Mercury is absurd. It is a mysterious rock hunk with a structure unlike the surrounding stone planets.“It’s too crowded,” said David Rothery, an astronomer at Open University in England.Most of the planet, which is close to the sun, is taken from its source. It lacks a layer as thick as Earth, and no one is sure why Another planet may have been so large – perhaps twice its current size or more. Millions of years ago, this newborn proto-Mercury, or super Mercury, could be hit by a massive object, stripping off its outer layers and leaving a remnant behind.
Although it is a good idea, there has never been any direct evidence for it. But some researchers think that they have found something. In a work presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston in March, Camille Cartier, a planetary scientist at the University of Lorraine in France, and colleagues said fragments of this proto-Mercury could be hidden in museums and other meteorite collections. Reading them can unravel the mysteries of the world.
70,000 meteorites have been collected
“We don’t have any Mercury samples,” he said. Cartier. Finding such examples can be “a small change” in understanding the natural history of the smallest planet of the solar system.According to the Meteorological Society, nearly 70,000 meteorites have been collected worldwide from as far away as the Sahara and Antarctica, finding their way into museums and other collections. Most come from asteroids released from the belt between Mars and Jupiter, while more than 500 come from the moon. More than 300 are from Mars. Significantly, none of these extraterrestrial celestial bodies are confirmed meteorites from the innermost planets of our solar system, Venus and Mercury. It is thought that it is difficult, though not impossible, for the detritus near the sun and the force of gravity to pull out of the solar system.
80 aubrite meteorites have been found
Among the small number of meteorite clusters is a rare type of celestial rock called aubrites. Named after the town of Aubres in France, where the first meteorite of this type was discovered in 1836, the aubrites are pale in color and contain small particles. They are low in oxygen and appear to be built up in the sea of magma. About 80 aubrite meteorites have been found on Earth.For these reasons, they seem to resemble the scientific examples of the planet Mercury in the early days of the solar system. “We often say that aubrites are the best analogue of Mercury,” said Drs. Cartier.
But scientists have stopped claiming that they are actually fragments of Mercury. Klaus Keil, a scientist at the University of Hawai’i in Manoa who died in February, argued in 2010 that aubrites were more likely to emerge from other asteroid species than those released by Mercury, while other scientists favored the asteroid group. asteroids in a band called E-type asteroids. Among his testimonies were signs that the aubrites had been blown up by the sun – something that was supposed to protect Mercury’s magnetic field. However, Drs. Cartier has another vision. What if the aubrites originally came from Mercury?Following the idea that something big collided with a small Mercury, Drs. Cartier said a huge amount of matter would be thrown into space, about a third of the planet’s mass. A small amount of that debris would have been propelled by the sun’s wind into what is now a space shuttle, forming E-type asteroids.
NASA’s Messenger spacecraft
There, asteroids would have been living for billions of years, sometimes crashing together and constantly being blown by the sun’s rays, defining the fingers of the sun’s rays visible to aubrites. But in the end, he suggested, some fragments were pushed into Earth and landed on our planet like aubriticmeteorites.Low levels of nickel and cobalt are found in aubrites similar to what we might expect from proto-Mercury, Drs. Cartier says, while data from NASA’s Messenger spacecraft that orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015 supports similarities between Mercury formation and aubrites.
“I think aubrites are the thinnest parts of a large proto-Mercury garment,” said Drs. Cartier. “This could solve the origins of Mercury.”If true, it could mean that we have fragments of Mercury – albeit a very old version of the planet – hidden in drawers and display boxes for over 150 years.
It would be great, ”said Sarah Russell, a meteorite expert at the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved in Drs. Cartier. The museum has 10 aubrites in its collection. The suggestion of Drs. Cartier may be tested soon. The European-Japanese space shuttle BepiColombo is currently on its way to orbit Mercury in December 2025. Drs. Cartier presented his views to the BepiColombo scientists’ team in early May.
“I was really impressed,” says Drs. Rothery, a member of the science group BepiColombo. He said their goal could be to look for nickel evidence on Mercury’s surface that would fully link the earth to the collected aubrites.It will not be “straight,” he notes, as Mercury’s face today will only resemble what is left behind proto-Mercury. “Drs. Cartier continues to test his ideas by melting aubrite samples under high pressure. If these experiments and data from BepiColombo support his theory.
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