- Using data gathered over 18 years of observations, scientists now say the planet Mars is wobbling.
- The wobble of the planet causes the poles to move regularly.
- Earth also has a wobble, but Mars wobble is a bit more of a mystery than Earth’s since Mars has no oceans.
When you think of the planets in our solar system, you probably imagine that they are just spinning like tops. They rarely rotate exactly in line with their orbital plane – for example, the Earth rotates at an angle of about 24 degrees – but most simple models of the solar system make planets appear to rotate perfectly. Some aren’t, and we just found out that Mars is one of those planets.
In a new article published in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists reveal that Mars wobbles a bit. This means that the poles are not always perfectly aligned and shift on a timeline of approximately 207 days. That makes Mars the second planet with a known wobble (called a Chandler wobble). The first? Soil.
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Chandler’s wobble on Earth has been known for a while – it was named after Seth Carlo Chandler, the man who first noticed the wobble in 1891 – and there is still a mystery as to how and why it wobbles the way it does . Mars, on the other hand, is even more mysterious, due in large part to all the things the Red Planet doesn’t have that Earth does.
The origins of the Earth’s wobble are not fully understood, and theoretically it should have been resolved over time. However, the fact that Earth has so much water and a thick atmosphere means that this imbalance can last indefinitely. Mars, on the other hand, is very different.
A summary of the discovery, by the authors:
For the first time, a part of the movement of the Martian axis of rotation on the surface of Mars, the so-called Chandler wobble, has been detected for a body of the solar system other than Earth. The movement has a period of 206.9 ± 0.5 days, an amplitude of 10 cm on the surface, and is seen in an almost circular counterclockwise direction from the North Pole. The polar motion is determined from radio tracking observations from Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Mars Global Surveyor, in order of decreasing sensitivity. The detection of the Chandler wobble improves our understanding of energy dissipation in the mantle for time intervals near the wobble period.
The wobble detected on Mars is more subtle than Earth’s, but Mars also has no moving surface water to support the movement. However, Mars has an atmosphere. It’s much less robust than Earth’s, but atmospheric pressure could help keep the fluctuation going. Still, it will likely disappear altogether, although it’s hard to say how long that would take.
Mike Wehner has spent the last decade reporting on technology and video games, covering the latest news and trends in VR, wearables, smartphones and future technology. Most recently, Mike worked as a Tech Editor at The Daily Dot and has appeared on USA Today, Time.com, and numerous other web and print stores. His love of reporting comes second to his gaming addiction.