NASA Messenger probe orbits Mercury

I thought NASA was suspended.

And yet this?

wikkid innit

Mercury rocks. Well actually it's fairly boring. It's the planet's history that is interesting. Why the fuck is its core so big? I have my own theory on that which I chatted about in my dissertation lol, let's see if I'm right

  On 3/18/2011 at 7:16 PM, ZiggomaticV17 said:

I thought NASA was suspended.

just space shuttle flights

  On 3/18/2011 at 8:55 PM, ezkerraldean said:

wikkid innit

 

Mercury rocks. Well actually it's fairly boring. It's the planet's history that is interesting. Why the fuck is its core so big? I have my own theory on that which I chatted about in my dissertation lol, let's see if I'm right

liquid core?

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May07/margot.mercury.html

they say sulfur is causing the melting temperature of the iron to decrease. did it get whacked with a huge drifting ball of galactic sulfur?

  On 3/18/2011 at 8:55 PM, ezkerraldean said:

wikkid innit

 

Mercury rocks. Well actually it's fairly boring. It's the planet's history that is interesting. Why the fuck is its core so big? I have my own theory on that which I chatted about in my dissertation lol, let's see if I'm right

widely held consensus is that an impact or impacts when it was relatively young blasted large amounts of the crust into space, no?

my idea was that in the protoplanetary disc, the T-Tauri-phase solar wind would have pushed all the volatiles (all the elements with lower melting temperatures etc) further out from the sun, meaning that closer to the sun there would be less oxygen for iron to react with, meaning that iron and other siderophile metals in planets closer to the sun would be much more likely to enter the metallic phase than the silicate phase (i.e. the rocks and minerals of the crust and mantle), meaning that as you get closer to the sun, metallic cores should get proportionally bigger innit. i was using that idea to explain why Mars's core is smaller than Earth's, plus the fact that potassium/uranium and potassium/thorium ratios on Mars are different to on Earth suggesting a net enrichment in volatiles on Mars when compared to Earth. or some shit

basically the baby sun farted all the oxygen away lol

but yeah the whole impacts-blowing-fuckloads-of-the-mantle-off-into-space shit could work just as well, though. most models predict that originally there were literally hundreds of Mars-ish-sized planets running about, and loads of those would have smashed the fuck out of eachother. would have been a right laugh to watch that shit

NASA Messenger "orbits" you.

Alain Robidoux. The ultimate snooker gent. I've spoken to him once or twice.

  On 3/18/2011 at 10:23 PM, ezkerraldean said:

my idea was that in the protoplanetary disc, the T-Tauri-phase solar wind would have pushed all the volatiles (all the elements with lower melting temperatures etc) further out from the sun, meaning that closer to the sun there would be less oxygen for iron to react with, meaning that iron and other siderophile metals in planets closer to the sun would be much more likely to enter the metallic phase than the silicate phase (i.e. the rocks and minerals of the crust and mantle), meaning that as you get closer to the sun, metallic cores should get proportionally bigger innit. i was using that idea to explain why Mars's core is smaller than Earth's, plus the fact that potassium/uranium and potassium/thorium ratios on Mars are different to on Earth suggesting a net enrichment in volatiles on Mars when compared to Earth. or some shit

 

basically the baby sun farted all the oxygen away lol

 

 

 

but yeah the whole impacts-blowing-fuckloads-of-the-mantle-off-into-space shit could work just as well, though. most models predict that originally there were literally hundreds of Mars-ish-sized planets running about, and loads of those would have smashed the fuck out of eachother. would have been a right laugh to watch that shit

makes sense to me

oooh actually, a prediction: if the whole idea of impacts blowing half the mantle into space idea is correct, then there will be no such equivalent of the Moon's KREEP on Mercury's surface (a huge layer of intermediate volcanics in the upper crust, strongly enriched in light and low-temperature elements like potassium, the rare-earth elements etc.). presumably such a layer would have formed, but it would then have been totally removed along with all the upper mantle, by previously mentioned impacts. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST

also

first image is back

the color version has been released:

it's the first color image of mercury! (although, it's not all that colorful..)

hey it's not red!

its a nice image no doubt