R
rlb2
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Many Years ago I predicted that we will eventually reevaluate whether Mars had a more substantial moon in its recent past than just Deimos and Phobos. My thought then was if Mars had a moon about 500 miles in diameter or larger and was hit by a large asteroid or comet impacting it in such a way to transfer most of that momentum towards Mars it could shatter the moon breaking it up into much smaller pieces and de-orbit the small pieces at different time periods causing one after the other pieces to fall to the Martian surface. This constant bombardment of Mars by pieces of its moon dropping from orbit would have heated up the atmosphere enough to increase the kinetic energy of the gas to escape velocity; therefore most of the Martian atmosphere would escape out into space. If this did occur within the last 400 million years then the actual age of the planet's surface would be falsely predicted by today’s crater counting modeling.<br /><br />Some impacts on our moon would have pulverized a much smaller moon. Mars has a crater so large, apx 2000 Kilometer diameter, Hellas Planitia that if it was deep enough Pluto could fit in it. I understand a much smaller rock made the crater but imagine the amount of energy that it took to dig up that 9,000 meter deep hole in the ground, that impact could destroy a good size moon. <br /><br />More and more information is pouring out today to at least link Deimos and Phobos as being made of similar material, considered class C asteroids made out of primarily carbon rich rocks with what they think is a lot of water ice; which they suggest may have come from the outer solar system. <br /><br />Phobos will either break up and form a ring around Mars or fall to its surface in 50 million years. Are these Moons the remnants of a much larger one that existed as little as maybe 400 million years ago. If they were made of the same material but dissimilar than existed on Mars, what would be the odds that they at least weren’t attached at one time. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Ron Bennett </div>