computer model confirms the hypothesis about the link between the "tiger pattern" on Mars satellites and its slow destruction under the influence of tidal forces.
Stickney Crater and Furrow on Phobos
Mars -Phobos is very small, with a diameter of less than 30 kilometers. On its surface, you can see the huge Stickney crater, a trace of a powerful ancient collision, and many nearly parallel light-colored grooves that are up to 30 kilometers and hundreds of meters wide.
These are still a mystery. According to one theory, they are left behind by debris rolling down from craters. Another way of saying that these trenches are related to the tidal forces acting on the satellite on Mars. This hypothesis has been confirmed by new work by scientists from China and the United States, whose articles were published in Journal of Planetary Science .
Phobos rotates to its planet ten times closer to the distance from the moon to the earth, and is only 6,000 kilometers from its surface. Gradually, this distance was shortened, and the orbit of the satellite was shortened by 1.8 cm per year. Phobos is experiencing the increasingly powerful tidal forces generated when moving in Mars gravitational field .
Usually the effects of these forces are only noticeable near very large celestial bodies (such as Juste ) or liquids (such as tides in the Earth's oceans). However, the small Phobos is already close enough to Mars to clearly feel how the planet deforms. Under the action of tidal force , the satellite extends slightly along a straight line pointing to the center of Mars.
This deformation will cause cracks on the surface and form grooves. Such assumptions were proposed long ago, but were considered unlikely because Phobos was too loose. The authors of the new study believe that only the satellite surface is loose and denser layers are located deeper.
In this case, deformation caused by tidal forces may cause them to split, creating deep cracks, loose material on the surface drops from the cracks, and stripes can be seen from a distance. This idea was also confirmed by computer simulations. Using layered structures with different features for calculations, in most cases, scientists obtained deep feature cracks, as well as parallel grooves on the surface of satellite models.
