A new study has revealed that the weird parallel grooves on the surface of Mars' largest moon Phobos could be a sign that the Red Planet's gravity is ripping the satellite apart.
Mars' largest moon Phobos
shows signs of being ripped apart by the extreme gravitational forces exerted
on it by the Red Planet,
Phobos is around 27 kilometres or 17 miles across at its widest point and
orbits Mars at a distance of 6,000
km or 3,728 miles), completing a full rotation around the Red Planet three
times every day. For comparison, Earth's moon is around 3,475 km or 2,159 miles, and it is 384,400 km or 238,855 miles apart from us
and it takes around 27 days to complete one orbit.
However, unlike the moon,
Phobos' orbit around Mars is not stable: The tiny satellite is trapped in a
death-spiral and is slowly falling towards the Martian surface at a rate of 6
feet (1.8 meters) every 100 years. Phobos' most unusual feature is arguably its
mysterious stripey surface. Parallel grooves, or surface striations, cover the
moon. According to evolutionists, Phobos will hit Mars in around 40 million years in the future.
Source:
.
Baker, Harry. 2022, Mars may be slowly ripping its largest moon apart Live Science. 14 November.
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