The chronology of Mercury's geological and geophysical evolution - The Vulcanoid hypothesis

Details The chronology of Mercury's geological and geophysical evolution - The Vulcanoid hypothesis The chronology of Mercury's geological and geophysical evolution - The Vulcanoid hypothesis

Sep 1987

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1987icar...71..350l&link_type=abstract

(The Planet Mercury Conference, Tucson, AZ, Aug. 6-9, 1986) Icarus (ISSN 0019-1035), vol. 71, Sept. 1987, p. 350-375.

Physics

Geophysics

15

Mercury (Planet), Mercury Surface, Planetary Evolution, Planetary Magnetic Fields, Terrestrial Planets, Volcanoes, Light Elements, Mariner 10 Space Probe, Planetary Cores, Planetary Craters, Solar System, Sulfur, Mercury (Planet), Chronology, Geology, Geophysics, Evolution, Hypotheses, Core, Formation, Surface, Features, Volatiles, Heating, Bombardment, Cratering, Collisions, Velocity, Orbits, Distance, Origin, Volcanism, Age, Scarps, Differentiation, Planetesimals, Relative Age, Stratigraphy, Morphology, C

Scientific paper

The authors have investigated whether constraints on Mercury's chronology could be relaxed by effects of a Mercury-specific bombarding population of planetesimals interior to its orbit, encountering the planet only occasionally due to secular perturbations. Such "vulcanoids" could have been a significant source of early cratering. However, those in orbits that can cross Mercury's are depleted by mutual collisions in ⪉1 Gyr, and can provide at most a modest extension of the period of heavy bombardment. Further inside Mercury's orbit, lower collisional velocities might allow survival of vulcanoids to the present. The authors report on a search for such bodies and on observational limits to such a population. They also review evidence that Mercury's intercrater plains are of volcanic origin and mainly predate Caloris, and that scarp formation (and global contraction) mainly postdates Caloris and has continued to recent times.

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