Mercury Photos Reveal Strange 'Pie Crust' Surface New photos of
the baked planet Mercury, the closest world to our sun, have
revealed odd formations that look uncannily like cosmic pies,
evidence of potential "ghost" craters hidden underground,
scientists say. The new Mercury photos by NASA's Messenger
spacecraft show unusual landscape on the planet's volcanic
plains that have no equal anywhere in our solar system,
researchers said. They feature giant ring structures dotted with
wrinkles and so-called graben (big troughs), which outline the
buried ghost craters. "The pattern of winkle ridges and graben
resembles the raised edge and cracks in a pie crust," study
leader Tom Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies
at the National Air and Space Museum said in a statement. The
images of Mercury's volcanic plains indicate both a pushing
together and a pulling apart of the planet's surface. "It's
pretty exciting because it's telling us that there's something
really very different going on on Mercury th