NASA has found out that the Mars moon Phobos may be facing destruction.
Phobos, one of Mars’ two natural moons, could be doomed.
NASA researchers have determined that Phobos has at most 50 million years of existence left, and perhaps as little as 30 million years, according to an AOL report.
Scientists have spotted indentations that stretch across the moon’s surface, indicating that it could suffer from structural failure. They initially thought they came about as a result of a collision, but they later determined the indentations were unrelated to any sort of collision. Instead, tidal forces are the more likely cause.
Scientists had actually considered this possibility decades ago, but they didn’t think that the pull was strong enough for the moon to fracture in this way. Now, scientists have grown much more accepting of this explanation. It’s indicative that the interior of the moon isn’t stable and solid, but rather filled with rubble that moves around. And Phobos is so close to Mars that gravitational forces on the moon have to be extreme.
As NASA explained in a statement: “An interior like this can distort easily because it has very little strength and forces the outer layer to readjust. The researchers think the outer layer of Phobos behaves elastically and builds stress, but it’s weak enough that these stresses can cause it to fail. All of this means the tidal forces acting on Phobos can produce more than enough stress to fracture the surface. Stress fractures predicted by this model line up very well with the grooves seen in images of Phobos. This explanation also fits with the observation that some grooves are younger than others, which would be the case if the process that creates them is ongoing.”
Phobos is tiny — a radius of just 11 kilometers — and it is irregularly shaped, resembling a meteor more than it does a moon. It is however seven times the size of Deimos, Mars’ other moon.
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