Phobos Strata
Phobos has parallel lines around its surface.
Impacts leave radiating streaks, these are parallel.
As of yet, I can see only one probability. These are layers of particulate or molten solids. This is a chunk of the skin of a planet.
Phobos was once part of the surface of a large sedimentary and/or molten body; a planet or moon. A planet that is now scattered among the asteroids.
Any thoughts?
rwjefferson
Peace through Liberty
Why couldn’t it be a piece of a closer planet like, say, Mars?
Phobos (and Deimos) are both thought to be captured asteroids. The layering feature you mention is discussed on that page (if I read you right), and probably comes from a past collision.
The asteroids, in turn, are thought to be the constituents of a “planet” that failed to form because of Jupiter’s gravitational influence. If so, they would never participated in the formation of sedimentary rock, as happens on planetary surfaces.
I cannot see the association of parallel grooves to impact(s). Impacts leave radial lines.
The only mechanism I can see for parallel groves is sedimentation. That implies that Phobos is a small piece from the surface of a planet.
Phobos is the size of a mountain, if it were from Mars; I would expect to see many other pieces of Mars still in orbit. When planets shatter, the debris tends to fall toward the Sun. This planet would have orbited beyond Mars.
I propose that Phobos is a remnant of Theia. Theia is the planet that struck Earth to create Luna. If Theia were in orbit between Mars and Jupiter, a comet strike could send it careening towards Earth. The debris from the collision would become asteroids and the moons of Mars.
rwjefferson
Peace through Liberty
This probably won’t satisfy your question, but in craters the radiating streaks are caused by ejecta falling back to the surface. (This is a WAG, but I suspect most asteroids aren’t large enough to have the gravity to pull most of the ejecta back down to form those streaks anyway) Asteroids are thought to have a very low density, and all the sites I checked claim that the lines are a compression phenomenon. Furthermore, they are grooves, and so not piles of ejecta or layers either.
If Phobos weren’t an former asteroid, we’d probably be able to tell by its composition and density. If the lines were strata, we’d be able to see differences in the composition between the lines. I haven’t seen any evidence of either. Then again, I haven’t looked that hard.
I have an irrational fear of that moon.
I’ve been diagnosed with phobophobia.
They don’t look like evidence of sedimentation to me; more like the planet(oid) was dragged through a hedge (metaphorically speaking), leaving scratches. Perhaps it has moved at speed thrugh a debris field in the past?
You have to be careful with the metaphorically speaking thing.
You’d be amazed how many think Eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is NOT a metaphor. That is how you can tell the ones that have NOT eaten at that Tree. I understand they even want to teach it in Public School History classes.
O.K. I’ll bite.
Exactly what form did this space hedge take to leave parallel streaks on an asteroid/moon?
Maybe this is what sediments look like when they are covered with an eon’s coating of space dust.
The Northern 45 degree Hemisphere appears to have once been molten; as though it has been smoothed by heat. That is the side that was closest to the impact.
rwjefferson
Peace through Liberty
Exactly; even if these lines were the result of Stickney, they are lines of cleavage between strata.
I’m saying that (most of) the asteroids and Phobos and (part of) the Moon were once the planet Theia.