Post B5MDuYd70sgpuE9Iky by hfalcke@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by hfalcke@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #B5MDuYCAd38gYfXmlM by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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       Today in Research Notes of the AAS:Lin & Sie 2026, "Mercury: A Planet by Solar Proxy?" - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ae5e75Provocative title aside, the interesting thing here is the review of how fast volcanoids get destroyed: Tens of thousands of years for ~1 km objects and hundreds of thousands of years for ~100 m ones at 0.387 au.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5MDuYR3jh35IqVfyC by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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       If you should want another way to get planetary scientists to argue, here is another question:Is Mercury a comet?
       
 (DIR) Post #B5MDuYd70sgpuE9Iky by hfalcke@mastodon.social
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       @michael_w_busch A comet 😳? Wouldn’t the composition be very different 😬
       
 (DIR) Post #B5MFI3DXYUzpNzxEMS by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
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       @aetios @hfalcke We also have "dark comets" that have small amounts of outgassing without visible dust tails and "rock comets" that get close enough to the Sun that the rocks start vaporizing off into space.The type case for a rock comet is 3200 Phaethon, the source of the Geminid meteor shower.Mercury is close enough to the Sun that it has a gas tail of sodium vapor.