...A team of scientists in Bern, Switzerland, decided to tackle the mystery. They ran a pair of extensive computer simulations to test the collision theory.
"You always try to prove an idea wrong. This work shows it could have happened in this way,'' said astronomer Jonti Horner, who will present his results tomorrow at a Royal Astronomical Society meeting in Leicester, England.
First, the scientists simulated the catastrophic collision of the young Mercury with a giant asteroid traveling at 16 miles (25 kilometers) a second...
(Mercury: Garbage In - Garbage Out?)
Thanks. I wondered if that hypothesis of an old impact on Mercury began life as an alternative model of formation for the Earth’s Moon; even if so, it didn’t work out. IMHO, best case scenario it was Pelion on Ossa.
Mercury’s formation impact splattered Earth with material
Source: Royal Astronomical Society
http://www.physorg.com/news63466447.html
“...Given the amount of material that would have been ejected in such a catastrophe, it is likely that there is a reasonable amount (possibly as much as 16 million billion tonnes [1.65x10^19 kg]) of proto-Mercury in the Earth.”
Moon — Mass: 7.3477x10^22 KG (0.0123 Earths)
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon
(the hypothetical chunks of proto-Mercury would be 2.2456007E-4 per cent of the Earth’s moon’s mass)