Eh. This is sadly a clickbait headline with a murder-mystery writeup.
The seismometer on the lander (sitting on Mars) registered a tiny tilt:
> “But we didn't expect this seismometer reading; it's an unusual signal," Stähler said. "Imagine a 5- franc coin; now, push two silver atoms under one edge. That's the incline we're talking about: 10^-8."
Their theory is that the ground got cooler in the shadow, and therefore the instrument shifts slightly. So nothing “strange happens”, it just took them a while to debug it.
tl;dr: the shadow cast by Phobos during an eclipse affects the ground of Mars just a tiny bit.
The seismometer on the lander (sitting on Mars) registered a tiny tilt:
> “But we didn't expect this seismometer reading; it's an unusual signal," Stähler said. "Imagine a 5- franc coin; now, push two silver atoms under one edge. That's the incline we're talking about: 10^-8."
Their theory is that the ground got cooler in the shadow, and therefore the instrument shifts slightly. So nothing “strange happens”, it just took them a while to debug it.
tl;dr: the shadow cast by Phobos during an eclipse affects the ground of Mars just a tiny bit.