Planet Mercury Full of Strange Surprises, NASA Spacecraft Reveals
Mercury is not just damn hot but apparently covered with sulfur. A large part of the planet is covered with dried lava - enough to bury the state of Texas under 4 miles from the substance, scientists say.
These and other strange discoveries about Mercury were announced in seven articles published in the September 30 issue of the journal Science, a wealth of knowledge from the NASA's Messenger probe, covering the entire landscape of strange magnetic core the planet.
Messenger, which means "the surface of Mercury, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging," marks the first orbiter of humanity around the world smallest and deepest of the solar system. It is only the second probe even for just visit, after overflying Mariner 10 in the mid-1970s. Launched in 2004, the Messenger probe $ 446 million put into orbit around Mercury in March.
"Messenger is revealing that, contrary to preconceived ideas of many people, Mercury is a fascinating world with a complex history," study author Patrick Peplowski, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, Says SPACE.com. [Latest photos of Mercury Messenger]
Volcanic history
For example, high resolutionimages Mercury's surface shows that lava flows epic helped create the world's smooth northern plains. This molten rock once-filled craters over a mile (1.6 kilometers) deep and covers 6 percent of Mercury's surface, an area equal to nearly 60 percent of the continental United States, said James Head planetary geoscientist at Brown University.
Early in the history of the world, some 3.5000000000-4000000000 years these huge volumes of lava flowed from cracks in the surface as far as 125 miles (200 kilometers) outside the volcanic area, flooding the surrounding low plains "as a bathtub," said Head. [ Computer Graphics: Inside Planet Mercury]
Based on how this dish apparently eroded the underlying surface, the researchers suggest that it rushed out quickly. "We can not say if it took 2.7 days to 15 years or exact time of the orbit, but it was not hundreds of millions of years," said Head.
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"Analysis of the images and estimates of the rate at which the hollows may be growing leads to the exciting possibility that they are actively forming today," Blewett told SPACE.com. "It is exactly this kind of unexpected discovery that makes planetary
Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft.
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Quantum fluctuations in science, space and society, from quarks to Hubble and Mars. Served up by Alan Boyle, science editor. E-mail Alan, or connect via Facebook or Twitter. The trailer for "The Magic of Reality" shows off some iPad tablet
Mars Surprise! --Atmosphere is Supersaturated with Water Vapor
In the picture above the clouds of colored water are visible just after sunrise in and around a maze of canyons Noctis Labyrinthus known (the labyrinth of the night). Scientists do not yet know, however, why these clouds formed, why some and stick to the canyons. Exciting possibility is that water condenses in some regions shaded canyons, only to evaporate into the clouds when exposed to morning sun. Water in all its forms on the Martian surface might be important to sustaining life and possible future human exploration. Viking Orbiter 1, who visited in March 1976, took the photo above.The region shown is about 100 km in diameter. Although many spaceships have visited Mars in the past half century, very few direct measurements of the vertical structure of the atmosphere of the planet were made. Like most instruments of spacecraft have looked down on the surface, it has only been possible to deduce the horizontal distribution of gases in the atmosphere, leaving the question of how water vapor is mixed with the atmosphere almost unexplored.
This lack of direct measurements meant that descriptions of the vertical distribution of water vapor - a key factor in the hydrological cycle on Mars - has generally been based on the global climate models. This data gap was addressed by the SPICAM (Spectroscopy for Investigation of the characteristics of the Martian atmosphere) imaging spectrometer on Mars Express.
The instrument can be used in either blackout, when he studied the sunlight that has passed through the atmosphere of the planet, just after sunrise or before sunset.Measurements can then be analyzed to generate vertical profiles of concentration for many atmospheric constituents, including water vapor.
The new findings, based on data obtained SPICAM in the spring and summer north indicate that the vertical distribution of water vapor in the Martian atmosphere is very different compared to previous assumptions.
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