Mysterious object that 'crushed' Mars discovered

Mars is not a pretty sphere, but rather looks like it has been squashed and distorted many times. Scientists have just found a surprising culprit.

According to Science Alert, a research team led by astronomer Michael Efroimsky from the US Naval Observatory has just given an interesting explanation for the unusual shape of Mars today: The impact of the mysterious "third moon" named Neiro.

Mars once had a large moon named Neiro - (Illustration photo AI: ANH THU)

The planets are not actually round. Mars is the most unusual in the solar system, with a cross-section that looks like three overlapping ellipses.

It also has two equally odd moons named Phobos and Deimos, which look a lot like potatoes.

Neiro - named after a goddess of war, companion of the god Mars in Roman mythology - is a celestial body about one-third the size of Earth's satellite, the Moon.

According to Dr. Efroimsky's calculations and models, the gravitational force of this hypothetical Moon mass would still be enough to pull and distort Mars before its shape became fixed.

So this moon must have existed in the planet's early stages, when Mars was filled with ancient magma oceans, just like the young Earth.

At that time, Mars was like a lump of soft clay, which Neiro constantly changed shape. Unfortunately, the planet cooled and hardened at the time when its shape became most bizarre.

About 4 billion years ago, a period of intense, continuous collisions occurred in the young Solar System and likely broke Neiro apart.

But this Moon does not really disappear.

Although called the "Third Moon" because it was known after Phobos and Deimos, Neiro may be the parent body of Phobos and Deimos.

In other words, the two present-day moons of Mars could be two small fragments of this hypothetical moon that broke up. This would also be a reasonable explanation for the distorted shapes of Phobos and Deimos.

Of course, it's also possible that today's pair of Martian moons had a different origin, and Neiro drifted out of orbit or was destroyed altogether.