Publication Date:
2012-03-23
Description:
Radio tracking of the MESSENGER spacecraft has provided a model of Mercury's gravity field. In the northern hemisphere, several large gravity anomalies, including candidate mass concentrations (mascons), exceed 100 milli-Galileos (mgal). Mercury's northern hemisphere crust is thicker at low latitudes and thinner in the polar region and shows evidence for thinning beneath some impact basins. The low-degree gravity field, combined with planetary spin parameters, yields the moment of inertia C/MR(2) = 0.353 +/- 0.017, where M and R are Mercury's mass and radius, and a ratio of the moment of inertia of Mercury's solid outer shell to that of the planet of C(m)/C = 0.452 +/- 0.035. A model for Mercury's radial density distribution consistent with these results includes a solid silicate crust and mantle overlying a solid iron-sulfide layer and an iron-rich liquid outer core and perhaps a solid inner core.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Smith, David E -- Zuber, Maria T -- Phillips, Roger J -- Solomon, Sean C -- Hauck, Steven A 2nd -- Lemoine, Frank G -- Mazarico, Erwan -- Neumann, Gregory A -- Peale, Stanton J -- Margot, Jean-Luc -- Johnson, Catherine L -- Torrence, Mark H -- Perry, Mark E -- Rowlands, David D -- Goossens, Sander -- Head, James W -- Taylor, Anthony H -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 Apr 13;336(6078):214-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1218809. Epub 2012 Mar 21.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22438509" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
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Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
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Physics
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