Mercury's surface could once have ingredients for life

Mercury's surface could once have ingredients for life
Mercury's surface could once have ingredients for life
Anonim

In 1974, as it flew past Mercury, NASA's Mariner 10 probe observed a surface strewn with cracks and craters. Now, according to one of the new hypotheses, the cracked surface of Mercury could be formed as a result of the evaporation of volatiles - elements and compounds that easily turn into a gas state from a solid or liquid form - from under the surface.

Volatile substances, to which water can be attributed, are a necessary condition for the origin and development of life in the forms in which it is known to us. Therefore, their potential presence on Mercury is an intriguing discovery.

Previously, scientists believed that the fracturing of the surface of Mercury could be caused by subsurface tremors, activated after the formation of a large impact crater, called the Plain of Heat, as a result of a cosmic collision. A new study led by a team led by Alexis P. Rodriguez, an astronomer at the Institute for Planetary Sciences in Arizona, USA, shows that cracks and faults on the surface of Mercury have stopped only about 1.8 billion years ago, that is, about 2 billion years after the formation of the Plain of Heat, the authors explained.

Using data collected from the Mercury satellite MESSENGER, which orbited the planet closest to the Sun from 2011 to 2015, scientists found that the nature of the depressions on the surface of Mercury does not correspond to the hypothesis of tremors, in which the surface would have fewer depressions and sharp elevations. Instead, the researchers proposed a hypothesis about the presence of volatiles on Mercury in antiquity, which, after warming up, evaporated into space or condensed near the planet's poles.

The research is published in Scientific Reports.

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