Thursday, March 13, 2008

Mysterious Craters Seen on Mercury

"The halos are really exceptional," said MESSENGER science team member Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "We've never seen anything like them on Mercury before and their formation is a mystery."


Because the only thing more fun than a mystery is a mystery on another planet.

(Thanks to Nick Redfern!)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The National Technical Information Services (NTIS) is a vast archive of now out-of-print U.S. Government Printing Office publications (always individually packed in cardboard), including all the esoteric NASA unmanned satellite publications, such as the photographic account "Voyage of Mariner 10" (to Mercury).... I would order obscure titles from NTIS in the early 90's
and servicemen would literally search the vast, dusty NTIS underground archives while I was "on hold" on the phone.... If "Mariner 10" is sold out and not reprinted yet then everything is available on Microfish!

Anonymous said...

The only mysteries on other planets that interest me are those suggestive of planetary SETI (for example, the Face). Geological mysteries somehow don't excite me. Unfortunately, I suspect that announcements of these, such as the current Mercury "mystery craters" try to play off of this association, a spin tactic that I think is especially mendacious, given the propensity of geologists to "explain away" ALL possible artificial formations as the result of geological forces. Fellas, you can't have your cake and eat it too. In the deepest sense, there ARE no geological mysteries, only planetary SETI ones....