Deimos and Phobos...

Did you know Deimos and Phobos are the names of Mars's moons? I found that out in an Astronomy lesson a few days ago.
I always thought they were some made up places in Mars!

Sorry if somebody has already posted this up...

Heh, I'd say the vast majority of people already know this ;) (and in most cases this is from school/college, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, etc rather than Doomworld :P).

You just learned this now?

I guess you never checked DOOM's documentation too closely:

From DOOM's The Story So Far:
The UAC is a multi-planetary conglomerate with radioactive waste facilities on Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos. With no action for fifty million miles, your day consisted of suckin' dust and watchin' restricted flicks in the rec room.

Lutrov71 said:

Did you know Deimos and Phobos are the names of Mars's moons?

...Oh god...

Unbelievable... :?

Heh.

myk said:

I guess you never checked DOOM's documentation too closely:

Or read the Episode 2 end text.

BTW, the names mean panic and fear, and there is a bit of a conflict in the naming of these moons of Mars (moons with Greek names but a planet with a Roman name). Still, maybe Ares wouldn't have been a good name for a planet, not that that stopped them with Uranus.

very reliable-looking link

Hmm, isn't that common? Many moons have greek names... if not practically all of them. Not ours, though.

Grazza, yeah; not to mention the picture of the moon floating over Hell.

Well, they're pretty ad hoc, with quite a mix of Roman, Greek and others, though a convention of the type you describe appeared to prevail in the early days. The recent new names have gone very international.

Yeah; the planets themselves have Roman names (except the freaky newly-discovered ones) because they have their names since antiquity and the last such prevailing culture was the Roman (fortunately it didn't occur to christians to name them after saints and virgins in the middle ages... hmm, actually they sort of did, but it didn't stick scientifically.)

Heh... one moon's a Shakespearean character.

Most of Uranus's moons are named after characters from Shakespeare or Pope, though not all of them quite as silly as Puck.

Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.

He apparently boasts he could be our moon:

I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.

And pretty quick, at that.

ur dum dum hed

Thankfully they didn't name any planetary bodies after beings from Chinese mythology, otherwise we could have ended up with a moon called Long Wang.

Darkman 4 said:

You just learned this now?

Haha, no shit, where have you been the last 10 years???

Impossible. Phobos and Deimos aren't Mars' moons! That's just BS ID created for DooM! Quit fooling yourself!

Next you'll be telling me that Texas is real.

Danarchy said:

Next you'll be telling me that Texas is real.

har fucking har

<--- texas boy

Danarchy said:

Next you'll be telling me that Texas is real.

I hope not.

Grazza said:

Heh.

Or read the Episode 2 end text.

BTW, the names mean panic and fear, and there is a bit of a conflict in the naming of these moons of Mars (moons with Greek names but a planet with a Roman name). Still, maybe Ares wouldn't have been a good name for a planet, not that that stopped them with Uranus.

very reliable-looking link

Now that's pretty damn cool. I sure as hell didn't know the moons were named after gods, let alone gods of panic and fear.

Lutrov71 said:

Did you know Deimos and Phobos are the names of Mars's moons? I found that out in an Astronomy lesson a few days ago.
I always thought they were some made up places in Mars!

Sorry if somebody has already posted this up...

Is this some kind of stupid joke? Or did you seriously JUST figure that out?!

It's a joke, I said 'I always thought they were some made up places in Mars!' Isn't it pretty obvious? I wanted to see if somebody here didn't know about that, that's all.

Isn't the correct term for moons "satellites"?

NiGHTMARE said:

Thankfully they didn't name any planetary bodies after beings from Chinese mythology, otherwise we could have ended up with a moon called Long Wang.

Heh. Not that you would pronounce it to rhyme with tang. But that is silly. :P

Scuba Steve said:

Isn't the correct term for moons "satellites"?

Isn't the correct term for satellites "moons"?

Scuba Steve said:

Isn't the correct term for moons "satellites"?

I think that's the scientific term. It's not necessarily the incorrect term though.

Lutrov71 said:

It's a joke, I said 'I always thought they were some made up places in Mars!' Isn't it pretty obvious? I wanted to see if somebody here didn't know about that, that's all.

Yeah, uh-huh.

Lutrov71 said:

It's a joke, I said 'I always thought they were some made up places in Mars!' Isn't it pretty obvious? I wanted to see if somebody here didn't know about that, that's all.

I doubt that.

from http://www.nineplanets.org/phobos.html:

And Phobos is doomed: because its orbit is below synchronous altitude tidal forces are lowering its orbit (current rate: about 1.8 meters per century). In about 50 million years it will either crash onto the surface of Mars or (more likely) break up into a ring. (This is the opposite effect to that operating to raise the orbit of the Moon.)

Kapt'nMullet said:

(current rate: about 1.8 meters per century)

How do Scientists figure out things like this? And better yet, why would we even care?