The giant collision produced two Martian moons

Mars' moons can be formed after Mars collides with a primitive planet about the size of a third.

According to the Huffington Post, many previous scientists have suggested that Mars's two moons of Phobos and Deimos originated from asteroids captured when flying across the red planet.

In a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience on July 4, a group of French, Belgian and Japanese scientists based on computer simulations discovered two moons Phobos and Deimos formed after the big collision. between Mars and a primitive planet (protoplanet) is one third of its size.

Illustration of the giant collision creates 2 moons Phobos and Deimos.(Photo: Labex UnivEarthS 2016).

This is a theory that has been proposed, but the former scientific community could not explain why such a large impact produced two smaller moons instead of a single giant moon, especially one. number of debris appeared scattered in the area where the two moons formed.

The collision occurred about 100 to 800 million years after the planets began to form. Fragments from the collision form a very wide disk around Mars. The disc consists of two parts, the inner part has a higher density with the main component being hot material, the outer part is very thin due to the high gas content.

The inner part of the disk forms a moon about 1,000 times the size of Phobos. The intriguing interaction process in the external disk area acts as a catalyst, helping to collect debris to create many smaller satellites and further away.

After several thousand years, Mars is surrounded by a group of about 10 small moons and a giant moon. Several million years later, when the fragments of the disk no longer exist, Mars' gravitational force draws most of the satellites into its surface, including the big moon. The two most distant moons are Phobos and Deimos still present.

The giant moon on the inner disk that collided with Mars is thought to have caused the Borealis basin , a large, lowland area north of Mars. The moon Phobos flies 6,000km from Mars, and it is expected to fall to the planet after 20 to 40 million years.