KOMPAS.com – The size of Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System, is known to continue to decrease to this day.
The shrinking of Mercury is actually already known to scientists through the US Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA.
They made these findings when NASA carried out the Mariner 10 mission since the 1970s.
Scientists say Mercury is shrinking because the interior of the planet is cooling.
Mercury began shrinking about three billion years ago. However, it is not yet known whether this phenomenon still occurs.
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Mercury shrank 300 million years ago
Although previous findings showed that Mercury shrank billions of years ago, the latest findings say that this planet shrank around 300 million years ago due to tectonic activity.
There are also indications that the planet is still shrinking today.
Reporting from Space, the discovery of Mercury shrinking was studied by scientists from The Open University, England.
They analyzed the latest images, taken by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft orbiting Mercury from 2011 to 2015.
From there, scientists discovered grabens, a geological phenomenon where the land on the planet’s surface drops into shallow valleys along faults.
This usually occurs when the crust stretches, an indicator of planetary shrinkage.
Because the graben is still visible and unobstructed by impact craters or ejected debris, scientists estimate the graben’s age to be around 300 million years.
Scientists find it difficult to say whether Mercury is still shrinking at this time.
However, 300 million years is a “new thing” in the world of geology. So, it is possible that this phenomenon is still occurring today because the planet’s core has not completely cooled.
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Mercury is like a dried apple
Open University professor of planetary geoscience, David Rothery, likened Mercury’s shrinking to a dry apple.
“It’s like the wrinkles that form on an apple as it ages,” Rothery was quoted as saying by Insider.
He said the wrinkles that appear on Mercury are known as scarps.
To show that these scarps are still moving today, Rothery and graduate student Ben Man focused their attention on another geological structure called a graben.
When looking at the graben that appears when the scarps move, they become very small or only about 0.6 miles long at under 300 feet.
The appearance of the graben will not last long and it is estimated that in more than 300 million years it may not be seen again.
“Because of their small structure, they won’t last long,” explains Rothery.
“That’s why we say clearly that there has been movement in the last three hundred million years or so, and perhaps it is still ongoing today,” he continued.
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Mercury is rocked by an earthquake
On the other hand, Rothery also revealed that Mercury was hit by an earthquake with very large intensity due to movements on the planet’s surface.
“So, there are hundreds of very, very large earthquakes, and possibly millions of smaller earthquakes,” he said.
He suspects that the earthquake on Mercury is still ongoing today. However, scientists have not been able to measure it.
“We suspect the earthquakes are continuing, but we have no way to measure them until we bring a seismometer to the planet,” Rothery said.
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2023-10-20 08:00:00
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