Comments on: Phobos ahoy!

By: Binky the Inquisitive

Binky the Inquisitive — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:43:15 +0000

Obviously the extinct Martians wrapped this whole thing crudely with cable a billion years ago in an attempt to use it to generate power as the huge coil orbited through the Martian (and solar) magnetic fields. You can see the traces of different layers of windings going different directions. Most likely it didn’t work very well. We are looking at an all-time engineering f*-up, here. Probably funded by Martian tax dollars. Hence why they didn’t survive. The ancient Martians were incompetent.

Either that or they were trying to build a gigantic, planet-wide orgasmatron. Maybe it did work, and after that they didn’t bother to reproduce anymore… same result. Oh well.

By: ranti

ranti — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:47:05 +0000

ha ha ahhhhh ahhhh,,, the orbit of phobos is just like our satelites. very low and fast. nothing like it on the solar system, all the moons around the other planets including ours are far from the surface and slow. the russians are very interested and will land a rover soon. this thing is not solid. Mars was like our planet 65 million years ago, a blue marble. this thing may have been hit by asteroids for that long. phobos has the orbit of a satellite, not consistent with a natural satellite. or it could be a captured asteroid. It is also slowing down and will crash into mars in just a few hundred thousand years.

By: Spyre

Spyre — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:19:13 +0000

I’ve seen these types of grooves before. It took me a while to recall just where. I’ve finally remembered that I saw grooves like this on some potatoes I dug up. Asking around the agrarian community, I learned they were caused be a particular worm that loved to burrow shallowly into spuds whilst they’re underground. Obviously, they do this to make people wonder why there are groovy potatoes.

Ergo, ipse dixit and QED, it becomes apparent that Martian Potato Worms crawled up onto the Face of Mars, became lodged in the nose and were subsequently sneezed into orbit where some number of them managed to swim onto Phobos, having mistaken it for a really large and succulent Russet.

Mystery solved.

No. No thanks are needed; it is my humble joy to commit a priori anywhere I can.

By: GeoWonk.com » Blog Archive » Phobos, closeup of fear

GeoWonk.com » Blog Archive » Phobos, closeup of fear — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:02:51 +0000

[...] "FFFFFF"; google_color_link = "0000FF"; google_color_text = "999999"; google_color_url = "191919"; As I promised a little while back, the European Space Agency has released new extremely high-res pictures of [...]

By: morgajel

morgajel — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:41:49 +0000

It looks like it ran through debris field and got all scratched up.

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:20:41 +0000

It’s obvious the Martians of John Connors time dragged a bunch of asteroids into orbit, outfitted them as generation ships and left for a better world. Far from here. Since the MArtians had to leave while earth was still too turbulent to support their life forms. They finished up with a couple of small ones left over, so we have partially worked generation ships left behind,(hollow, right?),,,Phobos and Deimos.

Can’t wait to get there and verify this,,,or not,,,

GAry 7

By: Corey

Corey — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:15:35 +0000

We must declare Martian Law! Sir Deimos! Sir Phobos! To me!

By: IMForeman

IMForeman — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:49:50 +0000

That is one Groovy Moon.

By: DreamDevil

DreamDevil — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:02:58 +0000

NASA should be careful so they don’t accidentally open the portal to hell.

By: James

James — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:10:43 +0000

Those marks are definatly not cracks. I would say objects in the moon’s path have been dragged across it, forming the groves. It must either be made of quite a soft material or the process has been going on for a very long time.

By: rob

rob — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:26:25 +0000

ah, dang. critter42 beat me to it.

By: Charles Boyer

Charles Boyer — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:39:32 +0000

Phobos is a captured asteroid and not an accreted moon, correct?

And if memory serves, it falls roughly 1.3 meters towards the Martian atmosphere every year and that soon (from an astronomical standpoint) it will enter the atmosphere and impact somewhere on the red planet.

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:27:19 +0000

I can’t get past preferential erosion, possibly by micrometeoroids (maybe? I’m not an astronomer), but it would require Phobos to have layers of different rock (some harder, some softer) normal to the NW-SE axis (in the above picture). Like looking at the walls of the Grand Canyon. Problem is, I can’t for the life of me figure out how a moon could have been carved out of solid rock and placed into orbit without getting melted. If it was a capture, it still would have to have come from a much larger body (big enough to form rock layers) which was destroyed without melting Phobos.

By: Grand Lunar

Grand Lunar — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:22:15 +0000

Makes me think that going to Phobos as part of the Flexible Path is definately worth it.

By: BigBob

BigBob — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:57:41 +0000

The notion that the lines emanate or even radiate from crater Stickney was pretty much put to bed a couple of years ago. Here’s a paper from 2006 describing the appearance of different ‘families’ of grooves, that were caused by separate events.
http://tinyurl.com/y8o6ptw

Here’s an abstract from the Open University paper on evidence from HRSC Mars Express:
http://oro.open.ac.uk/12594/

It says (amongst other things);
‘A new map of Phobos’ grooves shows their orientation to be quite independent of Stickney crater, and the evidence is now overwhelming that the grooves of Phobos were caused by debris ejected from a large impact craters on Mars’.

By: b2

b2 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:22:51 +0000

The old images set me thinking again about the grooves. I worried about them for months a few years back. Now I’ve had a new idea. The trouble with the ploughing through debris theory [John B Murray 2006] is that at orbital altitude there won’t be strings of ejecta narrow enough to make those regular grooves, it has to involve some fine ring material. But if Phobos is orbiting in a ring it have the same velocity as the ring material in which it orbits, it won’t be ploughing through anything. So here’s the new idea. If, during the period when Mars had these putative rings, Phobos had a highly elliptical orbit, but in the same plane as the ring’s circular orbit, it would have come screaming in and ploughed right through the rings at periapsis on each orbit. It would have had to be tidally locked as it is now, to present the same face to the flak, though it must have wobbled a bit, going by the angles of the grooves. (cf. Murray)

Perhaps the rings even formed in the same event that created Phobos, impact or capture, presuming there was enough material dislodged by the tidal disruption if it was the latter.

I understand that the orbits of smaller particles and dust cicularise and flatten out relatively quickly by collisions, while a large chunk like Phobos, would slowly circularise by tidal forces, so if they formed together there would be a time when the orbits were different. Another point is that a common source for Phobos and the rings would be most likely to put them in the same plane.

The involvement of rings of fine material is crucial. How else could a groove form that extends the length of the flank in serene uniformity, than with a narrow linear obstacle like a ring edge on? There are some less well defined grooves that are clearly crater chains, like the five little craters almost identical in size, equally spaced in a line parallel to one of the huge smooth trenches. These could have been caused by irregularities in the rings, bits where larger and fewer ring particles accumulate.

Does it have any merit?

By: locke

locke — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:38:09 +0000

@Steve Paluch, you’re correct, of course. There will be at least one other close flyby soon afterward to take more images.

By: critter42

critter42 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:36:31 +0000

no, no, no – it was stuck in giant Rotato! (edit: If you’ve ever used a Rotato, the grooves DO look striking similar )

By: kevbo

kevbo — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:11:19 +0000

You forgot to remind us to check out the full size original image (i.e. click to enspudify)…

By: I'd rather be fishin'

I'd rather be fishin' — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:09:42 +0000

When I first saw the striations, it reminded me of claw marks on my leg left by my daughter’s cat.

By: ultraholland

ultraholland — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:53:14 +0000

Those look like cross beds. Unfortunately Phobos is too large for them to be cross beds, but how cool would it be to have an ejected rock with flow structures on/in it??

By: Steve Paluch

Steve Paluch — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:56:57 +0000

I thought the flyby on March 3rd was to map the gravity field, not take pictures…

By: freelancer

freelancer — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:50:39 +0000

Quick question.

What is the correct pronounciation of Phobos? I had always assumed it was “PHO-bose”, but I am currently listeing to KSR’s Red Mars on Audiobook and the narrator pronounces it “Pho-BOSS”.

By: Mike C.

Mike C. — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:35:06 +0000

Most interesting info, and a cool photo to boot. Which reminds me to go out and pick up some potatoes.

By: bigjohn756

bigjohn756 — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:12:34 +0000

Phobos looks like a potato that went hunting with Cheney.