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Is there mercury on Mercury?
Guest_Enceladus75_*
post Nov 2 2008, 08:09 PM
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This may sound like a completely stupid and whimsical question, or else give the UMSF food for thought. But does anyone know if there has been any work done on estimating the abundances of metals on Mercury, and with this in mind, in particular I'm wondering if planet Mercury's namesake element, the liquid metal mercury, could exist as an ore in the crust of Mercury?

I guess this speculation is pretty fanciful, but could it be possible for Mercury to contain its namesake metal?

And leading on from that, could Mercury, Mars or Venus contain precious metals such as silver, gold or platinum worth mining in commercial quantities eventually? Or can such metals only be created in sufficient concentrations on Earth only, due to its plate tectonics?
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elakdawalla
post Nov 2 2008, 08:47 PM
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Mercury likely exists in Mercury, as it does in everything else in the solar system, from the Sun to planets, moons, and asteroids. The question is whether we'd be likely to encounter it in any abundance locally. I don't know the answer to that question, but I can send you to a story and a couple of definitions that might be useful in trying to figure it out.

Here's the story: when the terrestrial planets initially formed, they were molten, and separated into iron, nickel, and sulfur-rich cores and rocky mantles, a process called differentiation. One thing that happened during differentiation is that less abundant elements got partitioned into the core and mantle. You might think the heaviest elements would have wound up in the core and the lighter ones in the mantle, but it's not quite that simple. What happened is that elements that have a chemical affinity for iron or sulfur wound up in the core, and the stuff that doesn't, didn't. This is one reason the mantle and crust of Earth is relatively rich in radioactive elements, because those huge atoms don't fit into the chemical lattices that iron-bearing minerals form (unlike, say, magnesium and titanium, which fit quite nicely).

Elements that like iron are called siderophile. Elements that prefer to bond with oxygen, and thus tend to get partitioned into rocky mantle and not core, are called lithophile. While looking this up, I found a third class I hadn't read about before, chalcophile, which like to bond with sulfur so are more likely to end up in the core than the mantle, though they are not as strongly partitioned as siderophile elements. Mercury, along with copper, silver, zinc, arsenic, and lead, are all chalcophile.

Here's a link.

Instinct tells me that Earth would have richer deposits of ores than most other planets, for two reasons. First, the fact that it's had volcanic activity right up to the present means that its rocks have been repeatedly processed -- partially melted, extruded, lithified, then all over again -- which has the potential to concentrate relatively rare elements. Second, it's my understanding (though I'll admit I never took a class in economic geology) that the best way to concentrate ores is to take a relatively enriched source rock and run hot, acidic groundwater through it, dissolving minerals and redepositing them in veins in the rock, which happens in volcanic environments on Earth, but not on, say, Venus, which is pretty much dried out.

--Emily


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silylene
post Nov 4 2008, 05:03 PM
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QUOTE (elakdawalla @ Nov 2 2008, 08:47 PM) *
Mercury likely exists in Mercury, as it does in everything else in the solar system, from the Sun to planets, moons, and asteroids. The question is whether we'd be likely to encounter it in any abundance locally. I don't know the answer to that question, but I can send you to a story and a couple of definitions that might be useful in trying to figure it out.

Here's the story: when the terrestrial planets initially formed, they were molten, and separated into iron, nickel, and sulfur-rich cores and rocky mantles, a process called differentiation. One thing that happened during differentiation is that less abundant elements got partitioned into the core and mantle. .........

--Emily


I was thinking that maybe there is a mechanism that some tiny amounts of elemental Hg could actually coincentrated enough to be found on Mercury. I agree with you that there would expected to be only very trace amounts of Hg in the planet's crust, originally present in oxidized states. But what little there is perhaps could slowly vaporize if the mercury contaning minerals decompose under the intense heat / light, and move in the gaseous form into cooler regions. Gaseous mercury would then recondense in the cold, permanently shadowed polar craters. Once there, it would be permanent. So maybe tiny traces of Hg could be found in those locations via this concentration mechanism.

(Perhaps via similar mechanisms, tiny traces of mercury could be found in the moon's permanently shadowed craters too.)
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djellison
post Nov 4 2008, 05:13 PM
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QUOTE (silylene @ Nov 4 2008, 05:03 PM) *
maybe tiny traces of Hg could be found in those locations via this concentration mechanism.


Could the same not be true of any heavy element? How would this mechanism favour Hg over anything else?
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