When was Mars rings discovered?

Mars: From Rusty Red to Ringed Beauty (and Back Again?)

Okay, so we all know Mars, right? The rusty, dusty red planet. But what if I told you it might have rocked rings at some point? And, get this, it’s probably gonna sport them again in the future! Think of it – Mars, the ringed beauty. It’s just not a permanent thing like Saturn’s bling; these Martian rings would be more like temporary accessories, fashioned from the leftovers of a moon gone kablooey.

Now, scientists have been kicking around this idea of ancient Martian rings for a while. The real “aha!” moment came when they started looking at Deimos, one of Mars’s tiny moons, and its wonky orbit. It’s tilted a bit, only a couple of degrees off from Mars’s equator. At first, people shrugged it off. But then, in 2017, some clever researchers had a different thought.

Matija Ćuk, a brain at the SETI Institute, and his team figured that Deimos’s tilt could be a souvenir from a past ring system. Imagine a huge moon, like 20 times bigger than Phobos, hanging out around Mars. This “grandparent” moon, as they called it, would have messed with a ring system, nudging Deimos’s orbit out of whack. They spilled all the details at a big astronomy conference, the 236th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Pretty cool, huh?

Then you’ve got David Minton and Andrew Hesselbrock, who in 2017 suggested that the original Phobos and Deimos, along with the first ring, were born from stuff swirling around baby Mars, billions of years ago. The gravity from the ring stuff would have tugged on proto-Phobos, making it drift outwards. At the same time, bits and pieces from the ring would have spiraled inwards, raining down on Mars. Talk about a cosmic shower!

Oh, and here’s another thing: that massive Borealis basin, the one that covers like 40% of Mars? Some folks think it was carved out by a mega-impact about 4.3 billion years ago. Boom! Enough stuff would have been blasted off the surface to form a ring.

But here’s the really mind-bending part: Mars might be stuck in a loop, a ring-moon cycle! Scientists think it goes something like this: a big smash-up on Mars throws debris into space. That debris clumps together to make a moon. But, because of Mars’s gravity, that moon slowly spirals inwards. When it gets too close, BAM! Mars’s gravity rips it apart. The wreckage spreads out, and you’ve got yourself a ring.

Apparently, this has happened before. Like, maybe three to seven times already! Mars, you crazy cyclical planet, you.

So, what about the future? Well, Phobos, the bigger of Mars’s two moons, is doomed. It’s inching closer to Mars at about six feet per century. Fast forward 30 to 50 million years, and Phobos is toast. It’ll hit that Roche limit, the point where Mars’s gravity wins, and poof, rings!

The resulting ring system could hang around for millions of years, totally changing how the Red Planet looks. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to see that! It’s not clear if we’d be able to see the rings from Earth, but Mars might get a little brighter, a little more… noticeable.

Bottom line? Mars might be ringless now, but it’s got a history, and a destiny, filled with rings. The whole moon-forming, moon-destroying thing, all thanks to gravity, could mean rings popping up around Mars again and again. And when Phobos finally bites the dust? Get ready for a show, folks. A temporary ring system that’ll give Mars a whole new look for eons. Who knew the Red Planet had such a flair for the dramatic?