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aamukherjee A Slice of Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Fading Like A Dead Star -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
ikenbot CWL -
abluegirl A Blue Girl -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
![This Weird Green Rock Is From Mercury
Well, Mercury or a “Mercury-like body.” It’s unlike any other meteorite ever found on Earth.
Last year, a group of 35 meteorite samples was found in Morocco. One of them was this guy, a curiously green sample given the name NWA 7325. Further analysis indicates that its color isn’t the only unusual thing about it—this meteorite isn’t like any we’ve ever seen before.
NWA 7325 has a few very odd qualities. Its magnetic intensity is extremely low, for one thing, which has been an integral fact in figuring out just what the hell this thing is. Magnetic intensity is shared by rocks and the planet they originate from; Earth rocks have a magnetic intensity that can be tied to Earth, for example. This one’s magnetic intensity is highly similar to that of Mercury, which was confirmed by Messenger, the spacecraft currently in orbit around the closest planet to the sun. There are some other clues; the meteorite is also very low in iron, like the planet, and it doesn’t have any of the chemical signifiers that would identify it as, say, a Martian rock.
It’s the first meteorite to be identified as coming from Mercury, or (as is possible, though not likely) a Mercury-like body. It’s estimated that this meteorite (and the others found with it) are about 4.65 billion years old.
[via Space.com]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/d1e96a57231b0d011f5d58a2cbb27259/tumblr_mki7rx3Lnn1qbn6nco1_500.jpg)
Last year, a group of 35 meteorite samples was found in Morocco. One of them was this guy, a curiously green sample given the name NWA 7325. Further analysis indicates that its color isn’t the only unusual thing about it—this meteorite isn’t like any we’ve ever seen before.
NWA 7325 has a few very odd qualities. Its magnetic intensity is extremely low, for one thing, which has been an integral fact in figuring out just what the hell this thing is. Magnetic intensity is shared by rocks and the planet they originate from; Earth rocks have a magnetic intensity that can be tied to Earth, for example. This one’s magnetic intensity is highly similar to that of Mercury, which was confirmed by Messenger, the spacecraft currently in orbit around the closest planet to the sun. There are some other clues; the meteorite is also very low in iron, like the planet, and it doesn’t have any of the chemical signifiers that would identify it as, say, a Martian rock.
It’s the first meteorite to be identified as coming from Mercury, or (as is possible, though not likely) a Mercury-like body. It’s estimated that this meteorite (and the others found with it) are about 4.65 billion years old.
[via Space.com]
expose-the-lightHow Long is a Day on Mercury?
1/3 the distance from the Sun than Earth, it should be no surprise that a day on Mercury is a real scorcher with temperatures soaring over 400 ºC. But in addition to its solar proximity it also has an extremely slow rotation: a single day on Mercury is 58.6 Earth days long… and you thought your Mondays lasted forever!
To be even more precise, for every 2 Mercury years, 3 Mercury days pass — a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, caused by the planet’s varying elliptical orbit. (This also makes for some interesting motions of the Sun in Mercury’s sky.)
To illustrate this, UK’s The Open University has published a new video in their 60 Second Adventures in Astronomy series… check it out above (and see more of their excellent and amusing animations here.)
Video: The Open University. Narrated by David Mitchell.
(via sagansense)
ikenbot
Mercury’s Water Ice Bodes Well for Alien Life Search
The discovery of huge amounts of water ice and possible organic compounds on the heat-blasted planet Mercury suggests that the raw materials necessary for life as we know it may be common throughout the solar system, researchers say.
Image: The radar image of Mercury’s north polar region from Image 2.1 is shown superposed on a mosaic of MESSENGER images of the same area. All of the larger polar deposits are located on the floors or walls of impact craters. Deposits farther from the pole are seen to be concentrated on the north-facing sides of craters. Image released Nov. 28, 2012. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory
Mercury likely harbors between 100 billion and 1 trillion metric tons of water ice in permanently shadowed areas near its poles, scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Messenger spacecraft announced Thursday (Nov. 29).
Life on sun-scorched Mercury remains an extreme longshot, the researchers stressed, but the new results should still put a spring in the step of astrobiologists around the world.
“The more we examine the solar system, the more we realize it’s a soggy place,” Jim Green, the director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said during a press conference today.
“And that’s really quite exciting, because that means the amount of water that we have here on Earth — that was not only inherent when it was originally formed but probably brought here — that water and other volatiles were brought to many other places in the solar system,” Green added. “So it really bodes well for us to continue on the exploration, following the water and its signs throughout the solar system.”
Ice Water Found on Mercury!
NASA announced today that its Messenger spacecraft has discovered “compelling” evidence of frozen water and possible organic materials on Mercury’s north pole (shown left in red), confirming the decades of suspicion in the scientific community.
“The neutron data indicate that Mercury’s radar-bright polar deposits contain, on average, a hydrogen-rich layer more than tens of centimeters thick beneath a surficial layer 10 to 20 centimeters thick that is less rich in hydrogen,” according to David Lawrence, a Johns Hopkins University physics scientist working on the Messenger project.
(via ikenbot)
Most Spectacular Shots From 50 Years of Robotic Solar System Exploration
Science, bitches! Forget about repeatedly testing a hypothesis under controlled conditions and move straight to the explosions. Peer review ain’t got nothing on giant science cannons. It’s the parts of science everyone can get excited about because it goes BOOM, or FOOSH, or K-POW. Science! SCIENCE! And I’ve got 11 GIFs of science for your hungry minds to devour.
Terrestrial Planets
Also known as rocky planets, these bodies are composed primarily of rock and metal and have very high densities. They also tend to be relatively small in size and have slow periods of rotation. The terrestrial planets in our solar system are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They are the planets closest to the Sun. Terrestrial planets tend to have very few natural satellites, or moons. Of the four terrestrial planets in our solar system, only two have moons. Earth has one moon while Mars has two.
Images Credit: solarsystem.nasa.gov
New Maps of Mercury Show Icy Looking Craters on the Solar System’s Innermost Planet
ICE FISHING: New maps from a Mercury orbiter support the long-standing hypothesis that the innermost planet harbors pockets of water ice. In this composite image radar imagery from Earth-based radio telescopes appears in yellow.
Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
THE WOODLANDS, Tex.—Mercury is a world of extremes. Daytime temperature on the planet closest to the sun can soar as high as 400 degrees Celsius near the equator, hot enough to melt lead. When day turns to night, the planet’s surface temperature plunges to below –150 degrees C.
But some places on Mercury are slightly more stable. Inside polar craters on the diminutive planet are regions that never see the light of day, shaded as they are by their crater rims. The temperature there remains cold throughout the Mercury day—and during the Mercury year. Now new data from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, presented at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, corroborate a long-held hypothesis that Mercury has squirreled away pockets of water ice in those shadowy craters, despite the sun’s proximity.
crownedrose
John Glenn on the cover of Life magazine, February 2, 1962
The photo, a portrait of Glenn in his space helmet, appeared on Life’s February 2, 1962 issue — 50 years ago this week. It wasn’t until 9:47 am EST on February 20, after a number of delays, that Glenn’s “Friendship 7” Mercury space capsule was thrown into space atop a new Atlas rocket. When he returned to Earth four hours, fifty-five minutes, and twenty-three seconds later, Glenn was the greatest American aviation hero since Charles Lindbergh.
cwnl:
Crescent Moon & Mercury at Dawn
Copyright: Stefano De Rosa
Asteroid Crash May Explain Mercury’s Strange Spin
A collision with an asteroid might have set the planet Mercury whirling oddly in its orbit, a new study suggests.
When one body orbits another — say, a moon around a planet or a planet around a star — the orbiting body often spins. Our planet experiences day and night because it spins on its axis, regularly changing which side it exposes to the sun.
However, the gravitational pull that orbiting moons and planets experience slows the rate of their spin. The most stable arrangement they can reach is to keep just one side always facing the body they are orbiting. Such “tidal locking” is why our moon always keeps the same face pointed toward Earth.
If the same were to happen with Earth and the sun, our planet would rotate once on its axis for every orbit it completed around the sun. In other words, an Earth day would be exactly as long as an Earth year, with one side receiving constant sunshine and the other experiencing perpetual night.
(via ikenbot)
