Starship Asterisk*

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In a groundbreaking discovery for Mercury science, the MESSENGER spacecraft imaged a plume of material erupting from the surface of the innermost planet. In an MDIS image taken early this morning, a bright source of light may be seen above Mercury’s southern hemisphere. Located at approximately 67°S, 55°E, close to the newly named Alver basin, this light source appears to be an eruptive plume from a previously unrecognized vent.

MESSENGER team members are currently analyzing images of the eruption. One hypothesis under consideration is that the brightness indicates the presence of a “fire fountain,” an eruption during which lava is ejected from depth in a jet-like spray of molten rock. There also appears to be a dimmer cloud of material above the central plume. Under the fire fountain hypothesis, this higher cloud may be composed of smaller droplets of lava of a size that allows them to be blasted to greater altitudes. Most of these droplets will probably fall back to the surface, producing a distinctive “pyroclastic halo” around the vent like those seen elsewhere on Mercury.

An alternative possibility is that the plume is a “geyser” of volatile materials, analogous to the plume at Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Under this scenario, a pocket of volatile-rich material may have been heated by the intrusion of subsurface magma, solar tidal dissipation, or some other process, fueling a geyser-like eruption at the surface. Because of the recent identification of water ice at Mercury’s poles, the MESSENGER team is pursuing the idea that water may be involved in the eruption. Given that possibility and the date of the discovery, the team has already proposed to the International Astronomical Union that the feature be given the name “Poisson d’Avril.”

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

stephen63 wrote:It's amazing how easily a complete load of garbage can be packaged to sell! The explanation even sounded somewhat plausible!

Chris Peterson wrote:

stephen63 wrote:
It's amazing how easily a complete load of garbage can be packaged to sell! The explanation even sounded somewhat plausible!

It was plausible. Really, this was a bit too subtle, since there wasn't much to suggest a joke except to experts on Mercury. One of the few obvious clues was present in the release, but left out above, "An earlier design of the spacecraft included the Joint Analyzer for Plume Eruptions instrument, intended to collect samples of any plumes active during orbital operations."

• 1) Skeptically, since it was posted on "APRIL 1" and was clearly marked "APRIL 1"
  • [along with “poisson d’AVRIL” & the "ALV(e)R (bas)I(n)"]
    
    • OR
  2) Trustfully, since it appeared like a normal staid Bystander post and was duly credited to:
  • NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.

• Any lover of Scientific American Magazine & The Skeptics Society
  MUST hold a very high opinion of Michael Shermer & Martin Gardner.

• were written by an uneducated glover who spent that last 5 years of his life
  in the boondocks, with his illiterate family, suing his neighbors for shilling & pence:

• . http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... n-the-life
  . http://tinyurl.com/d8aumaq

• . http://thebackbench.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... rdner.html

stephen63 wrote:It's amazing how easily a complete load of garbage can be packaged to sell! The explanation even sounded somewhat plausible!

geckzilla wrote:

stephen63 wrote:
It's amazing how easily a complete load of garbage can be packaged to sell! The explanation even sounded somewhat plausible!

Clever and harmless. At least it's not convincing thousands of parents to avoid inoculating their children.