{"id":84,"date":"2025-06-20T20:03:30","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T20:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/84\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T20:03:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T20:03:30","slug":"something-big-is-twisting-mercurys-crust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/84\/","title":{"rendered":"Something Big Is Twisting Mercury’s Crust"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercury has it rough. Not only is it the smallest planet in the solar system, it\u2019s also the closest to our Sun. This unfortunate position has caused Mercury to develop cracks and fractures across its surface<\/a>, and generate stresses to its crust, a new study has found.<\/p>\n

Mercury is dry, rugged, and heavily cratered; the planet appears deformed with towering cliffs and ridges, as well as fracture lines that run along its surface. The origin of Mercury\u2019s scars has long been a mystery: How did the planet cool and contract in such an unusual way billions of years ago after it formed? Turns out, the answer may be due to its uncomfortable proximity to the Sun<\/a>. A team of researchers from the University of Bern created physical models of Mercury to see how much of the Sun\u2019s tidal forces affect the small planet, revealing that the star may have influenced the development and orientation of tectonic features on its surface over long periods of time. The results are detailed in a study<\/a> published in the\u00a0Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.<\/p>\n

Planets form from the hot, molten material left over from the birth of a star. Over time, these objects cool and their internal materials shrink, causing them to contract as their crusts wrinkle and crack. Evidence has shown that Mercury, on the other hand, not only shrank\u2014its surface also shifted laterally. Cracks and fractures also formed in its rocky crust. Scientists assumed that the process that shaped Mercury\u2019s outer layer was a result of this cooling and contracting, but the study suggests it may be the planet\u2019s cozy orbit around the Sun.<\/p>\n

Mercury has one of the most unique orbits in the solar system. It takes about 88 Earth days to complete one orbit around the Sun, during which the planet rotates around its axis three times every two orbits. Its orbit is also highly elliptical and is tilted by around 7 degrees compared to Earth\u2019s orbital plane, its eccentricity means that the tidal forces Mercury experiences from the Sun vary a lot. \u201cThese orbital characteristics create tidal stresses that may leave a mark on the planet\u2019s surface,\u201d Liliane Burkhard, a researcher at the Space Research and Planetary Sciences Division at the Institute of Physics at the University of Bern, and lead author of the study, said in a statement. \u201cWe can see tectonic patterns on Mercury that suggest more is going on than just global cooling and contraction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team behind the study sought to investigate how these tidal forces contribute to shaping Mercury\u2019s crust. They used physical models of Mercury over the past 4 billion years to calculate how the Sun\u2019s tidal forces may have influenced its surface tensions. The results showed that the the changing gravitational pull of the Sun has impacted Mercury\u2019s tectonic features over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cTidal stresses have been largely overlooked until now, as they were considered to be too small to play a significant role,\u201d Burkhard said. \u201cOur results show that while the magnitude of these stresses is not sufficient to generate faulting alone, the direction of the tidally induced shear stresses are consistent with the observed orientations of fault-slip patterns on Mercury\u2019s surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recent findings can also be applied to other planets, illustrating how subtle forces aside from tectonics can make a lasting impact on its surface. \u201cUnderstanding how a planet like Mercury deforms helps us understand how planetary bodies evolve over billions of years,\u201d according to Burkhard.<\/p>\n

The scientists behind the new study are hoping to gather more clues about Mercury\u2019s deformed surface through the BepiColombo mission, which launched in October 2018<\/a> as a joint venture between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). BepiColombo is only the third spacecraft to visit Mercury; the elusive planet is hard to reach due to the Sun\u2019s powerful gravitational pull that may have maimed the planet\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercury has it rough. Not only is it the smallest planet in the solar system, it\u2019s also the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":85,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[160,159,161,162,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-84","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-mercury","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-solar-system","11":"tag-the-sun","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114717485457218321","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}