The Hindu : Front Page : Planet Mercury appears in new light

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 01, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Front Page

Front Page

Planet Mercury appears in new light

Photographs from NASA probe show volcanic scars and wrinkles from shrinking

WASHINGTON: New pictures from the unseen side of Mercury show the wrinkles of a shrinking, ageing planet with scars from volcanic eruptions and a birthmark shaped something like a spider.

Some of the 1,213 photos taken by the Messenger probe sent up by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) support the case that ancient volcanoes dot Mercury and that it is shrinking as it gets older, forming wrinkle-like ridges. But other images are surprising and puzzling.

The spidery shape captured in a photo is “unlike anything we’ve seen anywhere in the solar system,” said mission chief scientist Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The image shows what looks like a large crater with faint lines radiating from it.

Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has often been compared to the earth’s dull black-and-white moon. But the new photos, which reveal parts of Mercury that have never been seen, show the planet is more colourful and once had volcanic activity.

With the help of some high-tech enhancement, Messenger photos showed baby blues and dark reds. “It has very subtle red and blue areas,” said instrument scientist Louise Prockter of Johns Hopkins University, which runs the Messenger mission for NASA. “Mercury doesn’t look like the moon.”

The last time a NASA craft went to Mercury was Mariner 10 in 1975. It took pictures of just 45 per cent of the planet.

Messenger, which will do a couple of more flybys of the planet before going into a long-term orbit, already has taken pictures of another 30 per cent of Mercury, Ms. Prockter said. The rest will be seen eventually.

Planetary scientist Robert Strom, who was part of both the Mariner 10 and Messenger teams, said: “This is a whole new planet we’re looking at.” And Ms. Prockter said: “There are some features we haven’t been able to explain yet.”

One example is what scientists are calling “the spider.” It is in the middle of a basin formed billions of years ago when space junk bombarded an infant Mercury.

Mariner saw only part of the crater. When Messenger took a look with sharper cameras and from a better angle, it photographed this odd central plateau jutting up, about half a mile high with dozens of tiny ridges radiating out. It is as if “something is pushed up,” said MIT planetary scientist Maria Zuber, who is part of the science team.

Ms. Prockter theorises that it could be the remnants of a volcano. Other scientists think the leg-like features could be the same ridges seen all over Mercury.

First seen in the 1970s, the ridges now found more widely, provide evidence that Mercury is contracting, the scientists said. Scientists had theorised that as the core of Mercury cools, it contracts and the whole planet shrinks. There was even a 19th century theory for why the earth had mountains, but one that was later proven wrong, Mr. Solomon said. But with Mercury that seems to be the case. As the planet shrinks, a bit of crust is pushed over another, forming what Ms. Prockter calls “wrinkle ridges.”

Besides having what looks like the leftovers from volcanoes, Mercury has at least one crater that seems to be filled with what would be that planet’s version of lava, Ms. Prockter said.

NASA launched the $446 million Messenger on its nearly 8-billion km mission in 2004. It will fly by Mercury two more times, this October and September 2009, before settling into orbit around 2011. Messenger will take pictures, measure the tenuous atmosphere, hills and valleys and unusual magnetic field of Mercury, which is the only solar system planet other than the earth to have a magnetosphere.

Quirky Mercury is one of the bigger question marks in the solar system, probed not nearly as much as Mars, Jupiter, Venus or Saturn.

Mr. Strom, a retired University of Arizona scientist who worked on Mariner 10, said that as he awaited Messenger’s flyby earlier this month, “I couldn’t sleep at all. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve.” Only he had to wait 30 years for his presents. It was worth it, he said: “What I saw was astounding to me.”

On the Net, the NASA Messenger site is at http://www.nasa.gov/messenger — AP

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page