New theory on Martian Moons' origin

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Wednesday, December 25, 2024 

Three theories on Mars

Theory !.

Valles Marineris is a result of a massive asteroid impact. The reason why we see some kind of a track instead of a usual crater could be explained by asteroid's trajectory. We can assume that it was an inner-belt asteroid with a tendency to inward migration. Orbit of this asteroid slowly narrowed by years until it became almost similar to the Mars' orbit. This means that the asteroid had regular close approaches to Mars, and after all it slammed into the planet. So, the asteroid moved along a tangent trajectory relativily to Mars right before the impact. We also can assume that there were more than one hit-and-run events between Mars and this asteroid. After the first one, which had probably created Candor Chasma, the asteroid could bounce out and continue its movement on near-Mars orbit. After finishing another heliocentric period the asteroid could hit the planet for the second time. This probably was the very reason that created the main part of the Valles Marineris. As soon as this canyon has several branches let us hypothesize that the initial asteroid had been disrupted after this impact into several pieces, each of which continued their movement separatly.

Theory II.

The core remnant of the impact event is Phobos. In other words Phobos is a part of the initial asteroid that created Valles Marineris. After bouncing out from Mars' surface it was captured by the planet's gravitational field and became its moon. This would explain significant porosity of Phobos, which had been nearly shattered after the impact, but despite a lot of clefts and voids remained to be a solid body. Also this would explain why this captured body has many minerals that are typical for Mars. And of course this theory makes clear how Stickney crater and numerous grooves had appeared. (As soon as we know that the latest exploring missions revealed that the grooves are not radial to Stickney, let us assume that the crater appeared after the first impact, and the grooves were resulted by the second, more catastrophic impact.)

Theory III.

Deimos is a part of Martian surface that had been excavated and pushed out into space by the impact event. In other words a huge solid piece of soil gained from Phobos enough impulse to become a new moon. As soon as this excavation happened, as we hypothesize, in an area very close to the equator of the planet, orbits of both Deimos and Phobos now lie almost exactly in Mars' equatorial plane. This theory also explaines the difference in ages of the Martian moons.

Sources

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