The Moons of Mars Explained -- Phobos & Deimos MM#2

less than 1m read

·Nov 2, 2024

The moons of Mars explained. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. They are really tiny. How tiny? Compared to Mars or our own moon, pretty tiny. Although, tiny is a matter of opinion. Their surface area is up close to some of the smallest states on Earth, like Luxembourg and Malta.

Although Phobos and Deimos are in no way lightweight, in reality, their gravitational pull isn't even strong enough to bring them into spherical form. So they look more like huge potatoes than moons. The most popular theory of their origin is that they were once part of the asteroid belt until Jupiter's massive gravity kicked them out of it.

So Mars could catch them. Phobos orbits Mars at an average distance of 9,400 kilometers, once every 7 and a half hours. It's on a collision course and gets 2 meters closer to Mars every year. In 50 to 100 million years, it will be either ripped to pieces by Mars' gravity and be transformed into a beautiful ring, or it will crash into Mars.

The energy released in this collision would kill everything on the small planet. So, if there are humans on Mars by then, they should build very strong bunkers. Smaller Deimos, on the other hand, is slowly escaping Mars. Eventually, it will fly off into space and leave a lonely red planet behind.

So, in a few hundred million years, Mars will be moonless and on its own. Unless, it manages to catch itself another asteroid.

English subtitles by Dan9er.

How do you make a Virtual Reality Glove? - Smarter Every Day 191

Example plotting corners of rectangle

View All

Worked examples: Summation notation | Accumulation and Riemann sums | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

We’re told to consider the sum 2 plus 5 plus 8 plus 11. Which expression is equal to the sum above? And they tell us to choose all answers that apply. So, like always, pause the video and see if you can work through this on your own. When you look at the…

Introduction to the coordinate plane

You’re probably familiar with the notion of a number line where we can take a number and associate it with a point on the number line. So for example, the number 2, I would go, I would start at 0, and I’d go 1, 2 to the right, and I would end up right ove…

Critically looking at data on ROC and economic growth over millenia | Macroeconomics | Khan Academy

So we’ve already talked about the general idea: the thesis that if the return on capital is greater than the growth of an economy, that could lead to inequality. Although we showed a case where, depending on the circumstances with the right numbers, that’…

Why I opened the first private jet showroom in the world!