Author Topic: Enough ice on Mercury to encase Washington, D.C.  (Read 821 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Buster's Uncle

  • With community service, I
  • Ascend
  • *
  • Posts: 49634
  • €683
  • View Inventory
  • Send /Gift
  • Because there are times when people just need a cute puppy  Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur  A WONDERFUL concept, Unity - & a 1-way trip that cost 400 trillion & 40 yrs.  
  • AC2 is my instrument, my heart, as I play my song.
  • Planet tales writer Smilie Artist Custom Faction Modder AC2 Wiki contributor Downloads Contributor
    • View Profile
    • My Custom Factions
    • Awards
Enough ice on Mercury to encase Washington, D.C.
« on: November 29, 2012, 08:54:11 pm »
Quote
NASA: There’s enough ice on Mercury to encase Washington, D.C.
By Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News – 1 hr 7 mins ago..


New evidence suggests Mercury's north polar region contains large deposits of ice. (NASA/Johns Hopkins Univers …NASA's Messenger spacecraft has discovered evidence that the planet Mercury has enough ice on its surface to encase Washington, D.C., in a block two and a half miles deep.
 
"For more than 20 years the jury has been deliberating on whether the planet closest to the Sun hosts abundant water ice in its permanently shadowed polar regions," writes Sean Solomon of the Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the principal investigator of the Messenger mission. The spacecraft "has now supplied a unanimous affirmative verdict."
 
"These reflectance anomalies are concentrated on poleward-facing slopes and are spatially collocated with areas of high radar backscatter postulated to be the result of near-surface water ice," Gregory Neumann of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center writes in the paper. "Correlation of observed reflectance with modeled temperatures indicates that the optically bright regions are consistent with surface water ice."
 
The study results were published on Wednesday in Science magazine, which explains in its summary, "The buried layer must be nearly pure water ice. The upper layer contains less than 25 wt.% water-equivalent hydrogen. The total mass of water at Mercury's poles is inferred to be 2 × 1016 to 1018 g and is consistent with delivery by comets or volatile-rich asteroids."
 
Radar imaging of Mercury has long suggested that there could be large deposits on the planet's surface, with reports dating to 1991. But today's report presents harder evidence supporting that theory.
 
Messenger has fired more than 10 million laser imaging pulses at Mercury's surface since arriving in its orbit in 2011. Feedback from those pulses have helped NASA in its quest to verify whether ice is present in Mercury's poles, which are largely shielded from exposure to the sun's rays.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/nasa-says-enough-ice-mercury-encase-washington-dc-194415297.html

 

* User

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Select language:

* Community poll

SMAC v.4 SMAX v.2 (or previous versions)
-=-
24 (7%)
XP Compatibility patch
-=-
9 (2%)
Gog version for Windows
-=-
103 (32%)
Scient (unofficial) patch
-=-
40 (12%)
Kyrub's latest patch
-=-
14 (4%)
Yitzi's latest patch
-=-
89 (28%)
AC for Mac
-=-
3 (0%)
AC for Linux
-=-
6 (1%)
Gog version for Mac
-=-
10 (3%)
No patch
-=-
16 (5%)
Total Members Voted: 314
AC2 Wiki Logo
-click pic for wik-

* Random quote

The happy life is thought to be one of excellence.. now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist of amusement. If Eudaimonia, or happiness, is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should in accordance with the highest excellence, and this will be that of the best thing in us.
~Aristotle 'Nichomachean Ethics', Datalinks

* Select your theme

*
Templates: 5: index (default), PortaMx/Mainindex (default), PortaMx/Frames (default), Display (default), GenericControls (default).
Sub templates: 8: init, html_above, body_above, portamx_above, main, portamx_below, body_below, html_below.
Language files: 4: index+Modifications.english (default), TopicRating/.english (default), PortaMx/PortaMx.english (default), OharaYTEmbed.english (default).
Style sheets: 0: .
Files included: 45 - 1228KB. (show)
Queries used: 35.

[Show Queries]