{"id":437093,"date":"2026-04-15T23:41:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T23:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/437093\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T23:41:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T23:41:18","slug":"mercurys-sulfur-rich-magma-may-rewrite-how-solar-systems-innermost-planet-formed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/437093\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercury\u2019s Sulfur-Rich Magma May Rewrite How Solar System\u2019s Innermost Planet Formed"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research from Rice University<\/a> suggests sulfur keeps Mercury\u2019s interior molten at lower temperatures, offering new clues to how the planet\u2019s strange crust and mantle evolved.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Yishen<\/p>\n

Yishen Zhang & Rajdeep Dasgupta provide new insights into the role of sulfur in shaping the thermochemical evolution of Mercury and other similarly reduced rocky planetary systems. Image credit: NASA \/ Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory \/ Carnegie Institution of Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cMercury\u2019s surface looks completely different than Earth\u2019s,\u201d said Professor Rajdeep Dasgupta, director of the Rice Space Institute Center for Planetary Origins to Habitability.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe couldn\u2019t study its magmatic evolution using assumptions built off our understanding of Earth, and missions data are difficult to interpret.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to find ways to bring the planet closer to our lab \u2014 specifically, through the meteorite Indarch<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indarch, a meteorite that landed in Azerbaijan in 1891, looks very similar to the chemical makeup of Mercury.<\/p>\n

The researchers realized they could use Indarch to study how Mercury\u2019s unique chemical makeup had shaped the planet, sharing their results in a recent publication.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndarch chemically is as reduced as rocks on Mercury,\u201d said Yishen Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher at Rice University.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is believed to be a possible building block of the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scientists used a model melt composition of Indarch to cook their own Mercury rocks in a high-pressure, high-temperature facility.<\/p>\n

The process was fairly simple: mix Indarch\u2019s chemical ingredients together in a small glass vial, change the settings in the facility to match the conditions on Mercury, add in the chemicals and cook.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis process of cooking a rock can show us what happened chemically inside of Mercury,\u201d Zhang said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy using the temperature, pressure and chemical constraints derived from spacecraft observations and models, we recreate Mercury-like conditions to understand how magmas form and evolve there \u2014 even without direct samples from the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the authors found is that sulfur lowers the temperature at which these reduced melted rocks begin to crystallize.<\/p>\n

That means sulfur-rich magmas on Mercury may stay molten at lower temperatures than similar magmas on Earth.<\/p>\n

The reason for this significantly decreased crystallization temperature is because of Mercury\u2019s unique chemical composition: low iron, high sulfur and the chemically reduced state.<\/p>\n

Sulfur is a promiscuous element \u2014 it likes to be bound to other elements, usually iron.<\/p>\n

Iron-rich planets like Mars and Earth have most of their sulfur bound to iron. Mercury\u2019s low iron content, however, meant that its sulfur was looking for new binding partners.<\/p>\n

Specifically, it could bind to major rock-forming elements like magnesium and calcium.<\/p>\n

On Earth, these rock-forming elements would typically bind to oxygen, resulting in a stable structure called a silicate network made up of silicon, oxygen and rock-forming elements.<\/p>\n

When sulfur replaces oxygen, however, that network becomes weaker and crystalizes at a lower temperature.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Indarch may represent Mercury\u2019s protoplanet state, these experiments show that Mercury likely formed with sulfur occupying a structural position that on Earth belongs to oxygen. This fundamentally changes how the planet\u2019s mantle solidified,\u201d Zhang said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a fascinating glimpse of how Mercury may have evolved as a planet to its unique current-day surface chemistry,\u201d Professor Dasgupta said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore importantly, it provides a way for us to think about planets not based on how Earth was formed, but based on their own unique chemistry and magmatic processes under vastly different conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat water or carbon does to magmatic evolution of Earth, sulfur does on Mercury.\u201d<\/p>\n

The findings<\/a> appear in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Yishen Zhang & Rajdeep Dasgupta. The effects of sulfur on near-liquidus phase relations of highly reduced basaltic melts with implications for magmatism in Mercury. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, published online February 26, 2026; doi: 10.1016\/j.gca.2026.02.034<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New research from Rice University suggests sulfur keeps Mercury\u2019s interior molten at lower temperatures, offering new clues to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[1204,2859,18,19,194066,17,5428,69666,194067,2660,42196,28709,133,10214,94968,27235],"class_list":["post-437093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-planet","tag-azerbaijan","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-indarch","tag-ireland","tag-iron","tag-magma","tag-magmatism","tag-mercury","tag-meteorite","tag-planet-formation","tag-science","tag-solar-system","tag-sulfur","tag-temperature"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116411373606609987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}