Mercury's Surface Looks Young | The Institute for Creation Research

Mercury's Surface Looks Young

NASA's Messenger spacecraft mission to Mercury has given scientists the opportunity to learn more about the properties of the solar system's innermost planet. After supposedly billions of years since its formation, the planet should be dead, or geologically inactive. New data from Messenger, however, show that Mercury remains active and is still generating surface features.

Before the Messenger data acquisition, astronomers observed that the sunny side of Mercury is hot enough to melt lead, and like other rocky objects in the solar system, many craters pockmark the planet's surface. In early 2011, Messenger carefully maneuvered into orbit and took photographs with unprecedented detail.

Images of the planet's surface revealed unusual, irregularly shaped hollows or depressions with rounded edges that were comprised of material so bright that many showed "high reflectance halos." Researchers hadn't expected to find such highly reflective features, which "appear fresh and lack superposed impact craters, implying that they are relatively young," according to the report published in Science.1

The study authors evaluated several possible causes for these fresh-looking features and ultimately described the most likely explanation as outgassing of volatile material from below the planet surface.

Of course, this conclusion only prompted new questions. How did Mercury obtain volatile chemicals in the first place, especially since its proximity to the sun should have burned them all off when the planet was supposedly forming? And, assuming they somehow did form, why would any such materials stay put for billions of years? After all, they're volatile. And how, after billions of years, does the planet still have the energy to expel the volatile-containing material through the planet's crust?

But if Mercury was created, then its volatile and non-volatile constituents would have been formed on purpose. And if Mercury was created only thousands of years ago, as the Bible clearly indicates, then it could easily have plenty of residual energy.

The study authors wrote, "Mercury is a small rocky-metal world whose internal geological activity was generally thought to have ended long ago. The presence of potentially recent surface modification implies that Mercury's nonimpact geological evolution may still be ongoing."1

Mercury's active geology is the exact opposite of long-age predictions—but it is just what one would expect if Mercury is only thousands of years old.

Reference

  1. Blewett, D. T. et al. 2011. Hollows on Mercury: MESSENGER Evidence for Geologically Recent Volatile-Related Activity. Science. 333 (6051): 1856-1859.

Image credit: NASA

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on October 24, 2011.

The Latest
NEWS
August 2025 ICR Wallpaper
"And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." (Galatians 6:9 NKJV) ICR's August...

NEWS
Quietly ''Devolving'' Tomatoes?
Apparently, evolution (and natural selection) can do almost anything: If new forms appear, the credit goes to creative natural selection; if old...

CREATION PODCAST
Five Unforgettable Lessons Learned from the Scopes Trial | The...
The Scopes Trial is one of the most famous court cases in American history, and this year marks its one hundredth anniversary....

NEWS
Yet Another Revised Age for the Land-Animal Ancestor
An allegedly vital piece of animal evolution was first discovered in 1984 in Scotland. Conventional scientists suggested the fossil of Westlothiana...

NEWS
Dr. James S. Johnson Goes Home to the Lord
Dr. James S. Johnson, chief academic officer and associate professor of apologetics for ICR’s School of Biblical Apologetics (SOBA), joined his...

NEWS
Pluto’s Largest Moon Looks Young
When the New Horizons space probe captured images of Pluto and its large moon Charon as it flew by in 2015, conventional scientists were surprised by...

NEWS
55-Million-Year-Old Tree Frog…Is Still a Tree Frog
In the 1990s, Australian paleontologists discovered fossil frog bones during a dig in Murgon, Queensland.1 This new species of frog—Litoria...

NEWS
Pastor and Longtime ICR Supporter Dr. John MacArthur Now with...
Faithful ICR supporter and pastor Dr. John MacArthur went home to be with the Lord on Monday, July 14, 2025, completing his 86-year pilgrimage.1...

CREATION PODCAST
Setting Sights on Scopes: The Truth Behind the Infamous Monkey...
The Scopes Trial is one of the most famous court cases in American history, and this year marks its one hundredth anniversary. Often,...

NEWS
Did Earthworms Rewrite Their DNA to Survive on Land?
An earthworm news story was recently posted that openly questions Darwin’s gradual and slow evolutionary progress in the living world.1...