Liked on YouTube: Does Mars Have Rings? Not Right Now, But Maybe In The Future!

Does Mars Have Rings? Not Right Now, But Maybe In The Future!
From its potential, to the lifecycle that could lead to it happening, join us as we explore the question of "Does Mars have rings?" and why the answer is not right now, but it might have...and might be again... Subscribe for more videos:https://www.youtube.com/c/InsaneCuriosity?sub_confirmation=1? want you to picture the solar system right now. Specifically, I want you to picture every single planet in the solar system from Mercury to Pluto (yes, Pluto is a planet, don't let them tell you otherwise!), and I want you to think about everything that makes them special. Now, let me ask you, how many of the planets have rings? After some time, you would likely answer four. Specifically, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. And would be correct, despite some of them not being overtly visible at times (Saturn's rings are by far the biggest), the rings of those four planets are confirmed. So thinking about that, you might wonder why we're talking about the potential of Mars having rings...even though we know that right now...it doesn't. In fact, we know in many ways that Mars doesn't have rings. First and foremost, we've seen multiple probes, satellites, orbitals and rovers to the planet and would've noticed really quickly if it was a ringed planet. Just as important though, as our closest neighbor on one side, we'd be able to tell via telescopes if Mars had rings, so what exactly is going on to prompt this? Well it's about a model of the history of our solar system, and how history may have turned Mars into a ringed planet, then stopped, but might start again. The closer of Mars’ two moons – Phobos – might sometimes exist in the form of rings. After spending some time as rings, it might then reform as a moon. It’s possible this cycle has repeated some three and seven times over billions of years, according to the output of a new computer model developed by scientists at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. NASA funded the study and reported on the findings – which were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience – on March 20, 2017. The idea of Phobos someday shattering and forming a ring for Mars isn’t new. It’s long been known that Phobos is getting closer to Mars and that it might someday break apart. According to the new model by David Minton and Andrew Hesselbrock, Phobos will break apart upon reaching the Roche limit – the minimum distance a moon can orbit without being gravitationally shredded – in roughly 70 million years. At that time, it’ll become rings for Mars. Now, as for how this cycle started (allegedly), it's honestly a story we've heard before. You see, billions of years ago, about 4.3 billion according to the system, a massive asteroid came to Mars and collided with it. The debris that was made floated into the atmosphere and became the rings of Mars, and then, over time, slowly clumped together to become the moon/moons we know now. Why is that a familiar story? Because we believe that this is what happened to Earth once upon a time when our moon got created. Though it's unclear if our own moon was once rings, but the possibility technically is there. Hesselbrock and Minton's model suggests that as the ring formed, and the debris slowly moved away from the Red Planet and spread out, it began to clump and eventually formed a moon. Over time, Mars' gravitational pull would have pulled that moon toward the planet until it reached the Roche limit, the distance within which a planet's tidal forces will break apart a celestial body that is held together only by gravity. So then, the rings reformed, then got pushed back out again, and once again reformed the moon. And this kept going and going, and is apparently continuing to this day. "You could have had kilometer-thick piles of moon sediment raining down on Mars in the early parts of the planet's history, and there are enigmatic sedimentary deposits on Mars with no explanation as to how they got there," Minton said. "And now it's possible to study that material." Other theories suggest that the impact with Mars that created the North Polar Basin led to the formation of Phobos 4.3 billion years ago, but Minton said it's unlikely the moon could have lasted all that time. Also, Phobos would have had to form far from Mars and would have had to cross through the resonance of Deimos, the outer of Mars' two moons. Resonance occurs when two moons exert gravitational influence on each other in a repeated periodic basis, as major moons of Jupiter do. By passing through its resonance, Phobos would have altered Deimos' orbit. #InsaneCuriosity #MarsEverythingAbout #RecentSpaceDiscoveries
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