Mars May Literally Be Tearing Its Own Moon Apart

[frigidmagi]

NBC News

It appears that Mars has a problem with its closest neighbor.

The Red Planet is closer to Phobos, one of its two moons, than any other planet and its moon in our solar system. But just under the surface of that cozy relationship, it looks like Mars is literally tearing Phobos apart.

Of course, as with many tumultuous relationships, the final breakup won't come for a long time -- 30 to 50 million years, scientists say. A new model by NASA researcher Terry Hufford and others suggests that grooves on the surface of Phobos are the result of the tug of war its engaged in with Mars, as the planet pulls its moon closer at a rate of about 6.6 feet every century -- and not the result of a major impact as had previously been thought.

We think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves," Hufford said in a NASA web post.

Read More: Mars Shows Strong Signs of Flowing Water, Researchers Say

Hufford and his fellow researchers presented their findings on Phobos' "stretch marks" on Tuesday at the Meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.

[Batman]

So Mars gets to have a ring some day. Who said only gas giants get to have those?
Besides, they'll all be fried when the sun goes Red Giant a couple billion years down the line anyway.

[Josh]

Just means we better book our excursions to Phobos in the next thirty mil or so, because it's going away.

Bear in mind that the solar system was estimated to have held a cumulative of a hundred or so planetary bodies since formation, most of them got ate up by the others with Jupiter being the most likely consumer of most of them.

It's a world eat world universe out there.