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.

THE FED JUST BAILED OUT THE STOCK MARKET AGAIN

Decomposing shapes to find area (grids) | Math | 3rd grade | Khan Academy

View All

3d curl intuition, part 2

So where we left off, we had this two-dimensional vector field V, and I have it pictured here as kind of a yellow vector field. I just stuck it in three dimensions in kind of an awkward way where I put it on the XY plane and said, “Pretend this is in thre…

The Rules for Rulers

[Ominous music plays] Do you want to rule? Do you see the problems in your country and know how to fix them? If only you had the power to do so. Well, you’ve come to the right place. But before we begin this lesson in political power, ask yourself: why d…

The Cosmic Calendar | Cosmos: Possible Worlds

This cosmic calendar compresses all of the last 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang into a single calendar. Either every month is a little more than a billion years, every day a little less than 40 million. A single hour is almost 2 million years. That …

Safari Live - Day 150 | National Geographic