相关论文: Mercury's crustal thickness correlates with latera…
The chemical composition of a planetary body reflects its starting conditions modified by numerous processes during its formation and geological evolution. Measurements by X-ray, gamma-ray, and neutron spectrometers on the MESSENGER…
The MESSENGER mission sought to discover what physical processes determined Mercury's high metal to silicate ratio. Instead, the mission has discovered multiple anomalous characteristics about our innermost planet. The lack of FeO and the…
The origin of Mercury still remains poorly understood compared to the other rocky planets of the Solar System. One of the most relevant constraints that any formation model has to fulfill refers to its internal structure, with a predominant…
High resolution images of Mercury's surface, from the MESSENGER spacecraft, reveal many bright deposits associated with irregular, shallow, rimless depressions whose origins were attributed to volatile-related activity, but absent…
Magma ocean crystallisation sets up the early structure and long-term evolution of terrestrial planets. Recent seismic evidence signals the presence of a silicate layer at the base of Mars' mantle. Magma-ocean crystallisation and subsequent…
In protoplanetary disks, dust grains rich in metallic iron can attract each other magnetically. If they are magnetized to values near saturation, the magnetically induced collision speeds are high enough to knock off the non-magnetized,…
Impact bombardment on Mercury in the solar system late accretion phase (ca. 4.4 to 3.8 Ga) caused considerable mechanical, chemical and thermal reworking of its silicate reservoirs (crust and mantle). Depending on the frequency, size and…
We ran several series of two-dimensional numerical mantle convection simulations representing in idealized form the thermochemical evolution of a Mars-like planet. In order to study the importance of compositional buoyancy of melting…
The pathway to forming the iron-rich planet Mercury remains mysterious. Mercury's core makes up 70% of the planetary mass, which implies a significant enrichment of iron relative to silicates, while its mantle is strongly depleted in…
The Earth, Venus, Mars, and some extrasolar terrestrial planets have a mass and radius that is consistent with a mass fraction of about 30% metallic core and 70% silicate mantle. At the inner frontier of the solar system, Mercury has a…
Rocky planets in our Solar System, namely Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the Moon, which is generally added to this group due to its geological complexity, possess a solid surface and share a common structure divided into major layers,…
We describe the current state of knowledge about Mercury's interior structure. We review the available observational constraints, including mass, size, density, gravity field, spin state, composition, and tidal response. These data enable…
The bulk density of a planet, as measured by mass and radius, is a result of planet structure and composition. Relative proportions of iron core, rocky mantle, and gaseous envelopes are degenerate for a given density. This degeneracy is…
MESSENGER magnetometer data show that Mercury's magnetic field is not only exceptionally weak but also has a unique geometry. The internal field resembles an axial dipole that is offset to the North by 20% of the planetary radius. This…
Mercury is the only other terrestrial planet in the solar system with an active dynamo magnetic field (~200 nT at the equatorial surface). Furthermore, Mercury's ~3.9-3.7 billion-year old (Ga) crust is strongly magnetized (~10 nT at ~30-km…
Modern terrestrial planet formation models are highly successful at consistently generating planets with masses and orbits analogous to those of Earth and Venus. In stark contrast to classic theoretical predictions and inferred demographics…
Recent observations of rocky super-Earths have revealed an apparent wider distribution of Fe/Mg ratios, or core to mantle ratios, than the planets in our Solar System. This study aims to understand how much of the chemical diversity in the…
The impact heat accumulated during the late stage of planetary accretion can melt a significant part or even the entire mantle of a terrestrial body, giving rise to a global magma ocean. [...] Assuming fractional crystallization of the…
The melt productivity of a differentiated planet's mantle is primarily controlled by its iron content, which is itself approximated by the planet's core mass fraction (CMF). Here we show that estimates of an exo-planet's CMF allows robust…
Boulders on the surfaces of planets, satellites and small bodies, as well as their geological associations, provide important information about surface processes. We analyzed all available images of the surface of Mercury that have…