Pages

Saturday, 1 October 2016

Mercury joins Earth in tectonically active club



Mercury is known for being the smallest planet in the Solar System, but, according to NASA, it's also the only one besides Earth that's tectonically active. Unlike Venus and Mars, which are basically cold, dead rocks, images from the unmanned MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft show that Mercury has small, cliff-like formations that suggest that the planet is contracting, which means that it has a hot, cooling interior.

.. Continue Reading Mercury joins Earth in tectonically active club

Category: Space

Tags:
Mercury
NASA
Messenger

Related Articles:
Rare meteorite may have formed the basis for the planet Mercury
MESSENGER spacecraft provides first global topographical model of Mercury
Mercury's volcanoes have been (mostly) snoozing for billions of years
MESSENGER shows Mercury's magnetic field to be almost 4 billion years old
NASA'S MESSENGER mission finishes with a bang
Mercury's dark secret

No comments:

Post a Comment

Rules for submitting comments:

1. No profanity. I maintain the pretense that this is a family-friendly site.

2. Stay on topic. A bit of straying and off-hand commenting is okay, but hijacking the discussion is right out.

3. No ad hominem attacks. Attack the subject, not the other person on the thread and keep the discussion civil.

4. No spamming or commercial endorsements. These get deleted immediately.

Tip: Beware of putting hyperlinks in your comments–especially at the end. For some reason, Blogger interprets these as spam.

Note: Due to the recent spate of anonymous spamming, registration for comments is now required.