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Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: Magnetic Twisters "Dance" Across Mercury, Study Says


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During a flyby in October 2008, the MESSENGER probe saw magnetic "twisters" dancing across Mercury, depicted above in an illustration.

The process that drives these invisible twisters is ten times stronger than it is on Earth and shows that Mercury is a more complicated planet than previously thought, scientists announced in April 2009.

Image courtesy NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington, reproduced courtesy Science/AAAS