Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Graph showing relative strength of Mercury's magnetic field. Despite its small size and slow 59-day-long rotation, Mercury has a significant, and apparently global, magnetic field. According to measurements taken by Mariner 10, it is about 1.1% the strength of Earth's. The magnetic-field strength at Mercury's equator is about 300 nT.
Mercury's magnetic field is approximately a magnetic dipole, apparently global, [8] on the planet of Mercury. [9] Data from Mariner 10 led to its discovery in 1974; the spacecraft measured the field's strength as 1.1% that of Earth's magnetic field. [10] The origin of the magnetic field can be explained by dynamo theory. [11]
This difference results from the 2.5 times higher gravitational field on Mercury compared with the Moon. [6] As on the Moon, impact craters on Mercury are progressively degraded by subsequent impacts. [4] [7] The freshest craters have ray systems and a crisp morphology. With further degradation, the craters lose their crisp morphology and rays ...
The new data collected by a space probe indicates Mercury's magnetic field could be 3.9 billion years old or some 400 million years older than even Earth's own magnetosphere. In one of its final ...
Vector field (blue) and its associated scalar potential field (red). Point P between earth and moon is the point of equilibrium. In physics, a gravitational field or gravitational acceleration field is a vector field used to explain the influences that a body extends into the space around itself. [6]
A Mercury-bound spacecraft launched from Earth must travel 91 million kilometers into the Sun's gravitational potential well. [12] Starting from the Earth's orbital speed of 30 km/s, the change in velocity ( delta-v ) the spacecraft must make to enter into a Hohmann transfer orbit that passes near Mercury is large compared to other planetary ...
Tests of general relativity serve to establish observational evidence for the theory of general relativity.The first three tests, proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915, concerned the "anomalous" precession of the perihelion of Mercury, the bending of light in gravitational fields, and the gravitational redshift.
The strength of the gravitational field is numerically equal to the acceleration of objects under its influence. [78] The rate of acceleration of falling objects near the Earth's surface varies very slightly depending on latitude, surface features such as mountains and ridges, and perhaps unusually high or low sub-surface densities. [79]