Mars' 2 weird moons began as 1 large moon, study suggests

Mars may have had a single moon before something smashed into it, tearing it asunder into the two moons we see today.

In a study published Monday in Nature, scientists explained how they used the orbital patterns of Phobos and Deimos along with seismic data from NASA's InSight mission to create a simulation of where their paths began, like a digital time machine. When they looked far enough back, it indicated the orbits once intersected, giving rise to the new smashed-moon theory.

While many moons in our solar system are spherical bodies like our own moon, Phobos and Deimos are not, explained Amirhossein Bagheri, lead author on the study and a doctoral researcher at the Institute of Geophyics, ETH Zürich.  Read more...

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