Mars Had Rings Like Saturn Billions Of Years Ago, Claims New Research

Mars has intrigued astronomers since forever and a peculiar aspect of the red planet is its moons.

A new study on these moons hints that Mars might have a circle of moon and ring formation, wherein its old moons break up into fragments, only to rejoin as a new moon.

UC Berkeley

The two existing moons of the red planet namely Phobos and Deimos revealed the big secret. Both the moons are irregularly shaped and have strange orbits.

The closest one, Phobos, is the closest to its planet than any other known planetary moon. It is able to complete an orbit within 7 hours, 39 minutes.

Deimos, on the other hand, is seven times smaller than Phobos, has a nearly circular orbit around Mars and is tilted at an angle of 2 degrees. Both the moons were previously believed to have been asteroids captured by Mars¡¯ gravity as moons.

Mars moon Deimos (Image: NASA)

The research team now seems to have found the reasons for these strange characteristics of the moons. Revealed by a team of scientists from the SETI Institute and Purdue University, a new research suggests the presence of an old moon orbiting Mars that might have put Deimos off its orbit by 2 degrees.

What does the study say?

Published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and presented at this week's American Astronomical Society meeting held virtually, the team of scientists suggested that there was a moon orbiting Mars around 3 billion years ago that was about 20 times as big as Phobos.

At the time of its death, this moon was pulled towards Mars and blasted apart to form a ring. Through this, the team suggests that there is a cycle that the red planet follows for creating its moons. They are born, grown, ripped apart and then born again out of the ring of debris that forms in their places.

Mars moon Phobos (Image: NASA)

A similar research surfaced in 2017 suggesting a similar cycle of moon-ring formation on Mars. The research hinted at multiple generations of Mars' moons and rings throughout its billions of years of existence.

The new findings also point towards Phobos being the living example of that. It is believed to have been formed around the time when dinosaurs inhabited Earth, around 200 million years ago. In around the next 50 million years, it would meet the same fate and be split into pieces to form a ring of the leftovers in its orbit.

The good news, however, is that these pieces will then stick together to form a new moon. Changes the whole concept of the ¡®new moon¡¯ cycles, doesn¡¯t it?