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geo

Finding out the truth about Phobos and Deimos

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I've been doing some reading and it seems like the moons of Mars are completely incapable of holding anything on them, due to low gravity. Phobos is so close to Mars that it orbits Mars every 7 hours or 2 Mars days. It orbits mars so fast that it is the only moon to rise and set in reverse.

Phobos is covered with dust that is 100 meters deep (technically fine powder). This dust is from collissions of other things hitting Phobos. Yet there is really no gravity to keep the dust on the moon. The dust would actually act like quick sand and suck everything into it. You would only need to throw a baseball 40 kph forward (not up) in order for it to fly away from the moon and never come back.

Demios is half the size of Phobos, has even less gravity, so it is not covered with dust, cause it all flies off. You would only need to throw a baseball forward at 20 kph for the baseball to never come back.

Does this interest anyone or is it just me? Discuss.

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Jodwin said:
I guess that means Doom is all but a big lie.

How dare you!

I'm sure the UAC implanted some Big-Ass Gravity Inducers (BAGIs), balanced to keep the moons in their natural orbits, after they vacuumed them with their advanced BFVC1337 systems.

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I heard somewhere that Mar's atmosphere is sulpheric so we'll never actually be able to feasibly get a colony on it.

geo said:

You would only need to throw a baseball 40 kph forward (not up) in order for it to fly away from the moon and never come back.

Baseball nothing. I'd be scared to jump on one of those moons.

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This has been bought up on the boards many, many times. In fact i even thought this thread was a bump first of all. Fanfics i've read either seem to assume in the 'doom universe' it's an alternate reality where they are the size of earth's moon, or thereabouts, or that they have been enlarged artificially somehow.

Also Demios at the end of episode 2 has a flat top with the base on, large things in space tend to be spherical which suggests demios is tiny really, and the gravity in the base is artificial somehow (perhaps using something we don't fully understand yet like string theory to make a 'generator' which effects bodies in a certian area and makes them feel like they are standing on an earth-like mass which doesnt exist in 'our' dimension but has been 'made' in higher dimension, beyond time. Or perhaps it's all taking place in an artificial series of virtual 'rooms' with a flat bitmap 'horizon' and the gravity is simply programmed to be earth-like)

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Jodwin said:

I guess that means Doom is all but a big lie.

Doom 1. That's a reason they put Doom 3 on Mars.

Also, the sand over Phobos is crazy news. Maybe it can be cleaned, so people'll be able to put mining machines on the satellite?

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Maybe UAC's fake gravity is the same technology that allows the Doomguy to pick up items by stepping on them? It's all starting to make sense...

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They originally thought the moon might have oceans of fine dust that where potentially miles deep, it's mentioned in an early 50's Collins Boy's Annual i have, which is also pretty confident of animal life being found on mars

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Phobos and Deimos from Doom 1 reminds me of the The Great Moonhoax and other Victorian/Pseudoscientific ideals...

Or maybe in Mage: The Ascension or White Wolf's WoD terms that "Phobos and Deimos" from Doom are actually Umbral realms representing them and the "UAC" are either Technocracy or Virtual Adapt/Sons of Ether Mages and the "Demons" are actually Umbral Spawn....

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Things in space become only become sperical when their gravity makes them spherical. The gravity over time, maybe millions of years pulls the planet into a sphere. To increase gravity there needs to be mass and density. Like lead is the most dense metal, making it the heaviest. There is a math equasion about it.

Deimos and Phobos are THOUGHT to be asteroids from a smashed planet known as Ceres or "Planet X." This is a THEORY, because between Mars and Jupitor is an asteroid belt. In that asteroid belt is part of a planet that is a dwarf planet. The distance between Mars and Jupiter is also the furthest distance between any two planets.

A dwarf planet is the smallest "space rock" that orbits a star and has gravity enough to make it spherical.

This dwarf planet Ceres has a core of rock, and a mantle of ice if not an underground ocean. Over the top of that is clay, dust and other stuff. Makes me think why no one is going there for water and not Mars, other than Ceres is extremely far and very tiny.

The idea is that something smashed into Ceres destroying it and caused the asteroid belt. Well not totally destroying it, but chipping and shattering off 2/3rds of it. That 2/3rds became the asteroid belt and Phobos / Demios are THOUGHT to have flown away from that and got caught in the orbit of Mars.

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The moon bases were both installed in a crater (probably the Stickney Crater for the Phobos base, and either the Swift or the Voltaire crater for the Deimos base). Just put some inviso-dome over these craters (forcefields or something; they've got the tech to summon demons from Hell, they've got the tech to create forcefields), vacuum the dust, add a pressurized atmosphere, and here you go.

The extra-low gravity is what allowed the DoomGuy to run around faster than a horse while wearing a pistol, a chainsaw, a shotgun, a chaingun, a rocket launcher, and two heavy sci-fi weapons, plus a full complement of munitions including up to 100 rockets.

It's also why he couldn't jump: He was too afraid that if he did, he'd go plummet to the sky...

At least, this was true for Episode 1 and Episode 2. In Episode 3, he's in Hell, and who knows what the gravity of Hell can be? In Episode 4 and in Doom 2 he goes on Earth and then everything's just nonsensical.

Neither Phobos nor Deimos are spherical, by the way. They're too small. You can see pretty pictures of the Moon of Fear and the Moon of Dread on Wikipedia.

Deimos is actually smoother than Phobos, contrarily to the lanscape shown in Doom says.

Anyway, before it was moved to the Mars Moons, Doom was supposed to be on some alien fictional planet named Tei Tenga. This is still shown by some textures. The SKY textures were simply not made to look like what you'd see from Phobos.

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I doubt that about the sky textures. They were made late during development. Your explanations are ridiculous.

Gez said:
The moon bases were both installed in a crater (probably the Stickney Crater for the Phobos base, [...])

Doesn't look like it. In Deimos, the area seems to be a valley amid mountains, in Phobos, a pair of craters sort of like the ones next to the Stickney.

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Gez said:

The moon bases were both installed in a crater (probably the Stickney Crater for the Phobos base, and either the Swift or the Voltaire crater for the Deimos base). Just put some inviso-dome over these craters (forcefields or something; they've got the tech to summon demons from Hell, they've got the tech to create forcefields), vacuum the dust, add a pressurized atmosphere, and here you go.

Deimos is actually smoother than Phobos, contrarily to the lanscape shown in Doom says.


Someone can correct me on this, but weren't the dome ideas used in the Doom novels?

I know a game is a game, but I just thought the real Phobos and Deimos were quite interesting. Much more than our own moon.

Deimos is smoother than Phobos, because Deimos is much smaller. Phobos is bigger, thus allows it to be a bigger target for impact from asteroids. Actually just a theory, but when Ceres (supposedly) was smashed, maybe Phobos was between Mars and Ceres. Deimos could have been between Earth and Mars using Mars as a sheild.

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geo said:

Deimos and Phobos are THOUGHT to be asteroids from a smashed planet known as Ceres or "Planet X."

Ceres has been known as "Ceres" since its discovery in the early 19th century. The name "Planet X" was used much later to refer to a hypothetical planet outside Neptune, and has nothing to do with Ceres.

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Fun fact: the sky texture for episode are mountains in either China or Japan (I forget which). Nine Inch Nails used footage of the coast near these mountains (or in a similar landscape as these mountains) as backing video during the Fragility tour for La Mer and The Great Below. These can be seen on the And All That Could Have Been DVD, with n alternate camera angle even. Considering Trent Reznor is a huge fan of Doom, I wonder if it is more than a coincidence.

CODOR said:

Damn, you beat me to it.

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Danarchy said:
Fun fact: the sky texture for episode are mountains in either China or Japan (I forget which).

Yangshuo, in China. Here's an image (linked to from the Doom Wiki) that looks pretty darn close to the sky used in KDiTD.

Damn, you beat me to it.

That's no moon... :-D

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I am happy that this topic has people talking about astronomy or planetology or whatever the term is. I never really had any interest at all until I looked into Phobos and Deimos maybe 6 months ago.

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geo said:

Lead is the most dense metal, making it the heaviest.

Measured in kilograms per cubic metre-

  • Platinum 21,400
  • Plutonium 19,800
  • Tungsten 19,600
  • Gold 19,320
  • Uranium 18,900
  • Mercury 13,593
  • Lead 11,340


Deimos and Phobos are THOUGHT to be asteroids from a smashed planet known as Ceres or "Planet X." This is a THEORY

An alternate theory is that Jupiter's immense gravitational pull has prevented the asteroid belt from coalescing into a planet.


The distance between Mars and Jupiter is also the furthest distance between any two planets.

  • Uranus to Neptune = 1,633 million km
  • Saturn to Uranus = 1,442 million km
  • Jupiter to Saturn = 651 million km
  • Mars to Jupiter = 550 million km


The idea is that something smashed into Ceres destroying it and caused the asteroid belt. Well not totally destroying it, but chipping and shattering off 2/3rds of it.

Our moon is believed to have been created by a similar near-catastrophic collision some 4.5 billion years ago.

Danarchy said:

I heard somewhere that Mar's atmosphere is sulpheric so we'll never actually be able to feasibly get a colony on it.

You're confusing Mars with Venus.

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GreyGhost said:

You're confusing Mars with Venus.

Yeah, I'm just repeating what a bunch of people on Fark said. Of course, that's also where everyone thinks Barack Obama is Muslim.

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I stand corrected. I will go yell at my science teacher. :-)

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Jodwin said:

I guess that means Doom is all but a big lie. :( Who would have thought...


Then again, It does take place in a distant future. Maybe man managed to settle on these desolate planets somehow?

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Those mountains are only cool because their from doom. If they weren't from doom theyd be normal 'no-one cares' mountains.

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