Scientists may have solved the mystery of how the Martian moon is marked

As a version of the space age showing how the leopard got his spots or camel his hump, the question of how the Martian moon Phobos got the strange groove patterns that crisscrossed his surface captivated him. imagination for years. While other moons and planets have grooves on their surface, none are as completely covered as Phobos. In recent decades, planetary scientists have offered many suggestions for explaining this phenomenon, without reaching specific conclusions. Maybe until now, that's it.

Using advanced computer modeling techniques, scientists at Brown University believe they have found a solution: rolling rocks, resulting from an asteroid impact 150 million years ago, causing the creation of the giant Stickney Crater.

"To evaluate the idea of ​​the spinning block, we built a computer model that simultaneously takes into account a mix of witch forces," said Ken Ramsley, global science researcher at Brown, at Digital Trends. "We include the weight of the blocks, their starting speeds and directions, the gravity of Phobos and Mars, the rotation of Phobos which was accelerated by the same forces that produced Stickney Crater and the orbit of Phobos. We also include the rubbing of the rocks when they roll and when we throw about 100 rocks in the model, sit and watch what happens. "

The model responds directly to four of the main objections to the theory of rolling blocks, namely that grooves do not originate from Stickney Crater, grooves that intersect with other grooves, grooves seen inside Stickney and the lack of groove in a large area of ​​Phobos. .

The results of the simulation were run on a high-end gaming computer. "We have been looking for a long time for a system that can handle this problem," said Ramsley. "Most three-dimensional software systems of planetary science focus on events that have unfolded for thousands, even millions of years." an eye in terms of planetary history.

"For its power and flexibility, we chose the Blender software with its built-in Bullet physics engine and tested it with simple models until we are certain that it will handle correctly all the aspects of gravity in our model, "he noted. "Where our Blender model can predict specific events that we can measure, like the duration of a single orbit, we are certain that the mechanisms of our model are accurate – and we are therefore very confident in the results of our study."

An article describing these works was recently published in the journal Planetary and Space Science.