[meteorite-list] Mercury question

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:20:09 -0500
Message-ID: <96AFCEC219F74D8BA6FE1B91093A37AA_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Carl, List,

    Only one Mercury question?

    What is revealed from the first bulk composition
scans is that Mercury surface, and presumably its
crust, is composed of high-potassium non-feldspar
rocks. In a word, Mercury is nothing like it's
"supposed" to be.

    Mercury appears to have been made (the rock
part) from high-volatile stuff, a notion that stands
everything everybody has ever thought about
Mercury on its head.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrBCExa2Rgw&feature=player_embedded

    Being non--field-geologically literate, I would
like somebody on the List to post a list of Earthly
high-potassium non-feldspar rocks rich in sulfur.
I suppose that would be a bunch of high-potassium
metallic sulfides, because one of the things we're
seeing is a lot of sulfur on the surface of Mercury.
Those yellow markings and stains in the photos?

    I don't think anybody ever thought Mercury
would be a place rich in volatiles -- completely
illogical.

    Welcome to the Real World...

    When I started out every book said the craters
on the Moon were volcanoes. We spent a noticeable
amount of the time we were actually ON the Moon
looking for the evidence for lunar volcanoes. There
aren't any volcanoes on the Moon.

    In one of the early Messenger flyby's there was
a featured imaged called "Spider" crater. I posted
here that I was pretty sure it was a caldera volcano.
Now it appears that a lot of the "craters" on Mercury
MAY be volcanoes.

    It would ironic (at the least) if we were to go from
"Moon volcanoes that are really impacts" all the way
to "Mercury impacts that are really volcanoes"!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/science/space/17mercury.html

Even better would be if Mercurian volcanoes were caused by
impacts, because every geophysicist on Earth rejects the
notion that impacts could cause volcanoes (and flood basalts).

    As long as we are going to be wrong about most
things, why not be wrong about everything? (I love
that NYTimes headline "Close Up, Mercury Is Less
Boring." Well, Earth Monkeys, at least it's not as
boring as the NYTimes...

Oh, the other thing is that the magnetic field of
Mercury is bigger (stronger) at one pole than the
other pole, just in case there's not already enough
weirdness.

    I have an easy explanation; Mercury's core is
EGG-SHAPED.

    Huh? Or two imperfectly merged cores of differing
sizes from a giant impact that did not completely
differentiate after the event.

    And let's not even get close to the question of how
a volatile-rich planet with a huge iron core could FORM
this close to the Sun...


Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: <cdtucson at cox.net>
To: "meteoritelist" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2011 5:41 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Mercury question


> List,
> I have a question.
> With this new data from MESSENGER about the surface composition of
> Mercury;
>
> http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=174
>
> What does this mean it terms of what a meteorite would be expected to
> look like?
> Would it be metallic -ish?
> Anyone, Thanks.
> Carl
>
> "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.
> Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote".?
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Received on Fri 17 Jun 2011 02:20:09 PM PDT