Gaku Nishiyama

New Capabilities

Lead author of the Mercury contraction study; member of the BepiColombo science team

Mercury is cooling. Cooling makes it shrink, and new research says it has shrunk more than scientists calculated: up to 23 kilometers of diameter lost since the planet formed 4.5 billion years ago, 10 to 30 percent more than prior estimates.

Updated 3 hours ago