Why does Mercury still have a magnetic field?

Mercury's mysterious magnetic field is still a conundrum for scientists.

Mercury is a tiny planet, the smallest of the planets of the Solar System. It is only one-third the size of the Earth and qualifies as a planet because of its proximity to the sun. If placed outside the orbit of Neptune, then with Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, Mercury is likely to be classified into the group of dwarf planets.

But it is still a "stagnant" planet there, closest to the Sun, orbiting the central Solar System at 105,000 miles per hour (about 50 km / s) - fast enough to complete the entire orbit. in just 88 days.

Picture 1 of Why does Mercury still have a magnetic field?
Visualization of the magnetic field of Mercury.

And, for some strange reason that no one understands, that is . the planet still has a magnetic field.

The magnetic field is special, and rarely a planet possesses it. Typically, a planet's magnetic field is created using the dynamo effect. In the case of the Earth, we have a molten core with a predominantly iron structure moving rapidly in a spiral. The intense heat of the core region causes the metal to flow out of the core's surface (to escape into the void) and so through convection, the Earth's crust continually swings and cools down again. , heat transfer out during the journey.

The combination of the rapid turnaround element in the core region and the huge convection currents rising and falling continuously through the impulse crust has built up the strongest, strongest magnetic field in the Solar System.

To create a magnetic field, we will need temperature. But strangely, Mercury is . cold.

The heat of the Earth comes from two sources: radioactive decay of the elements and the remaining heat from its formation. The relatively large size of the Earth allows it to retain heat for billions of years, but Mercury is not so lucky. Its small "bodybuilding" nature causes heat to escape rapidly. Thus, we can quickly come up with the fact that Mercury's core has long cooled into a concentrated iron ball.

However, even though Mercury's magnetic field is weak, it still exists , which is a joke. What is making it work? Where does that energy come from? It may not come from the core, but it is also possible that the core region still has some heat, warm enough to control slowly and cleverly convection in the shell. It was an acceptable hypothesis, but the speedy little world in its core region still held a very secretive secret.

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