Curious plume-like Mercury image

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What do you think.

Image artifact, light and shadow illusion or a plume from an alien mining operation?

I flipped it and enlarged a bit.

I gotta say that it looks weird. First I thought maybe it was a mountain ridge, but that doesn't make sense. It does in fact appear to be a plume, although from what I'd venture a guess that it's volcanic. That doesn't make sense either since there doesn't appear to be any volcanic structures in the photo.

Alien mining? Do you mean Mercurians or creatures from somewhere else other than Mercury?

Love it. A plume? OK. Here’s an interesting bit of Mercury data. It has a charge balance that's positive, so much so in fact it has a sodium "tail". Down in the gravity well by Mercury it's brutal. It's a smidge bigger than the Moon and there's no atmosphere other than some hydrogen and helium traces. A day is longer than a year on Mercury. Really. 176 and 87.97 Earth days. It's only 28 to 36 million miles from the Sun (it varies). Mercury's orbital velocity fluctuates radically and induces heating. Some think Mercury is being de-spun by this effect over time.

Mercury shrinks and expands and whatever Mercury is made of it's bloody dense to hold that tight an orbit. It's a little warm on the surface... hotter inside in spots. The core is thought to be molten. Mercury's gravity is 37% that of our 3rd Rock so gas or whatever released (even like a plasma) could escape and even "light up" as could be in the photo.

Mercury shrinks and expands from thermal cycling from -170C to 400C. Venus is a bit hotter actually but doesn't thermal cycle anywhere near as much as Mercury.

Alien mining? Who's to say. There very well could be exotic ores. It could also just be a trick of light. It does appear to cross from one feature into the shadows. I still love it. Good eye.

Vic


[edit on 3-2-2008 by V Kaminski]

An imagery of a pioneer sitting inside his cabin and cooking up some beef stew came to mind when I saw that photo of a plume arising from Mercury.


Then again maybe something is going on within the bowels of the planet, not necessarily mining operations. There does appear to be some sort of protrusion sticking out where the plume is coming out and it does seem out of place with a slightly brighter contrast from the rest of the photo.

its just a higher ridge formation catching the light, no biggie sometimes the higher up pieces of rock will still catch the light rays from the sun and its receeding into perspective is fooling your eye

The fact that the "plume" extends to the proper horizon suggests light variance. I would be inclined to think that it was a ridge-line made up of a more reflective material than the surrounding area. Even if this were true it is still a curious find as it still possesses the "what the heck is it" factor. All things aside it is a tremendous shot indeed!

Interesting photo.

I am quite open minded, but, I do see this as a natural feature (elevated surface).

I was thinking though, you could show this to most people and tell them that was the moon, and very few could tell you differently

Imho, this could be a very odd (and huge) ejecta formation, and it appears like a plume because the horizon is partially unvisible;
if we look closely, we see that there are other parts barely visible:

i tend to guess that those are solid part of the surface.

and the partial profile that we are looking at, is not the one of a sphere:


Ejecta formations could be very odd shaped, there are a lot of variables, like composition of the soil, strenght of the impact, mass of the body which hits the ground and so on; with, consequentially, many possible results.
I would like to point out that i don't think that this is a conclusive explanation, but just a possible one.
Anyway, Mercury has recently surprised NASA scientists for some reasons, like the "spider", but not only it:

Instruments provided a topographic profile of craters and other geological features on the night side of Mercury. The spacecraft also discovered a unique feature that scientists dubbed "The Spider."

This formation never has been seen on Mercury before and nothing like it has been observed on the moon. It lies in the middle of a large impact crater called the Caloris basin and consists of more than one hundred narrow, flat-floored troughs radiating from a complex central region. "The Spider has a crater near its center, but whether that crater is related to the original formation or came later is not clear at this time," said James Head, science team co-investigator at Brown University, Providence, R.I.

NASA Spacecraft Streams Back Surprises From Mercury

See also
“The Spider” – Radial Troughs within Caloris
Star & flag to the OP


[edit on 4/2/2008 by internos]