back to article Veiny green 'scum' meteorite may be first visitor from Mercury

A mysterious green meteorite with a unique geological signature may have arrived on Earth thanks to an explosion on the surface of the Solar System's smallest planet, Mercury*. The meteorite, dubbed NWA 7325, is actually a 345g package of 35 extraterrestrial stones formed around 4.56 billion years ago that were found in the …

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  1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Very interesing indeed

    Curious looking stone as well (good-looking scum, one might say)

  2. stucs201

    Its clearly not from mercury.

    Its either:

    a) A lump of purest green.

    b) From Krypton.

    Pick the pop-culture reference you prefer...

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Its clearly not from mercury.

      Is it ruguous or squamous?

      1. cortland

        Re: Its clearly not from mercury.

        Squamish? ( www.madcoversite.com/quiz_olympics.html )

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Its clearly not from mercury.

      I'm too embarrassed to admit publicly that my preference is for Percy.

    3. beep54
      Headmaster

      Re: Its clearly not from mercury.

      Either there is an "Its" which is clearly not from a liquid metal or you are missing an apostrophe and a capitalization.

  3. Charles Manning

    Hmmm

    Amazing speculations.

    Not quite as bad as palaeontology, where people find a tooth fragment and claim it is part of a dinosaur that was 10 ft long with long legs, but getting close.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmmm

      If you were to suffer an unfortunate fatal accident in the near future, and your remains not be found for some years, it would still be possible to recover your skull from its resting place and xray it and in due course determine that you were a troll. Science is magic, isn't it?

      The fact that you do not personally understand palaeontology, or geology, or astrophysics, or perhaps even forensics in no way detracts from practitioners of those subjects' ability to draw sound conclusions based on actual data from many years of research into related things.

  4. MondoMan

    Tsk, tsk.

    These young'uns today. You'd think they were born knowing nothing about the US space program! For example, that our first mission to Mercury (and successful at that!) was Mariner 10, which first flew past the planet in 1974. Thus, this MESSENGER mission is our *second* to the planet.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Devil

      Re: Tsk, tsk.

      It's the seventh mission to Mercury.

      Actually.

  5. Ryan 7
    Coat

    "Almost-planet Vesta"

    Is that like the almost-OS 'Vista'?

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: "Almost-planet Vesta"

      New keyboard please

  6. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    "Mercurian candidate"

    I saw what you did there.

  7. Kaltern
    Mushroom

    ahCHOOO

    Mercury obviously just had a real bad cold back then.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    I found rocks identical to these all down the west coast of Tasmania......

    They are pretty common actually.

  9. southpacificpom
    Holmes

    "we might find out if NWA 7325 is a valid sample or just an offshoot of another galactic flash in the pan."

    I had a "galactic flash in the pan" first thing this morning and feel much better for it...

    1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

      Wrong icon

      That's the "no shit" icon

  10. Paul 87

    The deeply cynical part of me is going "hang on, they want funding for their Mercury mission and NOW suddenly discover a rock that must, almost totally definitely certainly come from there, but without this mission we'll never know"

    Yeah.... not at all suspicious

  11. Ralph B
    Boffin

    NWA 7325?

    I reckon that's a misreading of "NWA 732S" which means it actually came from Sheffield in about 1977. Probably a Ford Cortina. It's seen better days, but I've seen worse.

  12. Graham Marsden
    Alien

    This meteorite...

    ... will be code-named "Andromeda"...

  13. Measurer

    NWA 7325??

    A track by NWA (Nephelinite's with Attitude). It's a geologist thang...

  14. Maty

    Visitor?

    If this meteorite is just visiting, I'd be very interested in its plans for the return journey. Otherwise, it's an immigrant.

    I for one, welcome our green scummy Mercurians, however veiny they may be,

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