Something is wrong with Phobos

here's something interesting

Something is wrong with Phobos. The martian moon looks like a solid, but it is not as dense as a rocky solid should be. Some researchers think Phobos might be riddled with vast caverns; others say it is just a "rubble pile" masquerading as a solid body. To solve the mystery, Europe's Mars Express spacecraft is making a series of close Phobos-flybys this month. March 10th update: According to gravity-field data just beamed back from Mars Express, mass is not evenly distributed throughout the moon’s interior. A detailed analysis is underway by ESA researchers. Stay tuned!

source: spaceweather

[edit on 10-3-2010 by Noobastronomer]

I read a theory that Phobos is a space station and it moved for about 5 months in the 80's then returned.

www.ufos-aliens.co.uk...

havent read it in a while but was good

Yes, something is wrong with Phobos... and Deimos, and Iapetus; our own moon is alleged to be 'hollow.' There are anomalies appearing on Saturn and Mars, Jupiter is sporting a 'bruise,' and you can top off the 'something's wrong' list with the sun, but it still begs the question, "What does it all mean?"...

I earnestly look forward to that post.

It's a poorly written article taken from ESA: Phobos Flyby Success.

“Phobos is probably a second-generation Solar System object,” says Martin Pätzold, Universitat Koln, Cologne, Germany, and Principal Investigator of the Mars Radio Science (MaRS) experiment. Second generation means that it coalesced in orbit after Mars formed, rather than forming concurrently out of the same birth cloud as the Red Planet. There are other moons around other planets where this is thought to have been the case too, such as Amalthea around Jupiter.

If we ignore the personal comments from the article, there isn't anything 'wrong' with Phobos. It's long been considered a 'rubble pile' and the recent fly-by supports the idea.

Something is not right about Phobos. It looks like a solid object but previous flybys have shown that it is not dense enough to be solid all the way through.

I can't imagine why the author used this language...it's emotive and inaccurate.

This is why choosing your words carefully is so important.

The author should have said that something about Phobos doesn't fit with our preconceived notions.

Using the word "wrong" implies fault or problem. There's nothing problematic about Phobos, nor is it somehow causing damage.

Just my opinion, of course.

It is very possible that the impact that produced the huge crater Stickney is responsible for shattering the internal structure of Phobos, and leaving it as a huge "rubble pile".