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The Moons Of Mars: Deimos & Phobos

I was amazed that I didn´t even know there had been storms on Mars. But if the moons have vanished, it will certainly be hard to hide it. And what exactly would somebody get out of denying that something had crashed on Mars?
 
Well, maybe they surveyed it just in time if the moons have collided! I spose they'll have to do it again now...

What could cause 2 moons to crash into, or even leave the orbit of a planet??? something big enough to disrupt the orbits? Anybody got any more news/links on this subject?
 
The latter part of that article suggests that the storms on
Mars and the loss of its moons?? may have been the result
of the same meteor storm which hit the USA in the Summer.

The paragraph about the guy in the Pentagon looking out at
a blazing meteor has a truly Fortean synchronicity about it. :eek:
 
I supose some one has considered that they might still be there but Mars is in the way? I mean they ARE in ORBIT around Mars are they not?

Wm.:)
 
They orbit very fast, so Mars can't be in the way for long.

In fact Phobos (the closest) orbits faster than Mars rotates. (From Mars, it would rise in the west, set in the east.) Mars has a similar rotation period to Earth, about 24.5 hours.

I did actually post the link about this on the uk.sci.astronomy Newsgroup, but for technical reasons due to my main ISP (LineOne, boo) I can no longer access the NG!
 
Sorry to come over all sceptical, but has this been mentioned anywhere else? Do we have any evidence apart from this page that the moons of Mars are missing?

Cujo
 
Tiny Phobos, the nearest satellite to Mars orbiting at a distance of just 9,380km above the red planet, is subject to very slight atmospheric drag. As a result, it is slowly slowing down and spiralling towards Mars - it is believed that it may plunge into Mars in about 2 million years' time.:spinning
 
A 1989 Russian space probe photographed an anomalous object close to Phobos. It was theorised to be smeared by an 8 second exposure, it looks like a cylindrical "craft" about 20 kilometers long. Another photo shows the shadow cast by the object onto the surface of Mars. The space probe was lost shortly after this photo was taken.
A Russian scientist calculated that phobos could be hollow due to it's peculiar orbit.
Infra-red photos from either Mariner 9 or the above mentioned Soviet Phobos 2 mission (my memory fails me) show a remarkably regular structure just below the surface of mars. It looks very much like an intelligently designed struture, though was dismissed as being natural, related to the melting of sub surface permafrost. Similar regular structures exist in the south polar regions of Mars, and have been dubbed the "Inca City".

Phobos also has some unusual grooves and strings of craters of unknown origin. The chain craters can normally be explained by tectonic action, but Phobos is too small to generate heat or volcanic activity.

I'll try to find some links....
 
Maybe it's the effects of Nemesis, the sun's hypothetical evil brown dwarf twin...

Ha... Now here's a crackpot theory...

Maybe there's a small, dark object of heavy mass orbiting between Mars and Jupiter who's gravitational pull helped to strip the atmosphere in the past (the lines on Phobos effectively cosmic wind errosion? wait - it gets better...) and has moved close enough to disrupt the orbits of the moons. It could also cause freak weather like the prolonged and unprecedented dust storms of late. Maybe it has an odd orbit that has come close to Earth in the past and caused similar freak weather to cause mass extinctions, not actual collisions (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1562000/1562191.stm )

No, I don't know much astrophysics... But consider there's enough anomalous events within the solar system to warrant speculation of the gravitational effects of Nemesis

I'm hoping that someone will pull this apart... I just thought of it in bed last night and it reminded me of Velikovsky's "When Worlds Collide"... If he can do it...
 
The story goes that a comet (76P ) heading into our system suddenly was not able to be found in close proximity to Mars.

In other words, tracking of the comet ceased at about the same time it was within approach to Mars.

Shortly afterwards, there was a "coincidental" occurrence of a massive dust storm on Mars the size of at least one third the planetary width - along with the apparent missing of the moons.

Since NASA has apparrently decided for itself to be the only outlet for astrological information on earth, there is a constant LACK of information about certain objects, events, and anomalies within our system.

I would not go so far as to say there is any more to the coincidence of the above events, although the sudden lack of information does more for promoting conjecture than does outright manufacture of truth.

So don't worry about missing moons, comets, asteroids, meteors, impact events, alien conspiracies.....BE HAPPY....GO SHOPPING...BE A GOOD LITTLE CONSUMER

:)
 
ASTRONOMICAL information, please, not astrological!
 
That is a very good point, Rynner... I've heard lots of conjecture, and it's fun (I'm still betting on Nemesis - or aliens from the Tenth Planet), but there seem to be very few people reporting this lack of moons...

Can someone just check and put us out of our misery? Phobos' orbit (I bekieve) is something like less than an Earth day, certainly faster than the rotational period of Mars.

Is this actually a non-event?
 
As the story is now a few days old, and there has been no announcement in the mainstream press, that Phobos and Deimos are still pottering along in their orbits around Mars. Even if we assume that there were a conspiracy on the part of NASA, most other nations have observatories that would probably have spotted if something was "wrong". Remember that we knew about the moons way before Hubble flew.

Also, government funded organisations do not have a monopoly on astronomy. There are plenty of amateurs out there who would love to be the first person to announce the disappearance of even one moon.

I await the "discovery" that the moons have returned from wherever it is that they have been, providing further evidence of someone monkeying around with the solar system. ;) (I recall the Sunday Sport pulling a similar thing with the discovery of a B29 bomber on the moon.)

:)
 
The problem is that professional astronomers are generally very little interested in planetary astronomy, and few amateurs have sufficiently large telescopes to observe Mars' moons.

Someone give us a reliable observation/link!
 
When something like this allegedly happens, the first place to go for rebuttals is Usenet (as long as it's at least 24 hours after the alleged event - usenet is SLOW). Sure enough, here we are:

link

absurdly long url shortened - stu

Link is now dead. It led to Google Groups, which is defunct. No archived version found.
 
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Well, it appears we are one for two so far....


Deimos Acquired by Glen Deen

Mars Moon Photographed on August 20, 2001 UT

Glen Deen and Marshall Masters

In times of such awful uncertainty and bad news, a little good news is nice to have. In what Glen thought would be a marginal observation attempt, he managed to successfully photograph Deimos on August 19-20, 2001 during his 5th of 11 observation attempts. We are deeply grateful to Glen for the incredible time and effort he has invested in this pursuit of truth. Glen’s full report, which includes imagery, follows below.

While the issue of Deimos has been conclusively settled, thanks to Glen’s help, the issue of Phobos (which has always been YOWUSA’s primary concern) remains a mystery. Furthermore, the Phobos issue will continue to remain a mystery until 2003 when Mars is once again close enough to the Earth for ground-based observation of it’s moon(s).

FULL STORY AT -


yowusa.com/Archive/September2001/deimos1/deimos1.htm
Link is dead. No archived version found. Link was apparently dead soon after its being posted here.
 
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there was a serie of books called Genesis revisited or something by Zacharia Smith(or similar) arguing about Deimos and Pheibos being 2 kind of hollows satellites with some machinary inside .I think it had to do with the sumerians ,but for this guy everything had to do with sumerians :spinning
 
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if NASA didn't say anything.

But I find the tidbit about NASA having a $10.5 million funding and spending only $1.5 million of it interesting -- that's a heap of money to be sitting idle and gathering dust. How do I become financial allocator at NASA? I imagine 9 million bucks buys a decent amount of good space gear.
 
I STILL haven't heard any news of any observations being made of the moons of Mars and it's been months now.:confused: I'm going to keep an eye on this...............
 
After the whole face business, which was quite disappointing as I believe it to be a rock these days and nothing more, it's interesting to see some anomalies of a different nature springing up.

Now, here's a big conspiracy :eek: - conjecture makes the world go round...

Maybe WE were responsible for the destruction of Phobos and Deimos? Interplanetary war? If we discover a base on a planet or moon, and we consider it a threat to international security, what do we do? Do we wait until they launch an attack of superior strength on us? Of course we wouldn't want to provoke one, but if we thought one was being planned against us...

Alternatively, maybe Phobos is a rock with an engine - it's own minerals providing its fuel source. The occupants are now headed for Earth! The Reptoids are coming! :eek!!!!:

Well...

Maybe... :D
 
Well it's been another couple of weeks and still no word on what's going on. The biggest news at the moment involves the rapid change of Mar's climate. Nothing mentioned about the moons though................
 
Mars is getting further away now, so there's little hope of observation of them from Earth, and all the orbiters at Mars are looking downwards - or so they tell us...
 
I was wondering if anyone knew of any agency, besides Malin, to get recent photos of the moons of Mars. I had read, on some other website, a theory that they had gone missing in 1997 and that the world govs. are covering it up.

I figure there HAS to be at least ONE FTMB member with a telescope powerful enough to independantly verify their existence [or lack thereof!]. Barring that, a member with a decent site with updated pictures.

I'm sure that they are still there. Yet, it occurs to me, how would I know if they weren't?:blah:
 
This topic has been discussed on this thread - I haven't heard of any further developments.

The moons are VERY small, and need a big telescope to be seen from Earth, and Mars is now getting further away. The next opposition (next summer I think) should be a close one, however.
 
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Thanks Rynner, I checked out the thread, but was still left in the dark... I guess I'm waiting 'till summer to find out!
 
Sorry, I meant summer next year! About August / September 2003.
 
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