Mercury shrank by 7km got wrinkles Shocking claim in new study

Mercury is shrinking: The nearest planet to the Sun in our solar system is Mercury. You will be surprised to know that the shape of Mercury is changing. The planet Mercury is shrinking, wrinkle-like marks on its surface are testifying to this. This has been said in a new study. Scientists believe that the radius of Mercury has reduced by about 7 kilometers. Despite being closest to the Sun, Mercury’s interior is cooling and the volume of the rock from which it is formed is decreasing.

This in Nature Geoscience Study published Has happened. The author of the study, Benjamin Mann, a research student at the UK’s Open University (OU), studied Mercury using data from the Messenger mission (2011-2015) of the American space agency NASA. They discovered new landforms on the planet, called grabens.

Benjamin said that our ownership of so many Grabens is important. This indicates that the tectonism phase of Mercury is currently active and its effect is on the entire planet. According to PTI report, the first evidence of Mercury’s shrinkage came to light in 1974 when the ‘Mariner 10’ mission showed images of several kilometer high scarps (ramp-like slopes) that had made their way across hundreds of kilometers.

Then NASA’s Messenger mission orbited Mercury between 2011 and 2015. This revealed scarps in all parts of Mercury. The study estimates that there has been a total reduction in Mercury’s radius of about 7 km. Although scientists have not been able to know when this happened.

One opinion is that the ramp-like slopes on Mercury are about 3 billion years old. But are all the slopes so old? Is he still active today? In this study, scientists have found evidence that many slopes have continued to move in recent times, even though they began billions of years ago. So this means that the planet Mercury is still shrinking.