Messenger, which discovered Mercury, was destroyed in 2015, but the valuable data it recorded is still being investigated today.
It has been 9 years since the mission of NASA’s Messenger space probe failed and ended its career by crashing into the surface of Mercury. Although it was no longer possible to save the structure, it still provides extremely valuable data for ground control. This is the reason for a new sensational discovery.
To this day, the smallest planet in the Solar System is surrounded by many mysteries, and there is no unified theory about its formation. Now, a team of Belgian and Chinese researchers has begun examining the data from the pore-visiting spacecraft, and it seems they’ve made an interesting discovery.
According to press information, running a simulation now allows us to conclude that there is a 15-18 kilometer thick diamond layer between the planet’s core and mantle, which can reveal a lot about the history of the celestial body’s development and can provide an explanation for its magnetic field, which is similar to Earth’s gravity.
The device drilling into the outer layer of the planet left behind a crater 16 meters in diameter, and the data it sent suggests that the dark spots on the surface contain carbon in the form of graphite. This is likely to come from inside the celestial body and not from passing comets as previously thought.
If this were the case, then the amount of crystallized carbon would have covered the entire surface of the planet. Previously, it was thought that in the absence of sufficient pressure, a diamond could not form here from coal, as it would require a high pressure around the core, but now it seems that they may have been wrong about this.
According to a thermodynamic model, the layer of carbon near the planet’s core could have turned into diamond, which formed a solid, thick layer between the core and the mantle above. The crystallization of the magma and the core could also have played a role in this. Based on these, however, the air pressure here can only be a few percent of that on Earth.
The specialists participating in the research believe that the presence of the diamond can explain the relatively quick completion of volcanic processes, since coal in this solid form conducts heat extremely well. The other special phenomenon is the magnetic field around the celestial body, which is much weaker than the one on Earth, but has existed for a long time. In order to confirm the discovery, however, further subsurface investigations are required.
Source: www.pcwplus.hu
