Starship Asterisk*

"One hypothesis for the fragmentation and evolution of the knots includes existing gas being driven out by a less dense but highly energetic stellar wind." That's why I was sending you private messages, John, because I was trying discreetly to persuade you that theories may be facts but not necessarily so .. and 'facts' may not be facts at all. However .. here we are out in the beautiful open air .. well, a basement is where I'm at actually .. where are you? Another hypothesis which I dreamed up all by myself is that the knots' tails are not the result of wind, but of movement of the knots through a medium as though the knots were smoking torches being carried through air (a medium? If we were ordering beer or other refreshment, John and other friends reading this, an extra large might be better.)

Phobos - Phobos might not notice the cosmic wind; but a dust mote would, and the wind might notice Phobos - creating your low pressure area behind an object into which a dust mote might fall .. gradually building drifts. I don't think an atmosphere is necessary for water to flow. Knowledge of surface tension of liquids in outer space is small. We don't know much about anything .. like .. maybe at one time Phobos was part of a larger body which did have an atmosphere. One theory I have read is that the moon was once part of earth and was knocked away by an impact .. the area where the Pacific Ocean now is being the result .. and the tearing apart breaking up the remaining land mass into the continents and setting them adrift.

Quantum entanglement (that's probably the word, John, I recognize that your knowledge can be solid) and Phobos - well, if particles of energy can react to each other over great distances, then particles of dust in space can react to each other and to Phobos at near and at great distances .. scale of time being a factor. What do you think of posible flow of possible dark matter acting as wind (or water - sand dunes can be built with water also) on the dust particles and building drifts and dunes as would wind on earth?

For a lovely discussion I wish I could locate the APOD photo which seems to show water falling (being attracted by a red star's gravity) as a waterfall out of a nebula being subjected to a shock wave, the water gathering in a pool (perhaps formed because of equalized energies of attraction and repulsion generated by the red star) and from that pool globes of water seem to be propelled by the flaming pulses of the red star. Now THAT is an interesting picture .. and accounts for formation of water as well as formation of the moons which appear to be big balls of water, etc. I would appreciate being sent the url of that photo if you who are gifted with research skills can find it .. it's a few years old, time being relative as to the 'few'. This is exciting, eh John and other friends?

Sputnick,
You talk nonsense.

"I don't think an atmosphere is necessary for water to flow."

John

John, you believe water needs an atmosphere to flow only because that is what your experience and knowledge tells you .. but there is experience and knowledge beyond you. Until a short time ago the speed of light was thought by amost everyone to be constant - now it has been both slowed almost to a stop in a lab, and (Alice in Wonderland behold the mirror) has been sent through a mirror where it picked up speed. (I do not keep copies of Scientific American or keep files, but I pick up a lot of this information in that magazine.) I saw again today on this website where a scientist of some sort made the statement that the Big Bang was fact when it is still theory. John - we know very little - only our need for self-asurance or self inflation demands that we think we know more than we do. Behold the lucky people living at sea level for whom water boils at 312 F - and consider their ridicule of the mountain people who say they can boil water with half as much fuel. Behold the frog without lungs just discovered. Behold the fireflies in the tropics who can flash in unison when their numbers are in the millions. Behold - the earth is a sphere suspended from nothing - pillared upon nothing. Behold a heavier than air flying machine. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha - such nonsense!

John - just a little test. Have you ever seen a Blue Moon? If not - do you believe they are real occurences and not just a handy 'saying' to describe rare happenings?

In the Digg forum someone suggested Martian miners as the groove makers, and at first I chuckled to myself - but consider a planetary civilization dying of thirst with a huge ball of ice just 'up there' .. build machines which would dig the ice and hurl it into Mar's atmosphere hoping for rain, and resulting in those long, long grooves which approach the lip of the crater, curving down into the crater a short distance, curve along below the lip, curve back out of the crater and curve down again in a long, long groove .. like an upside down U on the photograph. It's pretty hard to see how a comet breaking apart and causing impacts coming from a resulting long, long string of flying boulders could form those continual lines which change direction - and other lines which change direction taking much different paths on the moon.

Sputnick wrote:In the Digg forum someone suggested Martian miners as the groove makers, and at first I chuckled to myself - but consider a planetary civilization dying of thirst with a huge ball of ice just 'up there' .. build machines which would dig the ice and hurl it into Mar's atmosphere hoping for rain, and resulting in those long, long grooves which approach the lip of the crater, curving down into the crater a short distance, curve along below the lip, curve back out of the crater and curve down again in a long, long groove .. like an upside down U on the photograph. It's pretty hard to see how a comet breaking apart and causing impacts coming from a resulting long, long string of flying boulders could form those continual lines which change direction - and other lines which change direction taking much different paths on the moon.

The ejecta from Stickney would all go into separate orbits that would always return to the original point of ejection with orbital periods close to that of Phobos (assuming that they didn't crash into, or escape from, Mars itself). It was probably returning Stickney ejecta that produced these grooves over thousands of Phobos orbits.

Hi Neufer - I doubt if the ejecta from a collision the size of Stickney would return to it because in my unlearned opinion it would be blasted too far out .. and if returned to anywhere it would probably fall onto Mars, attracted by the much larger Martian gravity. Of course - the grooves could have been there before the moon began its orbits of Mars.

Today's superb Hirise pic of Phobos allows one to see clear crater chains, in a range of size and density, from isolated craters in a chain to trenches like a string of beads. You can't see them on this version, but compare with the APOD view.



John[/img]

Sorry John old chap .. I've examined the large photo closely .. and just as likely as your conclusion the grooves are trenches dug by automatated ice mining machines which hurled the ice into the Martian atmosphere .. a desperate attempt to save a civilization. What you take for impact creaters could be pits dug by malfunctioning machinery. You, John, are chained to your views via an unfortunate accident of entanglement which will not allow you to even consider why many grooves run as 'U's (clearly seen) - or why other grooves start in one direction and then change direction. Pity.

Perhaps the moon is layered - and 'something' heats up the interior, turning ice to steam in explosive jets along the lines of layering - the jets blasting holes which look like craters. The U turns could be explained by folding of the layers before the larger entity was smashed to pieces by a giant collision, Phobos being a tiny piece of an original huge moon or planet.

Hello All,

I don't quite know how it is that I can be so captivated by such a thing like Phobos. I noticed a row of larger, shallower looking craters going horizontally above the lighter area one right next to the other. Also the surface in general appears lumpy as if the impactors have entered Phobos and, once inside, slowed but still moving, pushed material toward the surface before coming to rest. The moons general shape suggests elongation via impact to the Stickney crater. So much for round moons eh?

Oooo. Oooo. One more thing: in the silvery area in BOTH APOD photos there are reddish craters and silvery craters. The latter could either be ones that have been covered over by the lighter material or the opposite-exposed when dust that perhaps once coated that particular spot was somehow removed. It doesn't appear that the two different color craters could be the same age. I wonder which is older.

Hi Astro - Someone on this site wrote that the moon's mass seems to inddcate 1/2 ice and 1/2 rock .. I think find it very easy to picture the silvery as ice. I, like others here, believe the red is dust from Mars, I believing the dust was shot into space from the big volcano .. Olympus Mons comes to mind as its possible name. As my post above says, I believe that the straight line craters were blasted by steam from within, the ice heated by gravitational tides, and the steam escaping along lines between layers. The groove craters appear too uniform for impact craters -- the Shoemaker Levi string was all different sizes, for instance .. the asteroid belt all different sizes. The Big Rock Thrower would have had to throw thousands of big bricks all taken from the same mold.

Hello Sputnick,

Well then how 'bout another approach? Phobos has a fairly low gravity so it could be feasible to have a "skimmer". You know, a relatively slow body graze the surface at a very low angle and sorta bump and scoot along making pockmarks and grooves 'til it either comes to a rest finally or, if traveling at just the right speed can't navigate the moon's curvature, breaks free of the weak gravitational field and gets left behind. It might account for the unifomity one sees in a line of craters within a groove. By the way, no one says these meteorites are anywhere near round or even fast for that matter. In other words: no rules for meteors- speed,angle, or direction is wide open territory.

Hi Astro - I thought of skimmers also, like stones skipping over water, and examined the photo with those in mind .. but the changes in grooves' directions are too great, the craters don't appear to be elongated, the craters are too close together, too often the skimmer should fly off into space and doesn't (coming over the lip of the crater, for instance) .. and there are, in my opinion, far too many grooves as (again, only in my opinion) skimmers would be rare. I've pretty much come to an end of speculation, for myself the only answer is steam venting through layering .. geology set in motion by close encounters with another object creating tidal heat. I'm surprised I thought of it, but one of my friends is a Professor Emeritus in Geology and his influence stirs my imagination.

Skimmers would be rare given the exact situation needed to produce this effect. Unless the original Stickney event was a one, two, three punch of low mass slow moving loosly packed material which, threw ejecta material into space in the direction of Phobos's leading edge, then Phobos subsequently passing through this debris field prior to the second and third concurrent strikes causing more debirs to pass through.

BMAONE23 wrote:Skimmers would be rare given the exact situation needed to produce this effect. Unless the original Stickney event was a one, two, three punch of low mass slow moving loosly packed material which, threw ejecta material into space in the direction of Phobos's leading edge, then Phobos subsequently passing through this debris field prior to the second and third concurrent strikes causing more debirs to pass through.

If an ISS space walker throws a monkey wrench perpendicular to the ISS's orbital motion the wrench will "boomerang" and hit (or graze) the ISS on the other side of the earth.

If an ISS space walker throws a monkey wrench in front of the ISS along its orbital motion the wrench will go into a slightly higher orbit, "boomerang" , and return to its original orbital ejection point but slightly behind the ISS (though with a somewhat faster velocity). If the wrench does not catch up to and then graze the ISS on this first orbit it will continue to orbit & return to this spot in space until it eventually does graze the ISS.

Moral: People in space stations shouldn't throw wrenches.

Throwing monkey wrenches into things at low velocity does not, I assume, compare to high velocity ejecta created by high velocity impact?

No comments regarding my steam theory?

Sputnick wrote:Throwing monkey wrenches into things at low velocity does not, I assume, compare to high velocity ejecta created by high velocity impact?

Phobos is traveling at 2.138 km/s; certainly a lot of Strickney's ejecta had speeds much less than that and the monkey wrench concept is valid.

Sputnick wrote:No comments regarding my steam theory?

They could be a form of "tiger stripes" but I doubt it.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050906.html
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051205.html
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080331.html

Hello neufer,

I like the moral, it's probably the most valuable, concrete piece of info to come out if these musings.

Pete: Hmm, I wonder what would happen ifn I tossed this here monkey wrench right now.

Jake: I wouldn't do that if I were you.

Pete: Why not?

Jake: Well, because of the "Neufer Principle".

Pete: The "Neufer Principle"? What's that?

Jake: Well, Pete, let me explain it this way: ifn you toss that monkey
wrench like you say, then, ifn I was you? I wouldn't sit in that
particular spot too much longer.

It would of course be very likely that "our people" who work up there in and around the ISS are well versed and highly trained regarding such hazards. A graze of any kind would, I think, be worrisome to the various teams involved in upgrades and supplies.

From my experience with discussion forums I really doubt if many posters in any discussion forum read beyond the first five words of others' posts, making these posts almost meaningless .. however ..

Art -- how do imacts from debris explain the curves in the grooves - most being complete U turns .. and how do you explain the absence of eliptical craters - each crater appears to be the result of a 90 degree explosion from above or below. I think this is another example of primary interests interfering with objectivity - interest in pure astronomy superseding the possibility of geological answers for astronomical phenomenon.

Tiger stripes? Have any of you read that if a particular molecule (of course I don't know which one) is dropped into water it 'grows' layers of mineral around it. I have seen an electron microscope photo of such, probably in Scientific American or similar magazine. That process explains layered rock formation as easily as sedimentary deposition .. with the two processes working to build rock in thicknesses probably reaching hundreds of miles .. and the first (molecular) process probably used in creation of the 'dry land appearing out of the water' as noted in a certain ancient book's chapter dealing with creation of this planet. We have all seen sufficient examples of layered rock to know it is common.

The absence of even posible explanations in this discussion for certain phenomenon, including the absence of eliptical craters, and why the 'U's are created, strengthens tremendously my belief that my theory of steam venting is the only logical answer.

Sputnick wrote:Art -- how do imacts from debris explain the curves in the grooves - most being complete U turns .. and how do you explain the absence of eliptical craters - each crater appears to be the result of a 90 degree explosion from above or below.

I don't really see your U turns, Sputnick.

For reasons that I don't understand almost all meteor craters on all solar system bodies are circular despite the fact that incoming meteorites come from all directions. Perhaps the fact that the crater is mostly an explosion some 15 times the physical size of the meteor itself makes the physical signs of an elongated entrance path insignificant.

The U turns are unmistakeable on the largest of the photos on APOD. I'll try to find the photo and url.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080410.html

examine the lip of the crater in the white zone. The clearest 'U' is upside down, clear, unmistakeable, curving around behind the large, white crater.
And how about the parallel tracks coming into the crater lip from the right hand side - there is just no way the grooves are impact created.

The grooves do not at all resemble Tiger Stripes - just simple geological layering.

Art (and everyone) several obvious eliptical craters can be seen by enlarging http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080410.html to the highest resolution, and examining the lower, right hand 1/3 of the photo. These I will say are probably returning debris. By enlarging the photo other peculiarities come into view - most notably assuming a curious appearance is what in the normal size format appears to be a shiny 'boulder' in the groove on the extreme left side about 1/2 way down/up. I'm going to enjoy examining this again on a better computer screen at the public library .. and I sure wish a direct photo of this could be taken.

I'm genuinely thinking the grooves are due to last ditch attempts at saving the Martian civilization by mining Phobos ice and hurling it into the Martian atmosphere. There are too many curiosities even for steam venting .. an no chance at all for impact chains.

Sputnik,
All the effects you note are due to perspective.

The "U-turns" are two sets of parallel grooves/craterchains, that probably ocuurred at different times, but almost equally distant from today, but after Stickney formed. When seen over Stickney's lip, they seem to curve and join, like two parallel lines joining at the horizon

A circular crater looks oval when seen from the side - indeed ANY circular object looks oval when seen from the side. Even Craters Messier and Messier A on the Moon, which are suggested to be the result of a very low angle, glancing impact, are ALMOST circular, although they have a very assymetric ray system.
See: http://www.seds.org/messier/Xtra/m-crater.html

John