Gold Dragon
Well-Known Member
This feels like deja vu. The progression of questions was just like this thread and I will copy my response from there.webdog said:How does it explain Mars' polar caps melting? It's clearly a Milky Way issue...not a man issue.
The melting of the martian polar ice caps is thought to be due to large variations in the Martian axis and orbit around the sun which are accentuated because Mars has small moons.
Axis variation would result in the opposite pole getting less sun. I believe most reports about the martian ice caps melting refer to the southern martian ice cap.
Orbital variation would result in both ice caps getting less sun. I think the mention of the axis variation is also because of its contribution to the variation on the orbit of Mars.
BBC - Martian 'wobbles' shift climate
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A team led by Jacques Laskar, of France's National Centre for Scientific Research, reports in the journal Nature that Mars experiences dramatic changes in its axis and orbital shape that result in enormous variations in polar "insolation" - the amount of sunlight that falls on the cap.
The same effect happens on the Earth as well, but to a far lesser extent because of the stabilising influence of the Moon's gravity. Mars, however, without a large satellite, can move on its axis up to 47 degrees.