{"id":546,"date":"2014-03-16T13:29:42","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T18:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=546"},"modified":"2014-04-01T14:35:36","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T19:35:36","slug":"shrinking-of-mercury-great-than-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/shrinking-of-mercury-great-than-expected\/","title":{"rendered":"Shrinking of Mercury greater than expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_547\" style=\"width: 460px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/450x297_q75.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-547\" class=\"size-full wp-image-547\" alt=\"The surface of Mercury, taken on Aug. 19, 2009. (Credit: NASA and the Defense  Video &amp; Imagery Distribution System)\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/450x297_q75.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"297\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/450x297_q75.jpg 450w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/450x297_q75-300x198.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-547\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The surface of Mercury, taken on Aug. 19, 2009. (Credit: NASA and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dvidshub.net\/image\/751198\/mercury#.UzMY509dXQs\" target=\"_blank\">Defense Video &amp; Imagery Distribution System<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Since its formation over 4 billion years ago, Mercury has been slowly shrinking as the molten iron in its core solidifies. The process leaves wrinkles and ridges, known as scarps, across the planet&#8217;s surface. Using images from NASA\u2019s recent MESSENGER probe, scientists have determined that the scarps would have reduced the radius of Mercury by about seven kilometers over its lifetime. This estimate is higher than that obtained using data \u00a0in the 1970s from the Mariner 10 probe.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/ngeo\/journal\/vaop\/ncurrent\/full\/ngeo2097.html\" target=\"_blank\">Original research article<\/a><\/span> published in the journal\u00a0<em>Nature Geoscience<\/em> on <strong>March 16, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Names and affiliations of selected authors<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<h4><a href=\"http:\/\/home.dtm.ciw.edu\/users\/pbyrne\/\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Byrne<\/a>, Carnegie Institution of Washington<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since its formation over 4 billion years ago, Mercury has been slowly shrinking as the molten iron in its core solidifies. The process leaves wrinkles and ridges, known as scarps, across the planet&#8217;s surface. Using images from NASA\u2019s recent MESSENGER probe, scientists have determined that the scarps would have reduced the radius of Mercury by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/450x297_q75.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-8O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":700,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions\/700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}