Final Flyby

[jjohnson]

Here is yet another pair of concentric craters on Mercury. Another "rare occurrence of perfect cosmic timing", or aim, in this case, when things start to look inexplicable to surprised astronomers when they review their probes' data and images.

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sci ... age_id=338

This is from a NASA Mercury Messenger photo dated 2 Oct 09. I inverted a copy so I could see just how concentric these circles are using a circle template. It's pretty close, whether using circles or ellipses (in case this was shot off the nadir - at an angle - so the circle is foreshortened). How often would chance predict a later object would strike the center point of an existing crater on a small planet or moon? Rare occurrence, or repeatable discharge event's typical profile?

Another odd photo from the Flyby 3 collection appears to show a very light colored area, with a particular color of light apparently identified by the investigators. At first I wondered, "glow discharge?" Why so bright? And why does the light phenomenon seem to lighten up the interiors of the nearby craters and bring out detail in the shadows? It looks more like burned-in film than a bright discharge to me. Any plausible interpretations?

[The Great Dog]

The Great Dog thinks that the light spots are areas where ore deposits in the surface crust of Mercury have been changed to another mineral -- quartzite, for example. Rather than the interior of the craters being "illuminated" The Great Dog sees a covering of fine powder.

Messages from Mercury

Kuiper Crater's Rays

What are Little Planets Made Of?

More from Mercury

Unveiling More of Mercury's Secrets

Mercury's Araneidal Terrain

TGD

[jjohnson]

Rats! Correction: I meant to say "the interiors of the craters [in the brighter area] do not seem to be illuminated by the additional brightness...". They remain just as dark black in shadows as those in the less bright areas adjacent. Odd.

[mharratsc]

A few more earmarks of electrical discharge over impact cratering are:

- lots of little hexagonal craters

-craters with little mini-domes dead in the middle of them

- "crater tracks"- arangements of small craters moving in a uniform line

Interestingly, no craters of noteworthy size appear inside the innermost area of the double ring crater. Rimshot crater on the edge of it's ring, but nothing inside of it... AND the smaller craters are all supposed to be more recent!

It seems outrageous to me that with the 'buckshot' appearance of the terrain in that area that none of these smaller meteors would impact in that bull's-eye? Two giant meteors will land in the same spot on multiple solar bodies, but a couple dozen smaller meteors won't even land within the inner perimeter?? *snort*

And that is another thing, too- in every instance of these "most ancient and venerable meteoric bombardment" scenes, the largest of the craters happened "in antiquity", and all the smaller craters are "newer, fresher, more pleasant-smelling".. WHY?

What law of physics can they bring to bear to account for this? Larger meteors have bigger engines and move faster?? Seriously, what's their story on that? If you ask me, Chaos should reign (rain?) during a 'meteor bombardment', wouldn't you think? Big ones, little ones, whatnot. What Universal Physical Law made all of the large impacts 'billions of years ago' but all the smaller ones are 'not so many billions of years ago'?

I find it more likely that the most energetic electrical discharges occurred earliest, and concurrent discharges continued to drop in power, creating smaller, and smaller, and smaller again craters as a result.

Argue with THAT logic, NASA!

Mike H.