Hey Space Placers!
Here is a very interesting article on results from NASA's MESSENGER mission at Mercury that indicate the innermost planet may have had a magma ocean very shortly after forming.
What I found most interesting was that the research team from MIT took results on the composition of Mercury's surface and actually recreated the mineral composition of two types of rock. They essentially created the same mineral compositions in the lab and then melted them to compare results from the spacecraft.
When pondering what process could create two types of surface composition covering the planet they proposed that an ancient magma ocean, erupting very shortly after Mercury formed, could cause such an occurrence. Because Mercury's surface is 4.1 billion years old, the magma ocean would have had to erupt only a million years after Mercury formed.
Read More Abut It: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/mercury-may-have-harbored-ancient-magma-ocean-0221.html
Sky Guy in VA
No comments:
Post a Comment