun hypothesis about inter-planetary pollination of life. As the solar system was forming, asteroids and comets would carry matter from one planet to another, which would hold the trace material for life. As exobiology has shown, bacteria can survive inside asteroids and other stellar fragments for a good period of time, i.e. the bacteria from rocks. (Not just the infamous martian meteorite)

 

Maybe, they aren't aliens at all just our distant redkneck cousins from mercury with a hot foot

 

One thing, I would love to look into more is Venus. The planet is so often forgotten for Mars, (No, I don't think people are being chauvinistic about those planets ). We know that on earth carbon based life forms can survive in high pressure, high temperature, and toxic environments to most humans, so why not Venus. It would be cool to find Venusians, although based on the old stories, they probably would be fems