AMERICANALMANAC (Jonah Adams) - Mercury is shrinking faster than anyone realized, new study finds
A peer-reviewed study from the German Aerospace Center reports that Mercury has lost up to 14 miles of diameter over its lifetime, roughly 30 percent more contraction than scientists previously measured. Researchers led by Gaku Nishiyama, a planetary scientist affiliated with Hokkaido University in Japan, compared maps of geologic faults and contraction features against surface […] The post Mercury is shrinking faster than anyone realized, new study finds appeared first on American Almanac .
A peer-reviewed study from the German Aerospace Center reports that Mercury has lost up to 14 miles of diameter over its lifetime, roughly 30 percent more contraction than scientists previously measured. Researchers led by Gaku Nishiyama, a planetary scientist affiliated with Hokkaido University in Japan, compared maps of geologic faults and contraction features against surface roughness data built from NASA's Messenger spacecraft imagery . What they found was straightforward: the roughest patches of Mercury's battered surface showed far fewer of the wrinkle-like ridges that signal planetary shrinkage. The reason, the team concluded, is that billions of years of asteroid and comet impacts buried those ridges under debris, hiding the true…Open