Masked tectonic structures suggest Mercury contracted 40% more than its visible scars alone indicate

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Add as preferred source Mercury in true color. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Arizona State University/Carnegie Institution of Washington The surface of Mercury is filled with craters, ridges and steep cliffs. Over billions of years, as the planet's interior cooled, the planet also shrank. Just as the skin of a drying fruit wrinkles when what is inside it shrinks, Mercury's rocky surface crumpled into ridges and cliffs as its interior cooled and the planet contracted. Mercury has quite literally grown smaller with age.

These geological and topographic features found on the planet's surface have also preserved a record of how Mercury has evolved. Scientists have long used them to study the planet's geological history.