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Originally Posted by freebeard
Ah, but what about what's inside Phobos? Orbital mechanics say it's hollow and radar from flybys suggest two or three major voids.
I find Phobos with it's obelisk and rectangular ports more interesting than Mars itself
Deimos is a gateway to the outer Solar system.
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And water erosion can't produce the lateral branches. It concentrates to the center instead of radiating outward.
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Mar's two moons were either part of the accretion disc from which Mars formed, or were captured by Mars after Jupiter's gravity pulled them out of the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. I don't have that data.
Wherever they came from, dynamicists will be able to learn their masses from the celestial mechanics of their particular orbits around the planet.
From their sizes, their density and mass can be reverse-engineered. ( the existence of the moon of Pluto, Charon, was predicted from orbital mechanics in 1978. In 1985, a cryogenically-cooled, charge-coupled-device behind a 1.5-meter telescope at Mount Palomar Observatory detected both eclipses and occultations in the Pluto/Chiron system, 'proving' the 1978 'discovery' of Chiron, simply from the mathematics [ same used for dark matter ]
Such is the precision with which NASA-JPL, etc. can operate at.
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Presently, on PBS WorldChanel.com, they have a series entitled ' LIFE FROM ABOVE', which includes imagery from NASA's 'Mission to Planet Earth.'
In the series images from space-based instruments, in every episode, you can see features on Earth, exactly as S-O's image from Mars. They are all products of water erosion. And they all have these lateral features.
In order to understand their origins, one must know the exact topography around these features, and for the exact time in which they formed.
Mars used to be tectonically, and volcanically active, but no more, and for a long time.
The Martian crust is cold and thick. Thick enough to support mountains with elevations of 87,000-feet ( 26.6-km )
Between normal rocky and metallic meteorites and the shergottite, nakhlite, Chassigny ( SNC) meteorites and lunar meteorites found on Antarctica; we know the elemental and mineral composition of Mars and it' atmosphere ( from gases trapped inside shock-formed diaplectic glass formed in impactor events, in addition to space probe fly-bys and Martian rover laboratory experiments.
Mars used to have four seasons, rain, snow, ice, snow melt, floods, erupting volcanoes, and magma oceans, uplifts, subduction, rifts, ridges, subsidence, wind erosion ( still does ).
Earth experiences 1,576,800,000 lightning strikes a year. None of them are associated in any way with terra-forming.