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Meta Research Bulletin ©2007
Tom Van
Flandern
Meta
Research / <tomvf@metaresearch.org>
NASA’s
Messenger mission to Mercury will
make the first of three fly-bys on 2008 January 14. It will eventually go into
orbit around Mercury in 2011. But even this first fly-by may start to answer
some of the mysteries surrounding Mercury. An article in New Scientist
2008/01/05-11:24-27 describes six of these mysteries.
1. “Was Mercury once twice the size?”
That is one theory to explain its high, Earth-like density. But fission theory
tells us that Mercury originated as a moon of Venus, just as our Moon fissioned
from Earth. (See additional story in accompanying news articles.) The smaller
mass of Venus as compared with Earth caused Venus to lose its light elements
more rapidly, producing a quicker contraction and spin-up to the point of
fission. As that over-spin condition was approached, the still-very-molten
Venus’s heavy elements were forced to its surface, resulting in an earlier
fission of a larger fraction of its mass consisting of more heavy elements, as
compared with Earth and its Moon. The latter pair fissioned after the heavy
elements had already sunk to Earth’s core and the deep mantle had solidified.
So fission theory answers “no” to this first mystery, but “yes” to Mercury
having an iron core.
2. “Why does Mercury have a magnetic
field?” Although its field is only 1/1000 of Earth’s field, core-dymo theories
expected that Mercury’s core should have solidified long ago and should no
longer have such a field. Fission theory indicates that other heavy,
radioactive elements should accompany the iron, keeping it hot and molten. So
fission theory says the field originates in the mainly iron core and continues
to exist because of plenty of uranium.
3. “What does the far side of Mercury
look like?” Mainstream theory  expects the so-far-unseen 56% of
Mercury’s surface to resemble the 44% seen by NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft. (See photo.) But the exploded planet
hypothesis expects a hemispheric dichotomy, similar to that seen on our Moon
and other solar system bodies. One hemisphere will be more mountainous, and the
other will have mare-like lava flows, similar to Earth’s Moon.
4. “Does Mercury have polar ice
caps?” If these are water-ice, mainstream theory suggests the water must have
come from comets yet managed to survive for a large fraction of the solar
system’s lifetime. The exploded planet hypothesis tells us that the source of
all comets still in the solar system was an explosion just 3.2 million years
ago, making the survival problem three orders of magnitude easier.
5. “Why is Mercury’s orbit so
tilted?” Fission theory indicates that Mercury originally made close approaches
to Venus for a while after its tidal escape from Venus. These would have pumped
up the eccentricity, and subsequent evolution would exchange some eccentricity
for increased inclination, leading to the present orbit. This process was
described and tested in “A dynamical investigation of the conjecture that
Mercury is an escaped satellite of Venus”, T.C. Van Flandern and R.S.
Harrington, Icarus 28:435-440 (1976).
6. “Is there physics beyond
Einstein?” Messenger will probably
not be able to detect small deviations from general relativity, but a follow-on
spacecraft planned for 2013 may. Deviations in perihelion advance predicted by
“pushing gravity” require two comparable masses to see, so Mercury and the Sun
are not a suitable pair for that test. But perhaps conditions might be
favorable to seeing a very small gravitational shielding effect similar to the
anomalous acceleration seen in Lageos spacecraft.
###
“Flying is the second
greatest thrill known to man… Landing is the first!” – Anonymous
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