These are all great points, but I have my own idea... Just as the Earth and Mars may have benefited from having less impacts because Jupiter protected them by grabbing objects.. couldn't Mercury have benefited the same because of its proximity to the Sun? I mean, density and gravitation balances are way off the charts. The Sun would have attracted far more than Mercury could have pulled into itself for bombardment. Just a thought.
Tom Lockhart It’s a good point - NASA representatives have said that its very difficult to put anything into orbit around Mercury because of the gravitational forces of the sun - impactors would need to be more direct and therefore fewer in total
In fact Mercury is in even more danger of being hit by asteroids by being closer to Sun. Just like the romantic partners of movie stars are likely to get photographed and hit by slander, not because they themselves are necessarily famous, but because their star companion attacks paparazzi, reporters and people to them. Of course in the case of our Sun is its gravity that puts Mercury in the line of fire by attracting asteroids.
@@netx421 As it turns out adquieren matter is not easy to achieve at certain stages of a celestial body. If you are a small planet with no atmosphere and you get hit by a big asteroid, that large explosion will blow more matter away from the planet than it deposits. Planets gain most of their mass absorbing small particles and gas during the early stages of a solar system. In fact one hypothesis about why Mercury's density says that it collided with a large planetoid which blew its outer crust into space.
The moon is also affected by Earth's gravity. That's why it gets hit so often. Overall, its local, combined gravity well is deeper than that of Mercury's. Sure, Mercury is closer to the sun, but that's still a lot of space. But the moon exists within the Earth's well, which means it has a good chance of being hit by anything the Earth attracts.
The only reason people think our moon gets hit more than earth is because the scars on earth are erased by water erosion. Earth probably took far more hits than our moon did over the billions of years.
@@LBCAndrew Also, the kinds of rocks that would create craters on the moon would be absolutely shredded by our atmosphere and only leave a trace in the scattering of extraterrestrial elements and isotopes
I think a planet losing its gaseous atmosphere doesn't go linear, and that is loses more gas further in the process when it has lesser gas, so I think your original hypothesis wasn't really tested.
@Winston Smith i don't really know which is correct but i would agree more with OP as more gas still bound to the planet means higher heat capacity for the whole atmosphere. i think that plays a greater part than gravity.
As a gas giant loses atmosphere, it should indeed become less able to hold on to what's left of the atmosphere. This due to the remaining gas becoming less and less compressed. You can see this effect when you look at the gas giants in our system, where Jupiter is much the same size as Saturn, despite having far more gas stuck to it. (ie it's heavier) And Neptune and Uranus while a bit smaller still aren't that small. What this means is that the surface of the atmosphere isn't getting much smaller, but the amount of gravity is getting weaker over time. And so losses would increase over time. Still, if this idea were to be true, the gas giant couldn't have always been in the orbit Mercury is in now. For one the mass loss just isn't that fast, and secondly, the Sun was less bright in the past. So the actual loss rate would actually even be lower from a pure heating perspective. (Assuming the Sun doesn't do anything crazy) Though considering its thought the planets may well have moved around a bit early on, it seems hard to completely dismiss this as a possibility.
If a gas giant had been as close as Mercury, It also would have been moving around quite a bit at the beginning. Also, when gas giants are found to be or have been as close as Mercury, there are not other rocky planets found in the system. There is a lot of misleading info online. And there are a lot of papers written that are not backed by additional study. While the theory presented is interesting, it is not one that is believed to be likely. Fact is, any of the planets could fall into the category of "they may have been gas giants" since the early planets ALL moved in different orbits. But that does not mean that they were.
@@johnjon4688 since you've said that all planets have been moving around since it's formation, why wouldn't you think about Mercury aswell? think about it, Mercury's current orbit plate couldn't be the original ones. since the planet is heavy cratered, it has alot of hypothesis (the 12.6° tilted orbit plate, high massed yet small, heavy materials, eccentric orbit (probably because of it's distance to the Sun. since the Sun always releases helium to strengthen it's magnetic field), shrinkage, geologically inactive (this ones a typical core type of a gas giant) that scientists haven't get to study nor answer it's formation. somethings heavy could've hit and push Mercury during it's formation, adaption and growth around the Sun. false infos aren't always a false one. if the person who made the information had an actual background knowledge, the info couldn't get stated as false in just 2 words.
@@sspeedd8809 Planets do move in their orbits, but not so much that a gas giant would be able to transgress multiple rocky planets without causing obvious signs. If Mercury had started as a gas giant, it would have started outside the orbit of Mars. Earth, Venus, and Mars would not be here if it had moved in.
Some time ago I did read an article wereby Mercury had a rocky mantel that was destroyed by an impact of a very large object in the early days of the solar system. This would be a reasonable explanation for the lack of craters compared to the earth's moon.
"Impact" is almost always the first idea astronomers come about when dealing with unusual events. Some times it stands further scrutiny, many other times it doesnt, often it keeps floating around until some better explanation is conceived and proved plausible.
The reason why you don't see more craters on Mercury is because of the formation of the planets. Mercury was actually a bigger planet than it was today, roughly Mars-sized. In theory, a collision occurred that stripped Mercury of it's surface and mantle leaving just the core. Overtime it gathered materials, but not enough to regain what it had lost. Basically today, most of Mercury's interior is it's core.
I don't think it works that way - in fact, the closer you are to the sun, the higher the incoming asteroid density per cross section (since they move closer to each other radially w. r. to the sun), so if anything, Mercury should have more.
As we've seen from Earth, it doesn't really take a huge atmosphere to erode away craters. The Chicxulub crater isn't visible from space; and on geological scales that's pretty recent.
Just wondering, here: if there was the significant off-gassing that we saw in the demo, would that off-gassing not have some propulsive effect, pushing it out of its orbit -- which would then result in a reduced off-gassing rate, which would reduce the propulsive effect, and so on?
Would a hot jupiter move to a higher orbit as it lost mass? Or is this another one of those weird quirks with gravity that it enacts the same pull regardless of the object's mass?
@@CynicalOldDwarf IIRC a hot Jupiter should migrate outward as it loses mass, however, all the matter thrown off by the sun should also create drag slowing the orbital velocity down a bit negating some of that migration. It's a lot of math and I haven't even looked at any of those equations in 20 years, but in theory you could calculate it.
Off gassing is generated by solar wind pressure and lack of gravity to hold small atoms/molecules. It isn't like a chemical engine in a space ship, where the reaction causes a pushing effect.
When your timescale is millions to billions of years you can off gas a lot of matter and not have it create any sort of propulsion effect. Especially when it would have to overcome a massive amount of gravitational forces to alter the orbit even a relatively small amount.
+Anton Petrov (WhatDaMath) you are very right, I absolutely love your videos I would really like to see more universe sandbox 2 videos. Oh, and I was just wondering where you got your accent from. Please respond as soon as possible, thank you:)
Shss don't do not doubt the wisdom from TH-cam Commenters, they clearly know the awesomes to hard problems, even tho they just saying the first thing that came to mind, and most of the time did not even think thing through or have done any research on it XD
I listened to a theory where at one time Saturn was closer to Earth than now. The video claimed that their was a collision between Saturn & Jupiter & our oceans came from Saturn, the planet was flooded with water contain NaCl. Also doesn't Uranus orbit on its side. The presumption it was 'knocked over' by a collision. Check out Velikovsky, Worlds in Collison. I know people have rejected his hypothesis since 1950, but a lot of it makes sense and the opposition to his hypothesis is totally irrational for people who call themselves 'scientist' It's either right or it's wrong. He made predictions back then that have proven true. Like the atmosphere of Venus would be very hot. It was presumed back then that it would not be hot.
@@fntime No, *nothing* about Velikovsky's idea makes any scientific sense. Seriously, Jupiter just "spat out" the planet Venus and it shot across the solar system and just happened to arrive in a nice neat circular orbit? And this was just a few thousand years ago and no-one on Earth noticed it? Anyway Venus is hot due to runaway greenhouse effect, nothing like what Velikovsky said. and *all* planets give off radio waves of one sort or another. However one model of the early solar system has Jupiter and Saturn orbiting much close in, and with millions of years of gravitational kicks ( no collisions) they migrated outwards - that part is (real) science yes, not some random "lets try and fit science to an ancient Greek myth like Mr Velikovsky.
Pretty much nothing, sadly. Earth's gravity is too low to hang on to any of that hydrogen/helium blown off a gas giant like that. If it got ionised in the solar radiation it would have hit our magnetic field and given a beautiful aurora though
IIRC I remember reading in a magazine the likes of "National Geographic " that Mercury appearered to look more like the Core of a Planet than what they expected a planet to look like. At the time astronomy had no theories explaining it's appearances. I had at that time no expectations of ever hearing a single idea of why it was the way it is. A Gas Giant? Why not. Thank you.
(I think) it being so close to the sun doesnt make a really high impact on their orbits, if you add a neptune to the sun's mass it would mostly stay the same. (so long ago!! sorry...)
Is it possible that mercury might have been a moon of one of the gas giant planets when they were in the inner solar system and was left behind when they moved to the outer solar system? I thought that the reason for the lack of medium craters might be that the gas giant might have protected it from them somehow.
According to a PBS series about the Solar System, Jupiter wandered all over the place until Saturn forced Jupiter to become stable in its current orbit. I think that's correct. I need to watch the series again.
Bigger question: did any of the terrestrial planets NOT start with a thick, gas giant-like, atmosphere? Venus currently has what 90+ times the atmosphere of earth, despite being much closer to the sun.... I think the current theory was that comets and asteroid impacts brought atmosphere to terrestrial worlds, but what if they already started with large amounts of gas and water, in addition to their silicon/iron core?
maybe there were large amounts of gas closer to the sun in big clusters, that would make venus and mercury have a thick atmosphere and then start escaping the planet due to the sun. (those are only my thoughts, i'm obviously not sure)
Unlikely, most volatiles were pushed well past the orbit of the asteroid belt by solar winds when the sun was still a T tauri star. Creating a gas giant any closer is impossible for a star of our size. You can migrate a gas giant in to the inner solar system but the presence of Jupiter and Saturn make that incredibly improbable. Yes we lost some of our atmosphere when our sun went from a T Tauri to a main sequence star but imagining a thick gas giant like atmosphere prior to that event is rather suspect.
That's not possible. A T Tauri star is a star in it's first phase of evolution. Gas and dust is falling toward a central point. At that stage there is no nuclear fusion happening. Instead the star is putting out heat and light by friction alone. All that gas and dust ramming into each other creates heat and energy which radiates away from the star. This pushes volatiles away from the star but not heavier elements like iron or silicates. Most hydrogen, helium, water, methane, what we call 'volatiles' are pushed out past the orbit of Mars by that heat and energy. This is why Earth is so incredibly dry. Earth's water by mass is about .02% the total mass of the planet. It only appears more because it's all gathered at the surface. You are correct that planets migrate but there is no model that ever says a gas giant can form inside that bubble where volatiles are being pushed outward by the heat and energy of a star in the T tauri stage. The time when planet formation happens. There simple won't be enough hydrogen, helium, or methane to form a gas giant close to a star. When gas giants migrate it is after their formation. If we see a gas giant close to its parent star it has migrated in. It can't have been created there.
Plausible, though Venus's atmosphere being 92 times the density of Earth's is largely due to the runaway greenhouse effect the planet suffered a few hundred million years ago. Plus, the gas planets atmospheres are primarily made of hydrogen and helium, whereas the atmosphere of Venus is primarily carbon dioxide, which is much denser than hydrogen and helium. The rocky planets of our solar system do have helium in their atmospheres, but it's a tiny percentage of the total atmospheric makeup of any rocky planet we know of.
Not only is Mercury a faster moving planet, you have the freaking Sun right next to it, so what's that about more mass? Also Jupiter have been protecting earth form asteroids, it seems to be one of those reasons life here exist, having a big nice gass giant sucking up all incoming problems. And that's also another hole in that idea, as having Earth so close by and bigger, should make Earth the bigger target, and therefore shield the moon from meteors. So no, not buying that one.
I would assume being closer to the sun, that the sun's gravity might take care of things potentially near enough to hit Mercury. Also being close to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, there are more things around Earth to nail the moon.
Yes, that is a explanation, but still doesn't really explain the massive iron core that much. In fact if masses were the answer here, would all the iron not end up inside the sun rater than inside Mercury?
@@MouseGoat well gravitationally, movement/orbit would keep the core moving, while solar wind/gravity of the sun could easily strip away any atmosphere. So if mercury was a gas giant, it should explain the heavy core, but no mantle/outer shell like Venus, Earth and Mars. But it's been a year and I don't remember the video that well. Will have to relook.
It is a reasonable hypothesis - when I first learned of most exoplanets being ‘hot Jupiters’, and the fact that Mercury is like a giant core of a planet in itself, I too wondered if Mercury was a former ‘hot Jupiter’ that had lost its gaseous atmosphere over time
If Mercury is a cthonian, it would be interesting. It is spattering sodium off in a tail due to proximity to the sun. So, it is possible. stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/MercurysTail.shtml Otherwise, a protoMercury atmosphere might have contained: hydrogen sulfide, water vapor, hydroxonium, hydroxyl. That's a guess based off what we detected in the tenuous atmosphere it still has. Would have looked wicked too.
Good night, Mr. Petrov. I've recently discovered your channel and I'm glad I did because its content is very interesting and presented in a very natural, open and thoughtfull approach. Besides, every topic you present is very interesting and always related to the most recent discoveries and investigation, too, and not just the usual ones from just another astronomy show. So, I congratulate you for that. I've been passionate about astronomy and astrophysics all my life and all these topics are food for thought and investigation. My thoughts about your hypothesis are the following: it's interesting to hypothesise the Mercury Issue in that way ( which, I've never seen anyone doing, so far ). However, we'll have to take in account that for Mercury to have migrated outwards after loosing all its hypothetical gaseous cover, a counteracting strong gravitational pull from the other planets at their positions then would have to be necessary to overcome that of a maturing sun and that is not what the current model for the formation and evolution of the solar system ( the Nice Model ) is postulating. Besides, a gas giant forming so close to the sun is ( probably ) next to impossible. Although, the stripped gas giant theory is an appealing one due to be an easier and faster process to occur, it would probably mean that Mercury would have to have formed in the outer Solar System and pass all the inner planets without collide with them on its migration to be so close to the Sun. So, it makes more sense to me to that ( perhaps ) Mercury is indeed a solidified stripped mantle and core of a bigger planet which have collided with proto-Venus, just enough to reverse its rotation or axis and strip Mercury of its outer layers on its migration to an orbit closer to the sun. Please, tell me your thoughts about this. My regards to you.
This may not bear out in current models of the planetary formation of our solar system, and a few comments here were disputing this theory with some weight behind them. But i love a scientist who is willing to think outside the box. I myself questioned this possibility years ago. Im no professional scientist, so i can do this without criticism. But its those professional scientists that think outside the box that do make some if the greatest discoveries. Kudos to you for taking the leap.
If the collision theory of the Moon's creation is correct, could not the higher number of craters be explained, at least in part, by the Moon being struck later by rocks which weren't quickly drawn to the Moon and the new Earth as they reformed after the collision ?
Ah....the moon, even without witnesses, theory of creation is pretty much a done deal. Zircon crystal analysis, moon rock composition, plus size issues, I feel happy with the explanation.
@@markgarin6355 You can accept your Theory on how the Moon was created, again, the Moons creation is just a Theory, no facts or conclusive evidence of its creation, just theories
If it was a hot Jupiter or jot Neptune it would have been orbiting the sun at a closer distance because of its greater gravitional tug on the sun, and as this hot gas mercury lost mass, it would have started to get further from the sun due to less gravitional influence
It doesn't work that way. The only thing that determines orbit is velocity and the mass of the star/planet. Otherwise, Earth would've drifted out to Neptune and vice versa. It would have to lose mass and somehow speed up at the same time.
Oh, and you can see here from the following equation why. The radius of the orbit r is dependent only on mass of sun m, velocity of object v and the gravitational constant G which doesn't change. r = Gm/(v^2)
Then you would not get that big a iron core, that's the key hint here, the bigger the planet the more massive core. Mercury is massive, but why? Venus and earth both have the expected amount of iron in there core for planets of there size. Planit building is a material lottery, the heavy the element, the less of it exist, so the more you have the more amazing "win" it is. And the Universe tends to favor the less amazing scenarios, as boring as it sounds lol
Thanks for this thesis Anton. I've been watching the mainstream documentaries about the Solar System over recent years where they always start off with Mercury as a Terrestrial planet that somehow had its crust blown off through a collision or series of collisions to provide the resultant high mass mini-planet. However, through the relatively recent 'Grand Tack Theory' and the acceptance that planets actually are not permanently fixed in their orbits from creation, I have often mused that maybe we are looking at the core of a Gas Giant that moved too close to the Sun very early in the creation of the Solar System. I'm no scientist - I have no concept about how to mathematically demonstrate such an idea - you do. Thank you.
There's also a theory that Mercury may have been at some point Venus' moon. Until a major impact causing it to reverse it's spin at a much slower speed and Mercury was pulled by the sun to its own orbit effectively transitioning it from a moon to a planet. However, based on discoveries of exoplanets in recent years, the Hot Jupiter theory makes more sense as it is apparently quite common to see these super gas giants orbit very near their host star as well as Mercury's density and core size relevant to the planet's size is consistent with the Hot Jupiter theory. Always neat to study and ponder. Thanks for sharing.
You are missing out the obvious. The proximity of Mercury to the Sun. The gravity of the Sun would attract many incoming objects so they would miss Mercury and impact the Sun. If you look at the structure of the Solar System the denser elemental objects are in the inner Solar System and the less dense elemental objects (gas giants) are in the outer Solar System. Meaning the elements that form the planets not the density of the planets. Is this not a feasible explanation of the Solar System we see today?
Kind of, but a lot of other solar systems seem to have gas giants really close in, even closer to the star than Mercury. The one we live in is actually unusual.
Michael Martin Yeah, but those systems aren't stable, and the gas giant planets are going to impact the star eventually. You're right about our solar system being strange, it's unique among the systems we've examined so far.
I heard the Sun is over 99.9 % of the mass of the solar system? Or something close to that. How is it comets travel more freely than other objects? The planets are more stable than anything else that I know of. Gravity is having a huge effect here. We're only seeing part of the picture right now because we're alive to do so. I don't know how many clues we'll need before we see the entire picture.
It's so close to the sun the Sun is going to catch most of the asteroids and comets. But also is going to attract more so I don't know that's a good theory
About the theory of number of craters indicating how old it is, this video is a good questioning and if Mercury was a gas planet that needed so many years to loose it's gas it wouldn't have many craters.
Anton, you ignored the Sun's gravity/tidal friction on the orbit/rotation of Mercury, and thus the geological heat that causes fresh surfaces. Look at Io and Jupiter for a similar effect. This kinda thing would solve problems of a young surface. Mercury has 2/3 orbit rotation, If i remember right. That must have slowed down from the past. Still, each orbit causes tidal friction, and make geological heating. . Second, If Mercury was instead a close gas giant/Neptune, it would have lost any atmosphere during the Sun's T-tauri phase - when the Sun was igniting and blowing off surface of the Sun along with any air on nearby planets. I believe close Neptune planets move into a close sun orbit with their atmosphere AFTER the T-tauri period, if there is one. Since our Jupiter stopped moving in, and is now moving out, I don't see a close gas giant here. Moreover, our Neptune and company moved by the mechanism of Jupiter/Saturn resonance. What would be the mechanism for Mercury to move AFTER the period of orbital bombardment? You sim moved it by fiat, but in real life you need a mechanism. Furthermore, the Sun when it started up, was on 70% of what it is now - how would that affect your quick and dirty simulation? Just my $0.05 worth.
An entire star system works a bit like a refinery, where the heaviest stuff condenses on the lowest level. In the state of accretion disc, I would expect that the heavier elements gathered in lower orbits whereas lighter elements made it to higher orbits, thus. This might explain the high density of the inner planets. This idea was discussed somewhere in the planethunters discussions years ago. I wonder what impact the proximity to the central star would have on forming the development of the surface chemistry of a planet. Could an athmosphere get absorbed in endothermic reactions into the surface of a planet and vanish this way? The 400°C on the surface of Mercury might have meant that quite a bit of a former athmosphere was absorded thus. Next thin I wonder is if the surface of the planet might have undergone some tempering process in the hot environment that made its surface more resilient to developing craters.
You are correct about the density sorting of accretion discs. The idea of the temperature causing atmospheric absorption may be disproven by the fact that Mercury still has an atmosphere that is just extremely thin. And it is a mixed atmosphere, caused mainly through collection of solar wind (H and He) and radioactive decay of the crust of the planet (O, N, Na, and Mg). There are a few other compounds as well but in extraordinarily trace amounts. The tempering process idea is an interesting one, but it would require the metals to have reached certain temperature windows that I am not sure the Sun gets Mercury up to without exceeding. Metals won't temper or keep their temper if they get too hot. But I am not a metallurgist. Maybe somebody with more knowledge can add to your idea.
Maybe before Mercury had a thick atmosphere somewhere like earth but no water trapping heat and destroying asteroids in its atmosphere until the solar radiation blew out mercurys atmosphere my opinion
Uh, but they don't? planets are just rocks in space, sometimes they big sometimes they small. Plantes "start" when they get formed by dust around a new star that itself was born by a supernova from a older star. The dust forms clumps of rocks that grow bigger and bigger, and over time some rocks will become big enough that they begin dominating their orbit. And because all matter wants to clump together, gas giants is the most common outcome when everything has been sucked up by one big ass "rock" But its not always the case, sometimes you have planets like earth and mars forming, nether of witch have ever been gas giants. Part of the reason is that Jupiter sucked up all the material first, Mars earth and Venus are kinda just the leftovers of Jupiter's feast, that got stuck in our own orbits.
Freedom Phoenix Goat didn’t Jupiter also move towards the sun for a while and push the super earths towards the sun? And th leftover of that debris formed the inner planets today.
I think the likelyhood of mercury having been a gas giant to be very low. Firstly, I would expect to see metallic hydrogen on a gas giant core. Though it is still light weight, it can form very large and strong metallic crystals that would prevent it from evaporating like gaseous hydrogen. You have also not considered the fact of earth's gravity on bringing asteroids into the area the moon obits. Also, there is no reason to think that all orbital paths in the inner solar system would get the same level of bombardment. Think of how hard it is to get to mercury from earth compared to the other planets. Asteroids from the belt will have the same problem.
I think that Mercury was a former ice moon of Jupiter or Saturn . When all of the gas giants were doing the hokey pokey early on it was dislodged from its parent planet and clipped the Earth, losing all of the water as well as its outer shell, creating the moon and giving Earth its water. Mercury spun into orbit around the Sun and the gas giants retreated to their current orbits.
If Mercury was ever a lost Jupiter and lost its atmosphere, it would have been hit by many more meteors in a shorter time than the Moon. Due to its mass, the Sun is bombarded regularly by comets and Mercury would have been also hit by many of them. The question is: how much big stuff falls into the Sun at any time and, knowing that, it may be possible to figure the proportion that hit Mercury. That would give an estimate in time in the cratering of Mercury, which would tell us when its atmosphere was depleted. Estimating next when Mercury was moved to its present orbit would depend how much mass it had to begin with.
Short review of Britaina on Mercury. Lots of movement of Mercury's surface both from molten core and Sun Tidal Forces and strong indicators of volcanic action indicates a possible reason craters are removed. But over all we need a bunch more data before a clearer answer of Mercury's history. Dating of Rocks on the Moon very helpful in answers there. The number of huge gas giants in close and medium orbits plus the extremely variable masses of planets around other stars indicates to me we might have some errors in our early Solar System Ideas. Maybe various stuff like Iron might collect in interstellar clouds in patches and in Solar System production process these clouds can clump and form a planet with a high amount of anything at any distance from a Sun. Yet understood process might allow Gas Giants to form at any range from a sun in part maybe Gas Giant can collect from proto planetary disk faster than a Sun can blow the gas away.
What about if the earth helped with the amount of asteroids that hit the moon. Like the gravitational pull from the earth pulled asteroids in and then hit the moon as well as the earth. Idk does that make sense? 😆🌚
Pietro Smusi as far as I know the earth captures Objects all the time. So during the big bombardment...is that wait it's called? idk ANYWAY. I'd imagine the earth would have captured a lot more and bigger ones at that and the moon has a pull of its own so it could of pulled them apart so like bits of asteroids hit the earth and the moon. Does that makes any kinda logical sense...no...okay I'll stop shower thoughts xD
That's incredibly likely. The Earth has 50x the mass of the Moon so dragging asteroids in to its orbit is much simpler than an object of the Moon's mass. The moon is also far less dense than the Earth meaning it's larger surface area for its mass make it a lovely target. I don't think very many planetary geologists would disagree with you.
what if we broke mercury apart peice by peice and used the parts to terraform Venus. I'm not sure how much mass we can move with rockets/solar sails but I think it would be easier then manipulating the orbit of asteroids. it may not solve the problem of water but at the very least we should be able to build structures with enough sizes/mass to helpcool the planet and fix it's rotation. I think we could also do things relatively quickly with a good assembly line process.
I was referring more to using it as a moon then making it part of venus. that said venus having a little more mass then earth isn't much of a problem for habitability. the key thing is the temperature and chemistry of the air needs to be changed to lighter less toxic compounds. namely a large amount of sulfur and carbon need to be removed. surprisingly if you can remove the sulfur from the clouds we could create all the water we need. sulfuric acid is basically 2water molecules fused to 1 sulfur atom.
J M Herdon has a similar theory of the inner planets being the cores of former gas giants. Whole earth decompression dynamics. It competes with plate tectonics and permits limited earth expansion through decompression. Worth a read. Just a few pages from back around 2006-7.
The reasons could be as follows - 1. For the reason why more craters on Moon compared to Mercury, the asteroid belt is more closer to moon than mercury and chances are that even the objects from late bombardment period would have been gravitationally pulled towards to sun than to mercury or even mars, Venus, earth and the moon could have helped the cause 2. The reason Mercury is more denser that if not it would have had lesser gravitational force and would have even be formed further away from sun, so when the planets did form because of heavy materials probably clung together to form mercury than lesser of such elements was stable for formation in the orbits they are for farther planets, lastly 3. If mercury was a gas giant like Neptune then not only the orbit would have to be very close to sun to loose enough mass but also would have resulted in pulling a lot more objects towards it which inverse would have seen lesser craters on other planets I.e. if it had and was a large gas giant......not sure about Nobel prize but logically seems right to me that’s all ;)
Anton,the moon has more craters because it is closer to the "Asteroid belt"and mercury is farther and probably is hit by more comets that fly by the sun so technically the moon would have more craters...
Just the best guess we have from the evedence collected over the years. Cant the moon be Thea and the junk blasted of earth from them bashing of each other.
I think your math is off a little bit. You claimed it lost 20 million earths mass. Perhaps you meant 20 earths mass. If it started with 20 million earth mass, that sounds like it would have been heavier than the sun!
I'm not sure but I think that Mercury's proximity to Sol causes it to be polished by the solar wind, light, and everything. I'd have to take a good look at the side facing the sun. If it's smoother then the solar wind is blowing comets away from Mercury. I'm unsure how the Sun's gravity works but how do comets enter and reenter our solar system? Is like a swimming pool with objects on the waves. Do the waves hit some sort of wall and bounce back into our solar system with the other planets contributing as well? If Mercury's surface is mountain-like and with craters maybe comets can still hit that side. Or Mercury wasn't a gas giant and had a molten core. Whatever the explanation is I'm unsure how long I'll be around to know the truth about this. There's many things to be discovered. Edit-The reason why the planets or the 8 we classify don't move like comets because their mass is higher. Their gravity presses harder causing them to be more locked into place. The low gravity of the comets make them more maneuverable.
I would also suggest that the likelihood of Mercury being impacted is likely statistically higher because it is further down the solar systems gravity well. Also the moon is afforded further shielding by the Earth, so you should expect even less craters on it! The crater anomaly is interesting. I think you put forward an interesting hypothesis
I like the idea. Sometimes i wonder why the amount of craters in the solar system is so huge. It seems odd unless it once had several asteroid bellts which it very well might have had but still - a refreshing theory. Essentially all matter in space is the same, just different phases.
Very nice explanation. You should also take into account that the moon is not alone and that Earth can attract asteroids for it. Here you can create a density of the number of asteroids per a gravitational volume [where the gravitational volume is the space in which the object's(or objects) gravitation is greater than the gravitation of the Sun at that distance]. The proximity to the main asteroid belt should also be considered. Thank you for your videos.
The planets should be named after their suns, such as Alpha Centauri with A being the closes planet to its sun, then Alpha Centauri B and so on. The moons could be names as, Alpha Centauri A-1, A-2 and so on. If you choose to add whether it is a gas or rocky planet, then you could name it as, Alpha Centauri A-g, B-r, C-r, D-g and so on. (Alpha Centauri Dg-3i) = 4th planet/gas, 3rd moon/ice. You could easily expand from here and any 2nd grader and up would be able to tell what any known planet or moon consisted of, etc. Thx, JAK-A-c/2. c=carbon
What if Mercury was the proto-planet that collided with the Earth? It would then proceed to its current position, and the heat from the Sun keep the surface molten for longer than the Earth and Moon. This would make the surface of Mercury younger than the Moon's.
Nothing like theoretical physics/astronomy I buy it. We can't know for sure but given what I've seen in other vids (gas giants being endlessly common) and all the weird in space :) I just hope nobody else nicks your idea.
A couple of other possibilities: 1. The moon is much closer to the asteroid belt then Mercury, so would "attract" more asteroids; 2. The close proximity of Mercury to the Sun with its FAR, FAR MORE gravitational pull would pull any asteroid in the vicinity into the Sun rather than Mercury.
Two reasons why the Moon and Mercury have a similar number of craters despite age differences, both based on their neighbors. 1. Mercury is close to the Sun, which could either break apart, destroy, or pull in more of the potential impacts toward itself. 2. Our Moon is quite large in ratio compared to Earth. Objects that might be pulled in by Earth's gravitational have a higher chance of striking the moon as well due to the two masses in close proximity. Being that our Moon is tidally locked, this is possibly also why the bulk of the craters on our Moon are on the far side of it, as the other 45-50% of the impacts happened on the Earth.
My theory: Mercury is the remnant of a gas planet somewhere in between the size of Neptune and Venus with a large core relative to the size of its atmosphere and maybe a different gas composition. The reason why there's this gap in between where we haven't found real examples could be b/c we can't really investigate stellar system formation and evolution in real time w/ our current technology. The debris of young systems makes that difficult. On top of that, we're in a completely different aeon of the universe and the elemental composition has changed enough to where we might have to look at young systems 4.5 Gly away to really get a survey like that (in other words, outside our galaxy) which won't be possible w/in our lifetimes.
Another contrary factor is that Mercury's tight orbit at the center of the solar system means it should be exposed to a lot more asteroid impacts. Sort of analogous to flux...the in-flux of asteroids toward Mercury should be greater.
Being closer to the sun before moving out would explain why there are no planets closer to the sun than Mercury, so using the concept of Mercury being closer is entirely plausible, which then as Anton demonstrated allows for a thick gaseous atmosphere to be removed. The core of Mercury is more like a super earth with the mantel missing, than what we understand is the cores of the 4 gas giants, which we don't know that well, which of course doesn't dispel the gas planet concept, just means that it would of had a different core
Edit - I've just seen that someone else said this idea but it's here now anyway. How about Mercury was once like Venus - rocky with a thick hot atmosphere. That gas (less of it) would take less time to burn off and the dense atmosphere might have vaporised enough asteroids so we see fewer impacts compared to The Moon.
Maybe in the late heavy bombardment by the time asteroids reached Mercury, the sun's gravitational pull on the asteroids directed them to the sun more so and Mercury became a smaller target.
Mercury, Mars and Moon were born out of a gas giant that went nova. The gas sheath of these gas giants expanded away for the core and electrical arcing back to the core caused the craters we see on these rocky bodies. The cores were ejected like we have seen with the "Cannon Ball pulsar." Their nova event probably happened shortly after they were ejected from a Herbig-Haro object, where stars and some planets are formed.
Another possability worth exploring is if Mercury was more of a dwarf gas giant, so bigger then a terrestrial planet but not as big as a normal gas giant, how would that have affected it's atmospheric loss? Would having less atmosphere to lose have also given it less protection from losing it's atmosphere? One would expect so as there's less gravity and other forces to help it retain it's mass in that case.
I think you have a valid hypothesis. mercury could have been a hot jupiter orbiting close to the sun, as it lost it's atmosphere, lost the mass, it migrated outward to it present location.
My uneducated and stoned thoughts about the craters. The Moon is in the Earth's gravity well and may have had more chances of being hit? Love your theory better. Mad props and complete appreciation for you and your videos. Peace.
I would think that since Mercury is closer to our star, it would have taken longer to go from molten to solid, thus it would have had more time for its heavy elements to sink to its middle, and it would have a younger looking crust than the moon. This could also explain it being made of more heavy elements and such, as the lighter ones would have been burnt off faster as well.... just a thought lol.
another explanation is that jovian moons also have less impact zones because their close to high gravity body so can also make sense that mercury has less impacts because of its proximity to the sun
I once saw a show that said Mercury was much larger, and had most of its crust and mantle lost in a massive collision.
I've read a similar thing. using Universe Sandbox 2, the mass required for Mercury to be made of ~25% irons and 75% silicates is around 7 moon masses.
yeah I saw someone say that in a documentary once.
I saw one too
I saw that too
I saw that too
These are all great points, but I have my own idea... Just as the Earth and Mars may have benefited from having less impacts because Jupiter protected them by grabbing objects.. couldn't Mercury have benefited the same because of its proximity to the Sun? I mean, density and gravitation balances are way off the charts. The Sun would have attracted far more than Mercury could have pulled into itself for bombardment. Just a thought.
Tom Lockhart It’s a good point - NASA representatives have said that its very difficult to put anything into orbit around Mercury because of the gravitational forces of the sun - impactors would need to be more direct and therefore fewer in total
In fact Mercury is in even more danger of being hit by asteroids by being closer to Sun. Just like the romantic partners of movie stars are likely to get photographed and hit by slander, not because they themselves are necessarily famous, but because their star companion attacks paparazzi, reporters and people to them. Of course in the case of our Sun is its gravity that puts Mercury in the line of fire by attracting asteroids.
This seems like an interesting concept that needs to be explored further.
@@Ramiromasters wouldn't it be a larger planet then?
@@netx421 As it turns out adquieren matter is not easy to achieve at certain stages of a celestial body. If you are a small planet with no atmosphere and you get hit by a big asteroid, that large explosion will blow more matter away from the planet than it deposits. Planets gain most of their mass absorbing small particles and gas during the early stages of a solar system. In fact one hypothesis about why Mercury's density says that it collided with a large planetoid which blew its outer crust into space.
The moon is also affected by Earth's gravity. That's why it gets hit so often. Overall, its local, combined gravity well is deeper than that of Mercury's. Sure, Mercury is closer to the sun, but that's still a lot of space. But the moon exists within the Earth's well, which means it has a good chance of being hit by anything the Earth attracts.
Saw this just after posting something similar. I thought the same thing
The only reason people think our moon gets hit more than earth is because the scars on earth are erased by water erosion. Earth probably took far more hits than our moon did over the billions of years.
@@LBCAndrew Also, the kinds of rocks that would create craters on the moon would be absolutely shredded by our atmosphere and only leave a trace in the scattering of extraterrestrial elements and isotopes
I swear, I woke up one day a few months back, quite obsessed with this idea. Good to see I'm not the only one!
What about the collision? hypothesis that mercury was a much larger body but it lost it's outer crust when it collided with another large object?
That seems to be the more likely hypothesis. Basically whats left of Mercury is the Mantle and Core.
DragonGodMillionare yeah
Rads it was the sun I think
S.Marvel Daboss errrmmm that's a negative on that
Armyboy89 I think Mercury’s remains are in a belt..
I think a planet losing its gaseous atmosphere doesn't go linear, and that is loses more gas further in the process when it has lesser gas, so I think your original hypothesis wasn't really tested.
@Winston Smith
i don't really know which is correct but i would agree more with OP as more gas still bound to the planet means higher heat capacity for the whole atmosphere. i think that plays a greater part than gravity.
As a gas giant loses atmosphere, it should indeed become less able to hold on to what's left of the atmosphere. This due to the remaining gas becoming less and less compressed. You can see this effect when you look at the gas giants in our system, where Jupiter is much the same size as Saturn, despite having far more gas stuck to it. (ie it's heavier) And Neptune and Uranus while a bit smaller still aren't that small.
What this means is that the surface of the atmosphere isn't getting much smaller, but the amount of gravity is getting weaker over time. And so losses would increase over time.
Still, if this idea were to be true, the gas giant couldn't have always been in the orbit Mercury is in now. For one the mass loss just isn't that fast, and secondly, the Sun was less bright in the past. So the actual loss rate would actually even be lower from a pure heating perspective. (Assuming the Sun doesn't do anything crazy)
Though considering its thought the planets may well have moved around a bit early on, it seems hard to completely dismiss this as a possibility.
If a gas giant had been as close as Mercury, It also would have been moving around quite a bit at the beginning. Also, when gas giants are found to be or have been as close as Mercury, there are not other rocky planets found in the system. There is a lot of misleading info online. And there are a lot of papers written that are not backed by additional study. While the theory presented is interesting, it is not one that is believed to be likely. Fact is, any of the planets could fall into the category of "they may have been gas giants" since the early planets ALL moved in different orbits. But that does not mean that they were.
@@johnjon4688 since you've said that all planets have been moving around since it's formation, why wouldn't you think about Mercury aswell? think about it, Mercury's current orbit plate couldn't be the original ones. since the planet is heavy cratered, it has alot of hypothesis (the 12.6° tilted orbit plate, high massed yet small, heavy materials, eccentric orbit (probably because of it's distance to the Sun. since the Sun always releases helium to strengthen it's magnetic field), shrinkage, geologically inactive (this ones a typical core type of a gas giant) that scientists haven't get to study nor answer it's formation. somethings heavy could've hit and push Mercury during it's formation, adaption and growth around the Sun. false infos aren't always a false one. if the person who made the information had an actual background knowledge, the info couldn't get stated as false in just 2 words.
@@sspeedd8809 Planets do move in their orbits, but not so much that a gas giant would be able to transgress multiple rocky planets without causing obvious signs. If Mercury had started as a gas giant, it would have started outside the orbit of Mars. Earth, Venus, and Mars would not be here if it had moved in.
Some time ago I did read an article wereby Mercury had a rocky mantel that was destroyed by an impact of a very large object in the early days of the solar system.
This would be a reasonable explanation for the lack of craters compared to the earth's moon.
"Impact" is almost always the first idea astronomers come about when dealing with unusual events. Some times it stands further scrutiny, many other times it doesnt, often it keeps floating around until some better explanation is conceived and proved plausible.
@@LuisAldamiz Who doesn't like a proper smash, hey? :O
The reason why you don't see more craters on Mercury is because of the formation of the planets. Mercury was actually a bigger planet than it was today, roughly Mars-sized. In theory, a collision occurred that stripped Mercury of it's surface and mantle leaving just the core. Overtime it gathered materials, but not enough to regain what it had lost. Basically today, most of Mercury's interior is it's core.
@Christiaan Overgaard Sorry No Ford is not an Word.
I'm willing to give the gas giant theory a chance. It seems like it could work.
What if the sun caught the asteroids that would have hit mercury
hey that could be true twjr 0.o
The sun is such a bully 😅
I don't think it works that way - in fact, the closer you are to the sun, the higher the incoming asteroid density per cross section (since they move closer to each other radially w. r. to the sun), so if anything, Mercury should have more.
+thesupersonicstig Leave the sun alone you "Sunophobe" I'm pro sun! I live in Florida 🌞
when I tried launching asteroids at mercury and the sun caught it
As we've seen from Earth, it doesn't really take a huge atmosphere to erode away craters. The Chicxulub crater isn't visible from space; and on geological scales that's pretty recent.
Earth is volcanically active and it has plate tectonics. Mercury doesn't seem to have either.
“This is the late, late, late heavy bombardment” did make me laugh. Thank you, wonderful person!
Just wondering, here: if there was the significant off-gassing that we saw in the demo, would that off-gassing not have some propulsive effect, pushing it out of its orbit -- which would then result in a reduced off-gassing rate, which would reduce the propulsive effect, and so on?
Would a hot jupiter move to a higher orbit as it lost mass?
Or is this another one of those weird quirks with gravity that it enacts the same pull regardless of the object's mass?
@@CynicalOldDwarf IIRC a hot Jupiter should migrate outward as it loses mass, however, all the matter thrown off by the sun should also create drag slowing the orbital velocity down a bit negating some of that migration. It's a lot of math and I haven't even looked at any of those equations in 20 years, but in theory you could calculate it.
Off gassing is generated by solar wind pressure and lack of gravity to hold small atoms/molecules. It isn't like a chemical engine in a space ship, where the reaction causes a pushing effect.
When your timescale is millions to billions of years you can off gas a lot of matter and not have it create any sort of propulsion effect. Especially when it would have to overcome a massive amount of gravitational forces to alter the orbit even a relatively small amount.
Thanks for the letting me dream.I love this kinda stuff so much!
we all need to dream sometimes
+Anton Petrov (WhatDaMath) you are very right, I absolutely love your videos I would really like to see more universe sandbox 2 videos. Oh, and I was just wondering where you got your accent from. Please respond as soon as possible, thank you:)
+Anton Petrov (WhatDaMath) Your video's are very interesting! love watching you.
It's amazing how much your voice has changed Anton.
Nice pfp
@@sextuspompeius1266 ty
You know who it is right?
Trained Scientists: We dunno how this happened
TH-cam Commentors: Fools the answer is obvious
Shss don't do not doubt the wisdom from TH-cam Commenters, they clearly know the awesomes to hard problems, even tho they just saying the first thing that came to mind, and most of the time did not even think thing through or have done any research on it XD
@@MouseGoat OH SHUT UP TRAINED SCIENTISTS ARE MUCH BETTER
This is a very interesting theory Anton.....first time I have even considered that Mercury was once a gas giant. Great video!
Whenever the Earth entered the plume of blown off atmosphere, what effect would it have had? Is this where much of our water came from?
Tickles the mind
I listened to a theory where at one time Saturn was closer to Earth than now.
The video claimed that their was a collision between Saturn & Jupiter & our
oceans came from Saturn, the planet was flooded with water contain NaCl.
Also doesn't Uranus orbit on its side. The presumption it was 'knocked over'
by a collision.
Check out Velikovsky, Worlds in Collison. I know people have rejected his
hypothesis since 1950, but a lot of it makes sense and the opposition to
his hypothesis is totally irrational for people who call themselves 'scientist'
It's either right or it's wrong. He made predictions back then that have
proven true. Like the atmosphere of Venus would be very hot. It was
presumed back then that it would not be hot.
Possibly, But the water could have came from the collision of Theia, a Mars sized planet about a few billion years ago that could have had water.
@@fntime No, *nothing* about Velikovsky's idea makes any scientific sense. Seriously, Jupiter just "spat out" the planet Venus and it shot across the solar system and just happened to arrive in a nice neat circular orbit? And this was just a few thousand years ago and no-one on Earth noticed it? Anyway Venus is hot due to runaway greenhouse effect, nothing like what Velikovsky said. and *all* planets give off radio waves of one sort or another. However one model of the early solar system has Jupiter and Saturn orbiting much close in, and with millions of years of gravitational kicks ( no collisions) they migrated outwards - that part is (real) science yes, not some random "lets try and fit science to an ancient Greek myth like Mr Velikovsky.
Pretty much nothing, sadly. Earth's gravity is too low to hang on to any of that hydrogen/helium blown off a gas giant like that. If it got ionised in the solar radiation it would have hit our magnetic field and given a beautiful aurora though
IIRC I remember reading in a magazine the likes of "National Geographic " that Mercury appearered to look more like the Core of a Planet than what they expected a planet to look like. At the time astronomy had no theories explaining it's appearances. I had at that time no expectations of ever hearing a single idea of why it was the way it is. A Gas Giant? Why not. Thank you.
Technically, planets are just “Star Moons”
Iron loves to swim into cores because it loves gravity, sooooo much.
hm
Wouldn't a Neptune-sized Mercury have affected the orbital patterns of the other inner planets due to its mass?
(I think) it being so close to the sun doesnt make a really high impact on their orbits, if you add a neptune to the sun's mass it would mostly stay the same.
(so long ago!! sorry...)
No planets are inside mercury a planet can notb3 inside another
Thats why he said “a very small gass giant”
Luciano Ariasduval Yes but the sun is a MASSIVE object. Mercury is not. So you cannot compare like that
kaleb A planet can be inside another, you can toss all of the inner planets into one of the gas giants and they’d be inside its clouds
Is it possible that mercury might have been a moon of one of the gas giant planets when they were in the inner solar system and was left behind when they moved to the outer solar system? I thought that the reason for the lack of medium craters might be that the gas giant might have protected it from them somehow.
According to a PBS series about the Solar System, Jupiter wandered all over the place until Saturn forced Jupiter to become stable in its current orbit. I think that's correct. I need to watch the series again.
J Hill yea that’s also why we don’t have super earths
Bigger question: did any of the terrestrial planets NOT start with a thick, gas giant-like, atmosphere? Venus currently has what 90+ times the atmosphere of earth, despite being much closer to the sun.... I think the current theory was that comets and asteroid impacts brought atmosphere to terrestrial worlds, but what if they already started with large amounts of gas and water, in addition to their silicon/iron core?
maybe there were large amounts of gas closer to the sun in big clusters, that would make venus and mercury have a thick atmosphere and then start escaping the planet due to the sun. (those are only my thoughts, i'm obviously not sure)
Venus's large atmosphere comes from it's uncontrolled volcanism. Everything about it in fact.
Unlikely, most volatiles were pushed well past the orbit of the asteroid belt by solar winds when the sun was still a T tauri star. Creating a gas giant any closer is impossible for a star of our size. You can migrate a gas giant in to the inner solar system but the presence of Jupiter and Saturn make that incredibly improbable. Yes we lost some of our atmosphere when our sun went from a T Tauri to a main sequence star but imagining a thick gas giant like atmosphere prior to that event is rather suspect.
That's not possible. A T Tauri star is a star in it's first phase of evolution. Gas and dust is falling toward a central point. At that stage there is no nuclear fusion happening. Instead the star is putting out heat and light by friction alone. All that gas and dust ramming into each other creates heat and energy which radiates away from the star. This pushes volatiles away from the star but not heavier elements like iron or silicates. Most hydrogen, helium, water, methane, what we call 'volatiles' are pushed out past the orbit of Mars by that heat and energy. This is why Earth is so incredibly dry. Earth's water by mass is about .02% the total mass of the planet. It only appears more because it's all gathered at the surface.
You are correct that planets migrate but there is no model that ever says a gas giant can form inside that bubble where volatiles are being pushed outward by the heat and energy of a star in the T tauri stage. The time when planet formation happens. There simple won't be enough hydrogen, helium, or methane to form a gas giant close to a star. When gas giants migrate it is after their formation. If we see a gas giant close to its parent star it has migrated in. It can't have been created there.
Plausible, though Venus's atmosphere being 92 times the density of Earth's is largely due to the runaway greenhouse effect the planet suffered a few hundred million years ago. Plus, the gas planets atmospheres are primarily made of hydrogen and helium, whereas the atmosphere of Venus is primarily carbon dioxide, which is much denser than hydrogen and helium. The rocky planets of our solar system do have helium in their atmospheres, but it's a tiny percentage of the total atmospheric makeup of any rocky planet we know of.
Just before I forget it, Let me tell you that I like your channel and love your always interesting topics. Kudos for your channel!
possibly because the moon is paired with the mass of Earth increasing the number of meteors being draw into the Earth/Luna system.
Not only is Mercury a faster moving planet, you have the freaking Sun right next to it, so what's that about more mass?
Also Jupiter have been protecting earth form asteroids, it seems to be one of those reasons life here exist, having a big nice gass giant sucking up all incoming problems.
And that's also another hole in that idea, as having Earth so close by and bigger, should make Earth the bigger target, and therefore shield the moon from meteors.
So no, not buying that one.
Freedom Phoenix Goat ok but you don’t have to be so dickish about it
The Moon was formed in a tight asteroid belt around Earth after the giant collision between two proto-Earths. Of course it has more craters.
I would assume being closer to the sun, that the sun's gravity might take care of things potentially near enough to hit Mercury.
Also being close to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, there are more things around Earth to nail the moon.
Yes, that is a explanation, but still doesn't really explain the massive iron core that much.
In fact if masses were the answer here, would all the iron not end up inside the sun rater than inside Mercury?
@@MouseGoat well gravitationally, movement/orbit would keep the core moving, while solar wind/gravity of the sun could easily strip away any atmosphere. So if mercury was a gas giant, it should explain the heavy core, but no mantle/outer shell like Venus, Earth and Mars. But it's been a year and I don't remember the video that well. Will have to relook.
It is a reasonable hypothesis - when I first learned of most exoplanets being ‘hot Jupiters’, and the fact that Mercury is like a giant core of a planet in itself, I too wondered if Mercury was a former ‘hot Jupiter’ that had lost its gaseous atmosphere over time
If Mercury is a cthonian, it would be interesting.
It is spattering sodium off in a tail due to proximity to the sun.
So, it is possible.
stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/MercurysTail.shtml
Otherwise, a protoMercury atmosphere might have contained: hydrogen sulfide, water vapor, hydroxonium, hydroxyl.
That's a guess based off what we detected in the tenuous atmosphere it still has.
Would have looked wicked too.
Kewl
wait, Mercury has a Atmosphere?
Good night, Mr. Petrov. I've recently discovered your channel and I'm glad I did because its content is very interesting and presented in a very natural, open and thoughtfull approach. Besides, every topic you present is very interesting and always related to the most recent discoveries and investigation, too, and not just the usual ones from just another astronomy show.
So, I congratulate you for that.
I've been passionate about astronomy and astrophysics all my life and all these topics are food for
thought and investigation.
My thoughts about your hypothesis are the following:
it's interesting to hypothesise the Mercury Issue in that way ( which, I've never seen anyone doing, so far ). However, we'll have to take in account that for Mercury to have migrated outwards after loosing all its hypothetical gaseous cover, a counteracting strong gravitational pull from the other planets at their positions then would have to be necessary to overcome that of a maturing sun and that is not what the current model for the formation and evolution of the solar system ( the Nice Model ) is postulating. Besides, a gas giant forming so close to the sun is ( probably ) next to impossible.
Although, the stripped gas giant theory is an appealing one due to be an easier and faster process to occur, it would probably mean that Mercury would have to have formed in the outer Solar System and pass all the inner planets without collide with them on its migration to be so close to the Sun.
So, it makes more sense to me to that ( perhaps ) Mercury is indeed a solidified stripped mantle and core of a bigger planet which have collided with proto-Venus, just enough to reverse its rotation or axis and strip Mercury of its outer layers on its migration to an orbit closer to the sun.
Please, tell me your thoughts about this.
My regards to you.
Finally someone has voiced what I've thought for years....
This may not bear out in current models of the planetary formation of our solar system, and a few comments here were disputing this theory with some weight behind them. But i love a scientist who is willing to think outside the box. I myself questioned this possibility years ago. Im no professional scientist, so i can do this without criticism. But its those professional scientists that think outside the box that do make some if the greatest discoveries. Kudos to you for taking the leap.
If the collision theory of the Moon's creation is correct, could not the higher number of craters be explained, at least in part, by the Moon being struck later by rocks which weren't quickly drawn to the Moon and the new Earth as they reformed after the collision ?
Isee no problem in it
I'll always remember your other intro and stuff but this new one is much better. tbh it makes me want to watch your new content more.
Mercury is so cool! I saw a video of the famous Queen concert in London. It's sad he died so young, he was so talented!
Our Moons creation is 100% theory and speculation, but I love how mainstream scientist tell people with high certainty how it was created
Ah....the moon, even without witnesses, theory of creation is pretty much a done deal. Zircon crystal analysis, moon rock composition, plus size issues, I feel happy with the explanation.
@@markgarin6355 You can accept your Theory on how the Moon was created, again, the Moons creation is just a Theory, no facts or conclusive evidence of its creation, just theories
@@Rock-Bottem1982 that's kind why it's called a theory. If I hear a better more convincing one, I'll probably believe that next.
If it was a hot Jupiter or jot Neptune it would have been orbiting the sun at a closer distance because of its greater gravitional tug on the sun, and as this hot gas mercury lost mass, it would have started to get further from the sun due to less gravitional influence
It doesn't work that way. The only thing that determines orbit is velocity and the mass of the star/planet. Otherwise, Earth would've drifted out to Neptune and vice versa.
It would have to lose mass and somehow speed up at the same time.
Oh, and you can see here from the following equation why. The radius of the orbit r is dependent only on mass of sun m, velocity of object v and the gravitational constant G which doesn't change.
r = Gm/(v^2)
+MisterLepton correction: it would have to slow down to get further away (from equation: as v decreases, r increases).
+MisterLepton then the equation is wrong...
+Remavas except v is the speed needed for a circular orbit
I have been wondering about Mercury's very large iron core. Cool hypothesis
Is it required to be a gas giant? Just a thick atmosphere like Venus ot primordial earth might do the job? Or hals a earth mass as atmosphere
Then you would not get that big a iron core, that's the key hint here, the bigger the planet the more massive core.
Mercury is massive, but why? Venus and earth both have the expected amount of iron in there core for planets of there size.
Planit building is a material lottery, the heavy the element, the less of it exist, so the more you have the more amazing "win" it is.
And the Universe tends to favor the less amazing scenarios, as boring as it sounds lol
Thanks for this thesis Anton.
I've been watching the mainstream documentaries about the Solar System over recent years where they always start off with Mercury as a Terrestrial planet that somehow had its crust blown off through a collision or series of collisions to provide the resultant high mass mini-planet.
However, through the relatively recent 'Grand Tack Theory' and the acceptance that planets actually are not permanently fixed in their orbits from creation, I have often mused that maybe we are looking at the core of a Gas Giant that moved too close to the Sun very early in the creation of the Solar System.
I'm no scientist - I have no concept about how to mathematically demonstrate such an idea - you do.
Thank you.
What if it was so heavily bombarded that it was molten. Afterwards it cooled, the impact craters would be nonexistent.
That's the Moon's seas.
There's also a theory that Mercury may have been at some point Venus' moon. Until a major impact causing it to reverse it's spin at a much slower speed and Mercury was pulled by the sun to its own orbit effectively transitioning it from a moon to a planet. However, based on discoveries of exoplanets in recent years, the Hot Jupiter theory makes more sense as it is apparently quite common to see these super gas giants orbit very near their host star as well as Mercury's density and core size relevant to the planet's size is consistent with the Hot Jupiter theory. Always neat to study and ponder. Thanks for sharing.
You are missing out the obvious. The proximity of Mercury to the Sun. The gravity of the Sun would attract many incoming objects so they would miss Mercury and impact the Sun.
If you look at the structure of the Solar System the denser elemental objects are in the inner Solar System and the less dense elemental objects (gas giants) are in the outer Solar System. Meaning the elements that form the planets not the density of the planets. Is this not a feasible explanation of the Solar System we see today?
Kind of, but a lot of other solar systems seem to have gas giants really close in, even closer to the star than Mercury. The one we live in is actually unusual.
Michael Martin
Yeah, but those systems aren't stable, and the gas giant planets are going to impact the star eventually.
You're right about our solar system being strange, it's unique among the systems we've examined so far.
Michael Coulter The systems with either resonance or tidal locking are pretty stable tbh
I heard the Sun is over 99.9 % of the mass of the solar system? Or something close to that. How is it comets travel more freely than other objects? The planets are more stable than anything else that I know of. Gravity is having a huge effect here. We're only seeing part of the picture right now because we're alive to do so. I don't know how many clues we'll need before we see the entire picture.
+ Michael Martin ofcourse ours is unusual. what other solar system actually has life ?
i subscribe to extremely few channels; since youtube came out i've subscribed to maybe 15 channels total, and you deserve a sub.
It's so close to the sun the Sun is going to catch most of the asteroids and comets. But also is going to attract more so I don't know that's a good theory
About the theory of number of craters indicating how old it is, this video is a good questioning and if Mercury was a gas planet that needed so many years to loose it's gas it wouldn't have many craters.
Anton, you ignored the Sun's gravity/tidal friction on the orbit/rotation of Mercury, and thus the geological heat that causes fresh surfaces. Look at Io and Jupiter for a similar effect. This kinda thing would solve problems of a young surface.
Mercury has 2/3 orbit rotation, If i remember right. That must have slowed down from the past. Still, each orbit causes tidal friction, and make geological heating.
.
Second, If Mercury was instead a close gas giant/Neptune, it would have lost any atmosphere during the Sun's T-tauri phase - when the Sun was igniting and blowing off surface of the Sun along with any air on nearby planets. I believe close Neptune planets move into a close sun orbit with their atmosphere AFTER the T-tauri period, if there is one. Since our Jupiter stopped moving in, and is now moving out, I don't see a close gas giant here.
Moreover, our Neptune and company moved by the mechanism of Jupiter/Saturn resonance. What would be the mechanism for Mercury to move AFTER the period of orbital bombardment? You sim moved it by fiat, but in real life you need a mechanism.
Furthermore, the Sun when it started up, was on 70% of what it is now - how would that affect your quick and dirty simulation?
Just my $0.05 worth.
@Cool Breeze Yes volcanism just reading on it along with a magnetic field. Sun does mess with the surface over time so that is going to change things.
An entire star system works a bit like a refinery, where the heaviest stuff condenses on the lowest level. In the state of accretion disc, I would expect that the heavier elements gathered in lower orbits whereas lighter elements made it to higher orbits, thus. This might explain the high density of the inner planets. This idea was discussed somewhere in the planethunters discussions years ago.
I wonder what impact the proximity to the central star would have on forming the development of the surface chemistry of a planet. Could an athmosphere get absorbed in endothermic reactions into the surface of a planet and vanish this way?
The 400°C on the surface of Mercury might have meant that quite a bit of a former athmosphere was absorded thus.
Next thin I wonder is if the surface of the planet might have undergone some tempering process in the hot environment that made its surface more resilient to developing craters.
You are correct about the density sorting of accretion discs. The idea of the temperature causing atmospheric absorption may be disproven by the fact that Mercury still has an atmosphere that is just extremely thin. And it is a mixed atmosphere, caused mainly through collection of solar wind (H and He) and radioactive decay of the crust of the planet (O, N, Na, and Mg). There are a few other compounds as well but in extraordinarily trace amounts. The tempering process idea is an interesting one, but it would require the metals to have reached certain temperature windows that I am not sure the Sun gets Mercury up to without exceeding. Metals won't temper or keep their temper if they get too hot. But I am not a metallurgist. Maybe somebody with more knowledge can add to your idea.
Maybe before Mercury had a thick atmosphere somewhere like earth but no water trapping heat and destroying asteroids in its atmosphere until the solar radiation blew out mercurys atmosphere my opinion
JúŁį Łmíń THICC ATMOSPHERE
@asaeampan mercury has magnetosphere.....
I love your videos! Keep up the good work!
Has anyone theorized that all planets start life as gas giants?
Uh, but they don't? planets are just rocks in space, sometimes they big sometimes they small.
Plantes "start" when they get formed by dust around a new star that itself was born by a supernova from a older star.
The dust forms clumps of rocks that grow bigger and bigger, and over time some rocks will become big enough that they begin dominating their orbit.
And because all matter wants to clump together, gas giants is the most common outcome when everything has been sucked up by one big ass "rock"
But its not always the case, sometimes you have planets like earth and mars forming, nether of witch have ever been gas giants.
Part of the reason is that Jupiter sucked up all the material first, Mars earth and Venus are kinda just the leftovers of Jupiter's feast, that got stuck in our own orbits.
Freedom Phoenix Goat didn’t Jupiter also move towards the sun for a while and push the super earths towards the sun? And th leftover of that debris formed the inner planets today.
Yes
I think the likelyhood of mercury having been a gas giant to be very low. Firstly, I would expect to see metallic hydrogen on a gas giant core. Though it is still light weight, it can form very large and strong metallic crystals that would prevent it from evaporating like gaseous hydrogen. You have also not considered the fact of earth's gravity on bringing asteroids into the area the moon obits. Also, there is no reason to think that all orbital paths in the inner solar system would get the same level of bombardment. Think of how hard it is to get to mercury from earth compared to the other planets. Asteroids from the belt will have the same problem.
I think that Mercury was a former ice moon of Jupiter or Saturn . When all of the gas giants were doing the hokey pokey early on it was dislodged from its parent planet and clipped the Earth, losing all of the water as well as its outer shell, creating the moon and giving Earth its water. Mercury spun into orbit around the Sun and the gas giants retreated to their current orbits.
Ken Ross nice theory
Mercury could have been an ice moon, but if it was a moon, Mercury would have been Venus's moon.
Numberjack Fiutro But word is not a Ford
If Mercury was ever a lost Jupiter and lost its atmosphere, it would have been hit by many more meteors in a shorter time than the Moon. Due to its mass, the Sun is bombarded regularly by comets and Mercury would have been also hit by many of them. The question is: how much big stuff falls into the Sun at any time and, knowing that, it may be possible to figure the proportion that hit Mercury. That would give an estimate in time in the cratering of
Mercury, which would tell us when its atmosphere was depleted. Estimating next when Mercury was moved to its present orbit would depend how much mass it had to begin with.
So Mercury could have been a Hot Jupiter? Interesting....
redapplefour sexy hot
Red hot chili peppers
No, it's far too close to the sun
@@SkylerLinux there are hot jupiters far closer to their own stars than mercury that we've found
@@SkylerLinux hot Jupiter's orbit closer than mercury to our sun
Short review of Britaina on Mercury. Lots of movement of Mercury's surface both from molten core and Sun Tidal Forces and strong indicators of volcanic action indicates a possible reason craters are removed. But over all we need a bunch more data before a clearer answer of Mercury's history. Dating of Rocks on the Moon very helpful in answers there.
The number of huge gas giants in close and medium orbits plus the extremely variable masses of planets around other stars indicates to me we might have some errors in our early Solar System Ideas. Maybe various stuff like Iron might collect in interstellar clouds in patches and in Solar System production process these clouds can clump and form a planet with a high amount of anything at any distance from a Sun. Yet understood process might allow Gas Giants to form at any range from a sun in part maybe Gas Giant can collect from proto planetary disk faster than a Sun can blow the gas away.
What about if the earth helped with the amount of asteroids that hit the moon. Like the gravitational pull from the earth pulled asteroids in and then hit the moon as well as the earth. Idk does that make sense? 😆🌚
Pietro Smusi as far as I know the earth captures Objects all the time. So during the big bombardment...is that wait it's called? idk ANYWAY. I'd imagine the earth would have captured a lot more and bigger ones at that and the moon has a pull of its own so it could of pulled them apart so like bits of asteroids hit the earth and the moon. Does that makes any kinda logical sense...no...okay I'll stop shower thoughts xD
knda
I was thinking about the same thing.
Maybe sun prevented the collisions
That's incredibly likely. The Earth has 50x the mass of the Moon so dragging asteroids in to its orbit is much simpler than an object of the Moon's mass. The moon is also far less dense than the Earth meaning it's larger surface area for its mass make it a lovely target. I don't think very many planetary geologists would disagree with you.
what if we broke mercury apart peice by peice and used the parts to terraform Venus. I'm not sure how much mass we can move with rockets/solar sails but I think it would be easier then manipulating the orbit of asteroids. it may not solve the problem of water but at the very least we should be able to build structures with enough sizes/mass to helpcool the planet and fix it's rotation. I think we could also do things relatively quickly with a good assembly line process.
psionx1 good thinking, only problem is u don’t rly want Venus to gain mass, as it is very close to 1g
I was referring more to using it as a moon then making it part of venus. that said venus having a little more mass then earth isn't much of a problem for habitability. the key thing is the temperature and chemistry of the air needs to be changed to lighter less toxic compounds. namely a large amount of sulfur and carbon need to be removed. surprisingly if you can remove the sulfur from the clouds we could create all the water we need. sulfuric acid is basically 2water molecules fused to 1 sulfur atom.
"It lost 20 million earths... that's kind of significant" ROTFL: he kills me on a regular basis!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHSHSGSGSFAGAHAH
J M Herdon has a similar theory of the inner planets being the cores of former gas giants. Whole earth decompression dynamics. It competes with plate tectonics and permits limited earth expansion through decompression. Worth a read. Just a few pages from back around 2006-7.
when I watched this video it had 63k views and he had 63k subs and my phone battery was at 63%.
kool
The reasons could be as follows - 1. For the reason why more craters on Moon compared to Mercury, the asteroid belt is more closer to moon than mercury and chances are that even the objects from late bombardment period would have been gravitationally pulled towards to sun than to mercury or even mars, Venus, earth and the moon could have helped the cause 2. The reason Mercury is more denser that if not it would have had lesser gravitational force and would have even be formed further away from sun, so when the planets did form because of heavy materials probably clung together to form mercury than lesser of such elements was stable for formation in the orbits they are for farther planets, lastly 3. If mercury was a gas giant like Neptune then not only the orbit would have to be very close to sun to loose enough mass but also would have resulted in pulling a lot more objects towards it which inverse would have seen lesser craters on other planets I.e. if it had and was a large gas giant......not sure about Nobel prize but logically seems right to me that’s all ;)
ha third and great video keep up the good work
Wow you actually made a simulation! Amazing I was hoping someone had done this
Anton,the moon has more craters because it is closer to the "Asteroid belt"and mercury is farther and probably is hit by more comets that fly by the sun so technically the moon would have more craters...
DESTOYER LINK wouldn't the Sun also have a strong enough gravitational field/influence to prevent the majority of collisions
WHY DOESNT THE SUN HAVE CRATERS THEN!?!?!??!?!
SkyBorik r/wooooosh
@@danielmarine8449 it swallows the asteroids coming at it
Beginning with smaller young sun, then Sun grows, takes Mercury's atmosphere. It sounds like a great hypothesis.
Correction! We theorize that the moon was created during a collision... We know nothing
Got a better idea?
thank you! they have found moon rocks that are older the earth......so les try again...
@@boomosby3763 state your sources?
Just the best guess we have from the evedence collected over the years. Cant the moon be Thea and the junk blasted of earth from them bashing of each other.
steve samson it’s Theia
Ive wondered this for awhile. Thx for considering!
I think your math is off a little bit. You claimed it lost 20 million earths mass. Perhaps you meant 20 earths mass. If it started with 20 million earth mass, that sounds like it would have been heavier than the sun!
Thomas Wagner the sun is around 333,000 earth masses
The video was claiming that Gas Giant Mercury was losing 20 million earth masses. In either case, Mercury or the Sun, that number is way too high.
Or just what it would have lost if the losing pace was continuing, and there was enough matter to be lost in the continuing time period
over the course of that time it should have lost that amount of mass, but it mass would run out before, it's hypothetical.
Thomas Wagner true
I'm not sure but I think that Mercury's proximity to Sol causes it to be polished by the solar wind, light, and everything. I'd have to take a good look at the side facing the sun. If it's smoother then the solar wind is blowing comets away from Mercury. I'm unsure how the Sun's gravity works but how do comets enter and reenter our solar system? Is like a swimming pool with objects on the waves. Do the waves hit some sort of wall and bounce back into our solar system with the other planets contributing as well? If Mercury's surface is mountain-like and with craters maybe comets can still hit that side. Or Mercury wasn't a gas giant and had a molten core. Whatever the explanation is I'm unsure how long I'll be around to know the truth about this. There's many things to be discovered.
Edit-The reason why the planets or the 8 we classify don't move like comets because their mass is higher. Their gravity presses harder causing them to be more locked into place. The low gravity of the comets make them more maneuverable.
Just the title blew my mind a little. I never even thought about this possibility.
This inspired me to try and lower the atmospheric mass on jupiter
I would also suggest that the likelihood of Mercury being impacted is likely statistically higher because it is further down the solar systems gravity well. Also the moon is afforded further shielding by the Earth, so you should expect even less craters on it! The crater anomaly is interesting. I think you put forward an interesting hypothesis
I like the idea. Sometimes i wonder why the amount of craters in the solar system is so huge. It seems odd unless it once had several asteroid bellts which it very well might have had but still - a refreshing theory. Essentially all matter in space is the same, just different phases.
Very nice explanation.
You should also take into account that the moon is not alone and that Earth can attract asteroids for it. Here you can create a density of the number of asteroids per a gravitational volume [where the gravitational volume is the space in which the object's(or objects) gravitation is greater than the gravitation of the Sun at that distance].
The proximity to the main asteroid belt should also be considered.
Thank you for your videos.
Before 2021:
hot jupiters and hot neptunes
2021:
hot jupiters, hot neptunes and hot ophadamias
The planets should be named after their suns, such as Alpha Centauri with A being the closes planet to its sun, then Alpha Centauri B and so on. The moons could be names as, Alpha Centauri A-1, A-2 and so on. If you choose to add whether it is a gas or rocky planet, then you could name it as, Alpha Centauri A-g, B-r, C-r, D-g and so on.
(Alpha Centauri Dg-3i) = 4th planet/gas, 3rd moon/ice.
You could easily expand from here and any 2nd grader and up would be able to tell what any known planet or moon consisted of, etc. Thx, JAK-A-c/2. c=carbon
What if Mercury was the proto-planet that collided with the Earth? It would then proceed to its current position, and the heat from the Sun keep the surface molten for longer than the Earth and Moon. This would make the surface of Mercury younger than the Moon's.
Seems legit
Nothing like theoretical physics/astronomy
I buy it. We can't know for sure but given what I've seen in other vids (gas giants being endlessly common) and all the weird in space :) I just hope nobody else nicks your idea.
A couple of other possibilities:
1. The moon is much closer to the asteroid belt then Mercury, so would "attract" more asteroids;
2. The close proximity of Mercury to the Sun with its FAR, FAR MORE gravitational pull would pull any asteroid in the vicinity into the Sun rather than Mercury.
Two reasons why the Moon and Mercury have a similar number of craters despite age differences, both based on their neighbors.
1. Mercury is close to the Sun, which could either break apart, destroy, or pull in more of the potential impacts toward itself.
2. Our Moon is quite large in ratio compared to Earth. Objects that might be pulled in by Earth's gravitational have a higher chance of striking the moon as well due to the two masses in close proximity. Being that our Moon is tidally locked, this is possibly also why the bulk of the craters on our Moon are on the far side of it, as the other 45-50% of the impacts happened on the Earth.
This is called "late heavy bombardment." We're adding lots and lots more craters... because... science!" LMFAO.
My theory: Mercury is the remnant of a gas planet somewhere in between the size of Neptune and Venus with a large core relative to the size of its atmosphere and maybe a different gas composition. The reason why there's this gap in between where we haven't found real examples could be b/c we can't really investigate stellar system formation and evolution in real time w/ our current technology. The debris of young systems makes that difficult. On top of that, we're in a completely different aeon of the universe and the elemental composition has changed enough to where we might have to look at young systems 4.5 Gly away to really get a survey like that (in other words, outside our galaxy) which won't be possible w/in our lifetimes.
Maaan i love that intro music!!!
Another contrary factor is that Mercury's tight orbit at the center of the solar system means it should be exposed to a lot more asteroid impacts. Sort of analogous to flux...the in-flux of asteroids toward Mercury should be greater.
🎯And it explains perfectly the dispersion of Life through the Solar system ! Bravo Anton👍
Being closer to the sun before moving out would explain why there are no planets closer to the sun than Mercury, so using the concept of Mercury being closer is entirely plausible, which then as Anton demonstrated allows for a thick gaseous atmosphere to be removed. The core of Mercury is more like a super earth with the mantel missing, than what we understand is the cores of the 4 gas giants, which we don't know that well, which of course doesn't dispel the gas planet concept, just means that it would of had a different core
Edit - I've just seen that someone else said this idea but it's here now anyway.
How about Mercury was once like Venus - rocky with a thick hot atmosphere. That gas (less of it) would take less time to burn off and the dense atmosphere might have vaporised enough asteroids so we see fewer impacts compared to The Moon.
Maybe in the late heavy bombardment by the time asteroids reached Mercury, the sun's gravitational pull on the asteroids directed them to the sun more so and Mercury became a smaller target.
Mercury, Mars and Moon were born out of a gas giant that went nova. The gas sheath of these gas giants expanded away for the core and electrical arcing back to the core caused the craters we see on these rocky bodies. The cores were ejected like we have seen with the "Cannon Ball pulsar." Their nova event probably happened shortly after they were ejected from a Herbig-Haro object, where stars and some planets are formed.
Another possability worth exploring is if Mercury was more of a dwarf gas giant, so bigger then a terrestrial planet but not as big as a normal gas giant, how would that have affected it's atmospheric loss? Would having less atmosphere to lose have also given it less protection from losing it's atmosphere? One would expect so as there's less gravity and other forces to help it retain it's mass in that case.
I think you have a valid hypothesis. mercury could have been a hot jupiter orbiting close to the sun, as it lost it's atmosphere, lost the mass, it migrated outward to it present location.
I read an interesting paper that put forth the idea that mercury used to be the moon of venus.
My uneducated and stoned thoughts about the craters. The Moon is in the Earth's gravity well and may have had more chances of being hit? Love your theory better. Mad props and complete appreciation for you and your videos. Peace.
I would think that since Mercury is closer to our star, it would have taken longer to go from molten to solid, thus it would have had more time for its heavy elements to sink to its middle, and it would have a younger looking crust than the moon. This could also explain it being made of more heavy elements and such, as the lighter ones would have been burnt off faster as well.... just a thought lol.
Something I thought about after learning that jupiter-like planets in other systems have an orbit similar to Mercury.
2:59 maybe this has something to do with a very large rocky body, only 230,000 miles away from the moon that could attract quite a few projectiles
another explanation is that jovian moons also have less impact zones because their close to high gravity body so can also make sense that mercury has less impacts because of its proximity to the sun
Thought I was on crazy pills. I have thought this for a very long time. Glad I came across this video!
Based off of the streaks that run accross the surface of mercury I'm guessing that its crust basically cooks and flakes off.