![Image](http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/mosaics/mdis_v7_750nm_250mpp_npolarTHUMB.jpg)
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/mosaics.html
mbined to give the most likely picture of Mercury's interior, the gravity and orbital data point to plenty of iron for the planet. By the team's figuring, the core extends 2030 kilometers from the center of Mercury, or 83% of the planetary radius; Earth's core is only 55% the size of the whole planet.
.And the team sees another, unexpected place iron may be stored. The data suggest a mass concentration in a layer surrounding the core. Considering the chemistry of iron and its minerals and the geochemistry of Mercury's surface as determined by MESSENGER, it is plausible that, when Mercury was forming, iron and sulfur combined and froze out of the molten core, floated to the core top, and formed a solid iron-sulfide layer tens of kilometers to 200 kilometers thick. That would leave the planet with a rocky rind as little as 200 kilometers thick
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... 37973c471cbut the layer of electrically conducting iron sulfide partially screens out and weakens the field before it reaches the surface.
how could Mars lose it's core and remain a planet?my belief that Mercury was once the iron core of Mars
A brief order of events.Sparky wrote:how could Mars lose it's core and remain a planet?![]()
What process would that be?Sparky wrote:If Mercury is composed of that much iron, then it is more likely to be a large chunk of whatever process that created the iron asteroids.
It may be a captured comet??
Is that it?Sparky wrote:Mercury hitting the sun would be more like a mosquito hitting a bug zapper, wouldn't it?
Good point...i have never heard that theory..the larger 'magnet' of earth pulls on the smaller magnet of Mars extracting it through the Martian mantle forming the enormous great chasm the Valles Marineris (same diameter as Mercury) - Mercury is born.------
Sparky wrote:If Mercury is composed of that much iron, then it is more likely to be a large chunk of whatever process that created the iron asteroids.
It may be a captured comet??
well, there you go....If Mercury came from Mars, then the sand and other bits of iron were part of that process.What process would that be?
Along the lines of chemical fractionation (heavier elements sinking to the core of a planet or body) it is believed iron meteorites originate from the metallic cores of asteroids or planets.
Hmmmmm, you are probably correct...maybe a ZAP! with extreme prejudice!!I would imagine if mercury did fall into the sun the event would be far more catastrophic and prolonged that a single 'zap' as you suggest.
Isn't such a technique based on the belief that gravity is a function of matter bending space? Is that really science? And do we really understand what "gravity" is and what constitutes "mass"?By precisely measuring the orbital movements of MESSENGER using the subtle Doppler frequency shifts of its radio signal, geodesist David Smith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and 16 colleagues measured how the pull of gravity varies across Mercury, as the team reports online today in Science. Those gravity variations, in turn, depend on where inside Mercury its mass is concentrated.
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