Mercury's Radius Shrank by over 10 km: Japan Team
Tokyo, Sept. 10 (Jiji Press)--Since its birth around 4.6 billion years ago, Mercury's radius has shrunk by over 10 kilometers as the inside of the planet cooled down, a team from Japan's Hokkaido University has found. The team's findings were published in the U.S. science journal Geophysical Research Letters on Thursday. Mercury's radius currently stands at some 2,440 km. Observations by...
Tokyo, September 10 - A Japanese research team has discovered that Mercury's radius has decreased by more than 10 kilometers since its formation approximately 4.6 billion years ago, as the planet's interior cooled. The findings, published in the U.S. scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, reveal that Mercury's current radius is around 2,440 kilometers.
Observations from U.S. space probe Messenger and other instruments have confirmed numerous wrinkle ridges on Mercury's surface, which formed due to the planet's surface contracting. However, estimating the planet's shrinkage based on the length and characteristics of these ridges was uncertain due to uneven distribution of the geological features.
Gaku Nishiyama, a postdoctoral researcher at Hokkaido University, employed a new analysis method to address this issue. Nishiyama focused on the possibility that the wrinkle ridges may have been hidden by impact craters and lava flows formed by meteorite impacts and volcanic activity.
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