Giant 'Great Valley' Found on Mercury

Giant 'Great Valley' Found on Mercury(thescienceexplorer.com)

72 points by lucodibidil 9 years ago | 12 comments

nitrogen 9 years ago |

> "This is a huge valley. There is no evidence of any geological formation on Earth that matches this scale," said Laurent Montesi.... The valley is about 250 miles wide and 600 miles long, with steep sides that dip as much as 2 miles below the surrounding terrain. To put this in perspective: if Mercury's "great valley" existed on Earth, it would be almost twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and reach from Washington, D.C. to New York City, and as far west as Detroit.

Although they were formed by a different process, this does sounds kind of like Earth's oceans. Do they not qualify as a geological formation?

Swizec 9 years ago | |

Near where I grew up there is a place called The Pannonian Plain. It's a remnant of a dried up sea.

So maybe we just don't call those geological formations valleys? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannonian_Basin

ubernostrum 9 years ago | |

I believe Earth's oceans are generally thought of as the baseline, with the continents being relatively higher "plateaus" above them (rather than the continents being the baseline with ocean floors being "valleys" in between).

tossaway1 9 years ago | | |

Either way, the Mariana Trench seems to dwarf the valley that's described in the article.

deepnotderp 9 years ago |

Take that silicon valley ;)

In all seriousness, this is very interesting and sounds kinda similar to glaciers.

module0000 9 years ago |

Reading this type of stuff makes me feel very small and insignificant - kind of like the total perspective vortex. It makes me truly sad to think that I will be long gone by the time humans are exploring these things.

egfx 9 years ago |

What's the temperature down there?

azernik 9 years ago | |

Probably very similar to the temperatures anywhere else on Mercury's surface - with no atmosphere, temperature doesn't vary much with altitude. So, somewhere around 500-700K during the (3-4-month-long) daytime, and around 100K at night.

egfx 9 years ago | | |

"Because the crater is deep, and the Sun never gets very high off the horizon at the pole, there are parts of the crater floor that are permanently in shadow; they literally are never illuminated by the Sun. Those spots can be very cold; well below the freezing point of water" from this article http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/11/29/_mercury...

egfx 9 years ago | | |

801° fahrenheit

ktRolster 9 years ago |

Littlefoot!