0:03

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production

0:05

of My Heart Radio. Hey,

0:13

welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

0:15

My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm

0:17

Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be bringing

0:19

you an episode about space

0:22

objects. And as we often do,

0:24

we're gonna be We're gonna be starting off here

0:26

by talking a little bit about the mythology

0:28

that is related to these space objects.

0:30

Rob do you mind if I start with a reading

0:33

from the Iliad? Oh, let's do

0:35

it, okay, So I want to read a passage

0:37

from the Iliad, book four, from the

0:39

excellent translation by Caroline Alexander,

0:42

And this is describing a big

0:45

host of warriors raging for battle.

0:48

It begins, but the Trojans,

0:51

as the numberless use of a wealthy

0:53

man, stand in their pen to be

0:55

milked of their white milk, bleeding

0:58

incessantly as they hear the cry of

1:00

their lambs. So the war cries

1:02

of the Trojans rose through the broad

1:05

army. For the speech of all the men

1:07

was not the same, nor was there

1:09

one voice, but the tongues were

1:11

mixed in confusion. The men were

1:14

summoned from many places. These

1:16

men aries drove on and

1:18

gleaming eyed Athena drove the Achaeans,

1:21

and terror and panic and

1:23

strife, raging, insatiable,

1:26

the sister and companion of Man slaughtering

1:29

Aries. She is small when

1:31

she first rises up, but in the end

1:34

she leans her head against the heavens even

1:36

as she strides upon the earth. Oh,

1:39

I love that section about the

1:40

the bad sister there. And

1:42

she's small when she first rises up, but then

1:44

when she she gets big, she leans her head against

1:47

the heavens and got her feet on the earth. So uh.

1:49

That is referring to one of the companions

1:52

of Aries, the the god of war.

1:54

In this passage. It is written in this translation

1:57

as strife, the abstract concept,

1:59

but in the Greek, of course, strife

2:01

is also the goddess Heiress,

2:04

and I love that final couplet about her.

2:06

But there are a couple of other concepts that are

2:09

mentioned there that also have personifications.

2:11

It's not just Heiress, the goddess of

2:13

strife. There's also terror and

2:16

panic that are driven on by Aries,

2:18

and these concepts have the godly personifications

2:22

of the God's phobos and demos.

2:25

So phobos and demos are each and

2:27

abstract concept representing a

2:29

human state of mind or something you might

2:31

witness on the battlefield

2:33

or leading up to it. But they're also these heavenly

2:36

persons in the Greek mythology,

2:38

and to read another passage from the Iliad about

2:41

their their representations, also

2:43

from the Caroline Alexandra translation.

2:46

Then he took up his man, surrounding

2:48

much emblazoned forceful shield,

2:51

a thing of beauty, around which ran tin

2:54

rings of bronze, and on it twenty

2:56

pale shining discs of tin, and

2:59

in the very center was one of dark enameled

3:01

blue, and crowning this a snake

3:04

bristling gorgon face stared

3:06

out with dreadful glare, terror

3:09

and route about her, and the

3:11

shields baldric was of silver, and

3:13

on it a blue dark serpent writhed

3:16

with three heads turned in all directions,

3:18

growing from a single neck. So

3:21

here this actually ties back into the

3:23

episodes that we re aired pretty recently.

3:26

I think about the gorgon Medusa and how

3:29

uh the the head of the gorgon of

3:31

of Medusa is widely

3:33

represented in in Greek art

3:35

and in Greek literature as a feature

3:38

of Greek art, mentioned in the literature as this,

3:40

like this thing that would be on the aegis

3:42

of Athena or of Zeus, a terrifying

3:45

image looking out at you. But mentioned

3:47

alongside the face of the Gorgon, here are

3:50

Terror and Route. Again I think these would

3:52

be Phobos and Demos. Yeah,

3:55

Phobos and Demos. So, like

3:57

you said, this episode we're getting spacey. We're also

3:59

getting a little methought mythological here,

4:01

especially at the start. Phobos and Demos

4:04

are the names of the two moons

4:07

of the planet Mars. Uh

4:09

and so this this marks a return for us

4:12

uh in in the past. I want to say, it's been a couple

4:14

of years at least now. We did episodes

4:16

exploring the moons of Jupiter, and

4:18

then other another episode

4:20

or episodes exploring the moons of Saturn.

4:23

And we always intended to venture onto

4:25

other moons, and here we are

4:27

now exploring the moons of Mars,

4:30

much like the space agencies of Earth. We

4:32

have long wanted to return a sample from

4:34

the moons of Mars and and have failed to

4:36

do so. But you know, maybe

4:38

the time has finally come. Don't curse

4:41

this. We might have a technological problem, uh

4:43

during the recording or retrieval of this episode.

4:47

Uh So, I'm so excited to be talking

4:49

about a this gorgeous couple of space turn

4:51

ups in orbit around Mars and uh.

4:53

And so this is going to be the first of a pair

4:55

of episodes. Be sure to join us

4:57

for both. Yes, uh

5:00

and even though it deals with two moons, it's

5:02

just gonna be. It's very much a

5:04

part one in part two. It's not like one episode is Phobos

5:06

in one episode is Demos, as you will

5:08

see. But before we even get

5:10

back into Phobos and Demos, I

5:13

want to start by talking just a bit about

5:15

our naming of Mars itself.

5:18

Um. So today we

5:21

know largely refer to the fourth planet from the Sun

5:23

as Mars. But of course Mars can be

5:25

seen in the night sky without the aid of a

5:27

telescope. So it's gone by many names

5:29

and has been factored into numerous pantheons

5:32

and cosmological systems

5:35

throughout human history. Right

5:37

Mars, because it is it can be observed

5:39

through naked eye astronomy. It was known to

5:42

the ancient Mesopotamians. Yeah,

5:44

there was the god Nergal,

5:47

a god of of plague

5:49

and war, the one that kind of evolved

5:52

apparently from a war god into

5:54

a another world deity. But

5:56

this was a This was a

5:59

deity that was recognized by the

6:01

Sumerians. Likewise, the Greeks

6:03

knew it as the star of aries, and we'll of course

6:05

talk more about areas here in a bit. In

6:08

Hinduism, Mars was associated with

6:10

Mangala, a god of war that

6:12

interestingly seems to encompass aspects

6:15

of war related to anger and hot

6:17

headedness, but also to stability

6:19

and balance. And then the

6:22

ancient Egyptians connected Mars

6:24

to Horace, the celestial falcon

6:27

and embodiment of kingship. Geraldine

6:30

Pinch points out in Egyptian mythology

6:32

that Egypt's earliest kings were

6:34

depicted as hawks praying on their

6:36

enemies. So here once once more

6:39

we can easily connect this to a motif

6:41

of warfare um uh,

6:43

well of one former that or another uh.

6:45

Though interestingly enough, in Chinese traditions,

6:48

Mars was apparently merely associated with the

6:50

element of fire. Oh yeah, because in the Chinese

6:52

astronomical traditions that different

6:54

heavenly bodies tend to be associated with

6:56

like the elements of earth. Right, so like one

6:59

planet will be fire, one planet will be would

7:01

one planet will be metal or something

7:04

else? Yeah? Yeah, exactly.

7:06

Um, so they're important within um you

7:08

know, Chinese cosmology and Chinese astrology,

7:11

though I've also read it argued

7:14

that the planets have

7:16

have maybe less of a significance in Chinese

7:18

cosmology versus uh, their

7:20

their place especially in um in

7:23

in you know, some of these other models that were

7:25

looking at here where they're closely

7:27

associated with very important gods.

7:30

Coming back to the idea that some of the

7:32

earliest kings of Egypt were depicted as

7:34

hawks praying on their enemies, I was just thinking

7:37

how good it would be if you just made a slight

7:39

rotation on that and they were portrayed

7:41

as vultures vomiting on their enemies.

7:44

Yeah. Well, you know, there's it's not

7:46

not that huge of a difference, right, and also seems

7:48

kind of fitting so and

7:50

and it would be in keeping with with what we've

7:53

been discussing here, right because so

7:55

far we we've been talking about connections

7:57

to ideas of blood

7:59

and fire. And of course this

8:02

inevitably seems to stem from the fact that Mars

8:04

appears as a red quote unquote

8:07

star in the night sky. Even

8:09

here in Atlanta, where we have a

8:12

terrible light pollution at night, you

8:14

can often go out and see that

8:16

that red, gleaming eye

8:19

of Mars out there in the distance. I

8:21

think my eyes must be a little bad because I've

8:23

never personally been able to notice

8:25

the redness of Mars when I've looked at it with

8:27

the naked eye. But I believe other people do see it.

8:30

Yeah, I mean it's it's it's it's faint,

8:32

but it's it's noticeable, you know, like

8:34

you can you can tell that there's something different going

8:36

on. Compared to all the other stars in the sky. It stands

8:39

out. And since it has that red color, you

8:41

know, it makes sense to associate it with blood and

8:43

fire and violence and all of these

8:46

things tied up with it. So the

8:48

name Mars, of course uh

8:51

arises from the Roman tradition,

8:53

and roughly speaking, you can say

8:56

that the Roman god of war

8:59

is Mars, and in the Greek god of war is

9:01

Aries, and these are basically

9:04

two names for the same thing. But

9:06

it's it's really worth driving

9:09

home that then, Mars differs

9:11

from Areas, and that while Arias was a god

9:13

of brutality and war

9:15

in its most base and chaotic state,

9:19

which I think is is is well represented

9:21

in in the in the in in his

9:24

usage in the Iliad Uh.

9:26

The Roman Mars, however, had

9:28

a different character. He was warfare

9:31

as just and orderly, you

9:33

know. He he was warfare

9:36

that brings um a

9:38

sense of balance to the world that you know,

9:41

warfare is viewed by an imperial culture,

9:43

you know, where war is the instrument

9:46

that demonstrates your greatness. Yeah,

9:48

Mars is therefore a military deity

9:50

that maintains order and protects

9:52

agriculture. Mars is Uh is very

9:55

closely associated with agriculture

9:57

in the Roman tradition. Um

10:00

So he upholds while Aries

10:02

threatens and tears down. Um

10:05

So. It's it's interesting because they are like two

10:07

sides of the same thing, which which

10:10

I think the Hindu god Mangala seems

10:12

to encompass both of these aspects. Here

10:14

we see this divergence in

10:16

Aries and Uh in mars Um

10:19

I was I was reading a little bit more. There's

10:21

a there's a book called Classical Mythology a to z

10:23

Um. Yeah, that's quite good.

10:26

And in one of the the ways they describe

10:29

Aries is that he is he's a

10:31

lord or a god of the screams

10:33

of the dying. Uh So, you

10:35

know, it's it's not so so Yeah, mars

10:38

Is is the god of of war

10:40

is great, war is good? And then Aries

10:43

is the war? What is it good for?

10:45

Uh deity? You know, he's just

10:47

um he He is the

10:50

worst of the pantheon. Uh

10:53

Is Aries the lord of the screams

10:55

of the dying. Sounds very like a seventies

10:57

exploitation movie epithe

11:00

for him, right, you know, he's um Aries

11:02

and Aries again. Yeah, and

11:04

I guess it does come to like, you know, Aries is the

11:07

very nature and heart of war and

11:09

violence, where Mars is more

11:11

like what what use can war

11:14

be put to? What does it? What

11:16

does it do? What can it accomplish? Uh?

11:19

You know, very much a whitewashing of war. Now,

11:22

as with Jupiter that we you know,

11:25

which we discussed in our recent episode, Mars

11:27

has many epithets or aspects um

11:31

So instead of having you

11:33

know, a whole bunch of different deities

11:35

representing different shades of the same thing, you

11:37

have different versions of, say Jupiter,

11:40

and in this case, there are different versions

11:42

of Mars as well, such

11:44

as Mars grativ Us, the

11:47

marching Mars. So this would be the Mars that

11:49

a soldier in the field would swear

11:51

by because you know, as

11:53

with Jupiter, deities are important

11:55

for swearing and making oaths and so forth.

11:58

Another major Mars is is Mars

12:01

Pader, protector of agriculture.

12:03

And this, of course is is literally Mars

12:06

the Father. And this is also very

12:08

notable because in Roman myth he

12:10

is the father. Uh, Mars is

12:12

the father of Romulus and Remus,

12:15

the twin founders of Rome. So

12:17

in the Roman tradition, Mars isn't just

12:20

the god of of noble

12:22

war. He is also the ancestor

12:25

of the Roman people. He is

12:27

the patriarch of the empire exactly.

12:30

Yeah, so he yeah, he is the empire.

12:32

Um. Now this

12:35

is this is where it gets kind of curious, right, And

12:37

I imagine a number of people are already thinking about

12:39

this. So, in the Roman tradition,

12:42

the primary war god Mars has

12:44

two highly important sons, Romulus

12:47

and Remus. So wouldn't

12:50

it make more sense to name the two moons

12:52

of Mars after Romulus and Remus,

12:55

rather than going to the Greek topping

12:57

over to the Greek tradition and drawing on

12:59

the two uh, two of the sons of

13:01

Aries. Wouldn't that imply that one

13:03

of the moon's has to kill the other moon. Um.

13:07

Well, you know, as we'll get into in

13:09

this episode of the next that's not a crazy idea

13:12

considering the House

13:14

of Mars over there. Orbitally speaking, I

13:16

may be remembering my mythology wrong. I

13:18

think things go bad for Remus. Well,

13:22

um, it's worth worth noting. Outside of Star

13:24

trek Lore, Romulus is

13:26

the outer moon of the main Belt asteroid

13:28

eighties seven Sylvia, and Remus is

13:30

the inner moon. Sylvia is named

13:33

for Rea Sylvia, the mythical mother

13:35

of the founders of Rome. Uh So it's

13:37

you know, kind of this was all filled in

13:40

later. Well, while while we're doing a round

13:42

up, I should also mention that that passage

13:44

from the Iliad I read at the top that had that great couplet

13:46

about airis the goddess of strife. Uh

13:48

There is actually an object name for Airess

13:51

as well. It's the dwarf planet Eiress

13:53

that is not quite a planet, but

13:55

is a nearly nearly spherical

13:57

asteroid. Yeah. I guess it's a Basically,

14:00

we're just gonna keep finding new things

14:02

to name. Uh So, if you're if

14:05

you're out there, any members of the Greek Roman

14:07

pantheon and you don't have something named after you

14:09

yet, just hold on, just be patient, um

14:12

and mortal beings that you are, We'll get around

14:14

to you eventually. Wait a second, I feel like

14:16

I just said something wrong. I think I called Aris

14:18

an asteroid as uh, Airis

14:20

is not an asteroid. Airis is a nearly

14:22

spherical trans Neptunian object.

14:24

Apologies about that. You're apologizing

14:26

to the planet or the deity. I don't want to be roped

14:29

in by strife here, want to make an

14:31

enemy of strife, all right? So yeah,

14:33

obviously, instead of naming Mars's

14:35

two moons after rhyming lissen

14:37

remus Uh the traditions of drawing

14:40

on the names of two of the many children

14:42

of Aries in Greek mythology,

14:44

so partnered with Aphrodite. He

14:47

fathered Demos Phobos

14:49

of course, and we'll get into them in a second. But

14:51

also Aros or love Uh

14:54

Andros requitted love and

14:56

Harmonia, who represents

14:58

harmony. And he's also said to have produced

15:01

other children by other mothers. So there's

15:03

you know, there's a there's a vast brood. Now

15:06

I believe Aries. Uh.

15:08

Isn't it the case that Aphrodity was actually

15:10

married to have faced

15:13

Us the forge god the the equivalent

15:15

of the Roman vulcan, and that Aries

15:17

is sort of her lover on the side or are

15:20

they officially an item later on? There's

15:22

a lot of drama there, Like,

15:25

I don't have to recall a myth about have faced

15:28

us making like a net of chains to

15:30

catch them in the act or something. Yeah,

15:32

I mean it fits the nature of Aries

15:35

again, he's he's really the scum

15:37

of the pantheon here um.

15:40

But let's talk a bit about the twins Demos

15:42

and Phobos, both deities very

15:45

much in the Greek tradition of war gods.

15:47

While Demos is traditionally associated with

15:50

terror and dread, Phobos is

15:52

fear and panic, though both of

15:54

them may be collectively thought of as

15:56

deities of fear. Uh. They ride

15:58

beside their father and battle along

16:01

with the goddess of discord Heiress so who

16:03

he mentioned already. But the twin brothers

16:05

of Fear are referred to in several

16:08

key works. We already mentioned the Iliad. They

16:10

also show up in Hesiods, the Shield

16:12

of Heracles and um if

16:14

if memory serves, I think in the Shield

16:17

of Heracles they actually like their

16:19

their father is wounded on the battlefield

16:21

and they drag him off the

16:23

battlefield, So they're very much his

16:26

his attendance, his personal

16:28

guard, the warriors that go into

16:30

battle beside him. Um.

16:32

But they are also just horrifying specters,

16:35

you know, they are gods of trauma and

16:38

the psychological dimensions of war. Um.

16:41

But they do seem to revolve around their

16:43

father on the battlefield in a way befitting of moons.

16:45

So perhaps they're ultimately a better fit,

16:48

uh than the Roman figures of Romulus

16:50

and Remus. Yeah, I would say that.

16:52

I mean, I think one thing that's interesting about them

16:55

is that they represent two distinct

16:57

types of fear that are things

17:00

that you need to manage differently if you're writing

17:02

horror fiction, say like that

17:04

Phobos Phobos is is panic.

17:07

Phobos is sometimes translated as route,

17:10

right, like getting routed in battle. You're

17:12

just like, you know, you're terrified

17:14

and you're running away, whereas Demos

17:17

is dread, the terror that

17:19

builds in anticipation of

17:21

of something horrible. Yeah.

17:23

Yeah, so uh, And I also think

17:26

it's probably more fitting because rome Elis and Remus

17:28

are a little more they're a little more fleshed

17:30

out as as figures, whereas

17:33

Demos and Phobos are a

17:35

bit more abstract, you know, like we don't have

17:37

as many tales about them and stories

17:39

about them that that uh, you

17:41

know, that stick with us. They are

17:43

more you know, harshly formed they

17:46

are, and then that they themselves are these kind of like

17:48

fragile, fractured nightmare

17:51

beings. Um. And

17:53

I think that's very befitting of the sort

17:55

of moons that we're going to be talking about

17:58

in these episodes. Sorry, one thing

18:00

I just got distracted wondering about. Wait

18:02

a minute, are are the moons of Mars especially

18:04

scary as moons? Not in the way

18:07

that I can think of, but they are rather mysterious.

18:09

I think they are some of the weirdest, most mysterious

18:12

objects in the Solar system. You can sort

18:14

of looking at it sideways.

18:16

Connect that sense of mystery to a kind of creepiness

18:19

about them. Yeah, I mean, I guess

18:21

I would. I would say that less

18:24

frightening as more just like, yeah, mysterious,

18:26

and also like you know, clearly the

18:29

product of violence, and in the case of

18:31

one of the moons, like you know, just destined

18:33

for destruction is just on a on

18:35

a collision course with destruction. Um,

18:38

you know, and uh, I think it pairs

18:40

well with this idea of like two shattered

18:42

beings that serve this horrible

18:45

god they you know, that represents some of

18:47

the worst aspects of of mortals

18:50

except in immortal form um.

18:53

So yeah, I will come back throughout

18:56

these episodes with comparisons to the mythic

18:58

twins, the double Grima worm

19:01

tongues of the Mars system. Yeah,

19:03

yeah, imagine there's some other good comparisons

19:05

to make. Yeah, like you

19:07

know, the sons of

19:09

some you know, awful ruler. There

19:11

might be a good Dune reference in there somewhere. I'm not sure.

19:14

Oh, I see, like they're the beast Ribon

19:16

and uh and fade Rouph the Yeah,

19:19

though I don't know. Fate has a lot of things together

19:21

in ways that these these two don't, so I'm

19:23

not sure. Thank

19:28

you. All

19:30

right, Well, let's talk about the discovery

19:33

of phobos and demos. Like we said,

19:35

Mars has been something that people throughout

19:37

human history have looked up and seen and

19:40

attributed various meanings and interpretations

19:42

too, But not so with phobos and demos.

19:45

Uh, these were not to be discovered for

19:47

some time. Right, you have to get well

19:49

into the age of the telescope to be able to

19:52

see these objects from Earth because

19:54

they are both very small and very close

19:56

to Mars, and when you're looking

19:59

at Mars in the night sky, it's reflecting a lot

20:01

of light and it's sort of going to blast

20:03

out any small objects nearby

20:05

it. You're just not going to be able to distinguish them

20:07

from it. Yeah, So it just simply wasn't possible.

20:10

Um. They these two

20:12

moons were discovered though, in eighteen seventy

20:15

seven by American astronomer ASoft

20:17

Hall, who lived eighty nine

20:19

through nineteen oh seven. Now,

20:22

Hall was was large as an interesting character

20:24

because, for one thing, he was largely a

20:26

self taught astronomer. He was not a

20:28

gentleman scientist of the day,

20:30

but rather the impoverished son of a clockmaker.

20:33

His father died when he was young, so

20:35

he had to leave school uh in order

20:37

to be He was going to become an apprentice to a carpenter,

20:40

but later on he ended up taking math classes

20:43

at New York Central College, and from

20:45

there he took a job at the Harvard College

20:47

Observatory and then became

20:49

an assistant astronomer at the US Naval

20:51

Observatory, and eventually he was made a professor,

20:54

So he had a really interesting

20:56

career path, you know, an ascension story.

20:59

So uh, you know, on one hand, it's it's just

21:01

neat to see that kind of trajectory with an

21:03

individual who plays into the history of astronomy

21:05

like this. So the

21:07

way it went down is in eighteen seventy

21:10

seven, during Mars Closest

21:12

approach, his wife, Angeline

21:15

Stickney, who was a mathematician and

21:18

a suffragists, encouraged him

21:20

to engage in the search for the

21:22

Martian moons and and to keep

21:24

engaging in the search because he had

21:26

been his writings. He apparently a loses this saying,

21:28

well, you know, there's just seemed to be so such a

21:30

small chance of him seeing anything. Um,

21:33

you know, he was considering just giving it up,

21:35

but his wife encouraged him on and

21:37

so he thought he made out Martian moons

21:40

on August tenth, but he couldn't be sure. You

21:42

know, it was I think the weather was weird that

21:44

night, so he didn't have the clarity that he

21:46

wanted. But then on August twelve he

21:48

discovered Demos, and on August eighteenth

21:51

he discovered Phobos. Both both

21:53

of these discoveries were made using

21:55

equipment at the U. S. Naval Observatory

21:57

in Washington, d C. Interesting

22:00

now, since he found them, he got to name them,

22:02

But as far as I can tell, there's not much more to

22:05

it than that. I don't you know, I couldn't find

22:07

anything about him having any real

22:09

reasoning for choosing these two names

22:11

over Romulus and Remus. Uh, if

22:13

he ever considered other names, if he

22:15

if he named them in an error,

22:17

I don't know. Um. I think ultimately

22:20

they're good names, though, just really scared that

22:22

night he'd been reading some ec comics or

22:24

what would be correct for the time

22:26

period he was reading the Great God Pan or

22:28

whatever. Actually, I don't know if that was out of the

22:30

time. I mean, ultimately he you know,

22:32

he could have tried to call them Tweedle dumb and tweedledd

22:35

So I guess it's just as

22:37

well that he went with the Phobos and Demos.

22:40

Now, this is an interesting little side note.

22:42

I can't find a what felt to me like

22:44

a really solid source on this, but a profile

22:46

of his wife, Stickney on the

22:49

official U. S. Navy page used

22:51

to state that as she was helping

22:53

her husband with the calculations and all of this, she

22:56

asked for a man's wages compensation,

22:58

and he refused, so she quit. Um,

23:04

oh yeah, I think you know, it's not like it's

23:06

really hard to say. I couldn't find any more information about

23:08

this, So I don't know if this is a joke, uh,

23:11

if this is you know, totally made

23:14

up, or you know, if what we're talking about

23:16

was a serious argument or more of like

23:18

kind of a fun story that you know,

23:20

that that that spouses tell. I

23:22

don't know. But at the

23:25

very least, though, phobos largest crater

23:27

ended up being named for her Stickney

23:30

Crater, which we'll get back to in a bit, so you

23:32

know, I guess ultimately her work paid in exposure

23:35

at least. Now, um, others

23:37

were looking for those moons as well and speculating

23:39

about their existence. And I ran across

23:41

a really interesting story about all this that

23:44

I read on Stephen Novella's neurological

23:47

blog, and this concerns the

23:49

moons of Mars and Gulliver's

23:51

travels. Gulliver's travels but Jonathan

23:54

Swift, Yeah, so that would

23:56

be long before this

23:58

discuss This would be over a hundred years before

24:00

the discovery of the Moon's right. Yeah,

24:02

this goes bad. This book came on seventy

24:05

six. And have have you ever read

24:07

Gulliver's travel Yeah, it's been a long

24:09

time. I read it in college. Um, I took

24:11

a class in college, so we read a lot of

24:14

like John Dryden and Alexander Pope

24:16

and and and Swift and uh. I

24:18

think we read Gulliver's Travels for that class,

24:20

or if not, we read large sections of it.

24:23

It's one that I've never read. I'm just

24:25

sort of familiar with it by bits

24:27

and pieces that I've absorbed through through

24:29

other sources. Well, So Gulliver's

24:32

Travels, if you've never read it, it's about

24:34

a it's largely satirical, but

24:36

it's about a sailor who goes

24:38

to these weird lands that end up being

24:40

sort of humorous portraits of

24:43

things that Swift Swift observed about

24:45

the world. So they're the lily Putians who

24:47

are tiny. And then I think at

24:49

some point he goes to a place called brobding

24:52

Nag, if I remember correctly, this full

24:54

of giants. And then he also goes

24:57

to a place where I don't

24:59

remember the aim of it, but it's the place where

25:01

the Yahoo's are, where the idea of the yah who's

25:03

comes from these like a sort of sort

25:05

of crass apes. Well.

25:09

At one point in the book, the Lilliputians catch

25:12

him up on things and inform him

25:15

that quote. They have likewise discovered

25:17

two lesser stars or satellites

25:19

which revolve around Mars, where

25:22

all the innermost is distant from the center

25:24

of the primary exactly three of his

25:26

diameters and the outmost five.

25:29

The former revolves in the space of

25:31

ten hours and the later in twenty

25:33

one and a half. Holy cow,

25:35

that's not that far off. Yeah,

25:38

and that this is what m Novella writes

25:40

about in this blog post. He points out, quote,

25:43

Phobos and Demos have orbits which are

25:45

about one point four and three point five

25:47

diameters from Mars center, respectively.

25:50

The lit Houtians gave figures

25:52

of three and five. The periods

25:55

of Phobos and Demos are seven point

25:57

seven and thirty point three hours, respectively,

26:00

while while the Laputians reported ten

26:02

and twenty one point five. These figures

26:05

are correct to within an order of magnitude,

26:07

which is another way of saying that they are wrong. They

26:09

are reasonable guesses, obviously, but do

26:12

not betray any special knowledge because

26:14

basically what he's exploring in this blog post is

26:16

like the question what did Swift know? Like

26:19

why is Swift? Why did Swift get this right? Or

26:21

sort of right or mostly right, depending on how you're

26:23

you're skewing it, Rob, I realized I

26:25

may have led you astray by talking about the

26:27

Lily Pucians because I think there are actually two

26:29

different things. They're the Lilliputians and

26:32

the Laputans. And I think this is

26:34

the Laputans okay.

26:37

I think the people of Laputa are on

26:39

a flying island, whereas the Lily

26:41

Pucians are somewhere else. They're they're the people

26:43

who are tiny compared to our apologies

26:46

to the Laputians and the Lilliputians.

26:48

Um, yeah, I ended up going when you

26:50

mentioned lily Pucians, I'd up going with them because it

26:52

makes me think of Oliver Sacks

26:55

talking about the Lily Pucians in his book

26:57

Hallucinations. Oh, I don't recall that

27:00

having to do with like seeing tiny people uh

27:03

as hallucinations sometimes due to I think

27:05

I can't remember that tied into migraines or not. But

27:07

anyways, book Hallucinations. Well,

27:10

yeah, this is really interesting. So I guess

27:12

the question is like how

27:14

how close do you have to be in guessing stuff

27:17

like this to to really be impressive. I don't

27:19

know, this seems pretty impressive for not

27:21

actually knowing anything. Well,

27:24

Novella points out that, first

27:26

of all, it could just be an educated guess

27:28

um based for starters,

27:31

on how Mercury and Venus have zero moons,

27:33

Earth has one, and then Jupiter

27:36

and Saturn were known to have many moons.

27:39

Therefore, perhaps two felt about right,

27:41

you know, like you needed something between

27:43

one and many? Uh so why not

27:45

too? Yeah? Uh? And of course, yeah,

27:48

you said that it was known that these outer planets

27:50

had many moons, like we've known that Jupiter had moons

27:52

since Galileo. Right, But

27:55

Novella presents another idea

27:57

that is pretty interesting. Uh And

28:00

this this gets kind of this is a really weird

28:02

concept of because it has to do with

28:05

uh anagrams and um

28:07

and so forth. But the idea

28:10

here is that Swift may have gotten

28:12

the notion from Johann Kepler, who

28:14

concluded at one point that Mars had

28:16

two moons based on a misunderstood

28:19

cryptic anagram the Galileo

28:21

devised what so basically,

28:26

in Kepler's sixteen ten memoir,

28:28

he misconstrued this anagram

28:31

that Galileo put together. You know, all these these

28:33

uh these letters that you're supposed to

28:35

rearrange into their proper form, that he had

28:37

sent his friends announcing the

28:39

discovery of Saturn's rings. And

28:42

instead of getting and I'm not gonna

28:45

read the the original phrase

28:47

here, but instead of getting I have observed

28:49

the highest most distant planet, Saturn

28:52

to have a triple form, instead

28:54

he got hale twin companionship

28:57

children of Mars, or I

28:59

agree you double knob children of

29:01

Mars. I

29:04

agree you double knob. Sure, that's what he

29:07

was writing. Yeah, so

29:09

in anyway, that's that's interesting. Um

29:12

Novella also points out that Voltaire also

29:14

wrote about Mars having two moons in

29:17

the seventeen fifty two book

29:19

Micromegas. I'm going to read a

29:21

quote from that quote. But

29:24

let us now return to our travelers. Upon

29:26

leaving Jupiter, they traversed a space

29:29

of around one hundred million leagues

29:31

and approached the planet Mars, which as

29:34

we know, is five times smaller than our own.

29:36

They swung by two moons that cater to this

29:38

planet, but have escaped the notice of our

29:40

astronomers. I know very well that

29:42

father Castel will write, perhaps even

29:45

agreeably enough, against the existence

29:47

of these two moons. But I rely on

29:49

those who reasoned by analogy. These

29:51

good philosophers know how unlikely it

29:53

would be for Mars so far from the Sun

29:55

to have gotten by with less than

29:58

two moons. Okay, so I this

30:00

is a work of fiction as well, Yes,

30:03

yeah, and I think of of similar um.

30:05

I've read Voltaire, but not this particular

30:07

work. But you know, a similar

30:09

satire and fantasy. Well, good job,

30:11

Jonathan Swift. Yeah, uh yeah,

30:14

so he basically got it right. But anyway

30:16

that none of this has anything,

30:19

you know, directly to do with the nature of Demos

30:21

and Phobos, but it's it's interesting nonetheless. All

30:23

right, Well, maybe we should talk about some of the physical characteristics

30:26

of Phobos, all right,

30:28

Yeah, so yeah, we're gonna mostly start

30:30

with Phobos, and we'll get into Demos

30:33

a bit more in the second episode, as well as more stuff

30:35

about Phobos, because ultimately they are twins

30:38

um and they have a lot in common.

30:40

So if Phobos represents the psyche

30:43

ravage by war in

30:45

uh in Greek mythology, then it might be

30:47

fitting, you know, given the nature

30:49

of the moon named after him, because

30:52

you know, we're talking about a shattered wreck destined

30:55

to battle its father and perish in the conflict.

30:58

Now, Phobos is the larger of

31:00

Mars's two moons. It is seventeen

31:03

by fourteen by eleven miles or twenty

31:05

seven by twenty two by eighteen kilometers

31:08

in diameter, and its shape

31:10

is is pretty irregular. It it doesn't

31:12

look like whatever whatever

31:14

you're imagining. If you haven't seen an image of Phobos,

31:17

it doesn't look like that. It looks more like a space potato.

31:19

Yeah. I've seen people say potato.

31:21

I would say kind of turnip. Or if it is

31:23

a potato, it's not a Russet potato.

31:25

I think it's more like a Yukon gold. Yeah,

31:28

it doesn't look very spherical.

31:31

Um. Now, it seems to be made

31:33

of C type rock similar

31:36

to blackish carbonaceous

31:39

chondrite asteroids. And it is

31:41

Uh, it's absolutely battle scarred.

31:43

I mean, it's just there are various tracks

31:45

on it, caused by landslides that have occurred,

31:48

it seems, but it's its surface has just been

31:50

bombarded into dust by impacts.

31:53

Uh. And its largest crater again is named

31:55

for Stickney, and it is UM

31:57

six point two miles or ten kilometers

31:59

in die ameter, and seems to have been almost

32:02

violent enough to have just destroyed it outright.

32:05

Yeah, if you're trying to picture it in your head, the Stickney

32:07

Crater is so large that it essentially

32:10

is one side of this

32:12

moon. Yeah, it's uh, yeah,

32:14

it's just it looks really

32:17

beat up, and it even has these these things

32:19

that look very much like battle scars, like it's been

32:21

scratched by an enormous space cat and

32:23

these were likely caused by uh, you know,

32:25

various collisions and violence as well.

32:28

So it's just totally beat up.

32:30

But like the son of a brutal war god, it

32:32

just keeps going on. It's just it keeps

32:35

clinging to life and uh and keeps

32:37

orbiting. It's uh, it's father. It completes

32:39

three orbits per day and

32:43

uh. And it has also has the tightest

32:45

orbit of any known moon, orbiting

32:47

at a mere six thousand kilometers

32:50

or three thousand, seven hundred miles. To

32:52

put that in comparison, our moon is

32:55

two hundred and thirty eight thousand, eight hundred

32:57

and fifty five miles away or three D eighty

32:59

four thousand, four d kilometers

33:01

away. Yeah, so Phobos is

33:04

really close to the surface of

33:06

Mars. Demos is a good bit farther

33:08

out, but Phobos. The distance

33:10

from the surface of Mars to Phobos is actually

33:12

comparable to distances between recognizable

33:15

landmarks on the surface of the

33:17

Earth, Like if there was a road, you

33:19

could drive from Mars to Phobos

33:22

in a couple of days. Like for comparison,

33:24

Google Maps tells me that the driving

33:26

distance between Miami and Vancouver,

33:29

so basically, you know, sort of diagonally across

33:32

North America. I mean, not even all the way up

33:34

to Alaska. Uh that's about

33:36

thirty four hundred miles or roughly kilometers,

33:39

so just a little bit shorter than the distance

33:41

from Mars to Phobos. Phobos is

33:44

right in there, right. So,

33:46

while we've joked about extraterrestrial

33:48

skies and how large planets sometimes

33:50

appear in the sky in various

33:52

movies or works of sci fi art if

33:54

it's like Battle for Indoor or basically

33:57

any location in the video game No Man

33:59

Sky, despite all that, Mars

34:02

would actually be quite huge in the sky

34:04

of Phobos if you were standing on its surface.

34:06

Oh yeah, I actually looked this up to see if

34:08

I could find somebody who had done like a

34:11

scale attempt to create that

34:13

view, and I could not find it. Maybe it exists

34:15

somewhere out there, but yeah, it would be absolutely

34:17

huge, because to look at it from the other way,

34:20

Phobos is, as moons go, extremely

34:22

tiny. I mean it's again, you're

34:25

looking at like like twentysomething kilometers

34:27

in with depending on which side

34:29

is facing you. Um so, so this

34:31

is much much smaller than

34:33

moons were familiar with, like Earth's moons or

34:36

like the Earth's single

34:38

moon. I didn't mean to suggest the multiple or

34:40

the larger moons of Jupiter or something

34:42

like that. But from the surface

34:45

of Mars, Phobos appears relatively

34:47

large. I think I remember reading

34:49

somewhere that it was it looks about

34:52

a third as big as the Moon

34:54

usually looks from the surface of Earth. But

34:57

it's so much smaller. And the reason it looks

34:59

that big is just how close it is. And

35:03

here's the an added factor to all of this, it's

35:05

getting closer. Uh. Phobos

35:08

edges closer to Mars at a rate of six

35:10

ft or one point eight meters every

35:12

century, So in fifty

35:14

million years it will probably

35:17

either crash into Mars or

35:19

break up and become a ring of

35:21

debris around Mars. I

35:23

hope it goes the ring route. Personally, Yeah,

35:26

either way, I think I really like the mythic synergy

35:29

of this because I can easily imagine, you

35:31

know, this terror using war god

35:33

Phoebos just being destined

35:35

to fight his own terrible father and

35:38

perish one way or another in the attempt.

35:40

You know, you're not gonna win, dude. Yeah,

35:42

but he but he has to, like it's his nature, like

35:44

this is this is what he's been been,

35:47

you know, raised and traumatized to

35:49

do. What else could possibly

35:51

happen? Now? Of course, given the time frame involved

35:53

here fifty million years, you know, humans don't

35:55

have to worry about you know, it's not one of these things we're like, oh,

35:58

we better not try and land anything on phoebe Post

36:00

because it's it's doomed, won't you know not,

36:03

you know, not anytime soon. Um.

36:06

And there have been some proposals that have sought to use

36:08

Phobos as a kind of staging ground for the

36:10

exploration of Mars itself, you

36:12

know, perhaps for robotics for example.

36:15

Yeah, and there are a lot of we can talk

36:17

more about this in the second episode in this series,

36:19

but there are a lot of reasons that Phobos might

36:21

be really a great place to

36:24

try to stage space missions. One

36:26

reason, for example, is that it would be if you're

36:28

trying to get something back from Mars

36:30

or to another place in the Solar System

36:33

from Mars, it's much easier to get off

36:35

of Phobos than it is to get off

36:37

of the surface of Mars itself. Yeah,

36:39

I mean, it's it's it's it's basically it's like a you know,

36:41

it's a it's a space station. Um.

36:44

Now, Phobos has no atmosphere um.

36:46

And also gravity on Phobos

36:49

uh is is pretty weak. According

36:52

to NASA quote, Phobos has only one

36:54

one thousandth as much gravitational

36:56

pull as Earth. A one fifty

36:59

pound or d eight kilogram person would

37:01

weigh two ounces or sixty eight grams

37:04

there. Um. Yet

37:06

they do point out that NASA's Mars

37:08

Global Surveyor has shown evidence

37:11

of landslides. You know, we mentioned that

37:13

that earlier, of boulders and dust that's

37:15

fallen back down to the surface after being

37:17

blasted due to various

37:19

impacts. So the gravity

37:22

there is in play, but it is, you

37:24

know, it is it is slight compared to the gravity

37:26

of Earth or certainly other uh

37:29

moons out there, right, Phobos is about

37:31

the mass that if you were to jump

37:34

on Phobos, you could jump really high,

37:36

but you would eventually fall back down right

37:39

now, Like our moon, the twins of Mars

37:41

are both locked with the same face

37:44

pointed at their planet. Uh. The day

37:46

side gets reasonably warm from human

37:48

perspective. I think I saw it compared in

37:51

one NASA document to a a

37:53

winter day in Chicago, while the

37:55

night side gets extremely cold. Though

37:57

again there's no atmosphere. So we're talking

38:00

about surface temperatures here. Uh, you know,

38:02

there's no air to do anything there. The

38:04

air can't hold the warmth you're just talking

38:06

about, like being blasted by radiation

38:08

and I guess whatever is radiating back

38:11

up off of the rock beneath your feet

38:17

than al

38:20

right, So in discussing Phobos, we

38:22

should point out as well, and we'll probably get

38:24

more into this maybe in the second episode. Is

38:26

that as of today, as of this recording, no one

38:28

has actually been to Phobos,

38:31

certainly not in person, but even attempts

38:33

to send probes directly to Phobos

38:36

have failed for various reasons. The

38:38

Russians made two attempts in

38:40

the late eighties Phobos one and two.

38:43

Uh, those failed that seemingly, I think for technical

38:46

reasons, and then inn

38:48

they attempted to send another one um

38:50

Phobos grunt to Phobos. That's

38:53

spelled fo b O s g r u n

38:55

t in uh the

38:58

the at least the English language Letterally sure it

39:00

was going to collect two grams of soil, but

39:03

that didn't quite work out. Yeah, it was

39:05

a proposed sample return mission. Would

39:07

have been really cool if we could have gotten some of Phobos

39:09

back here to Earth to study. But it failed.

39:12

I think it actually was it failed

39:15

in orbit before it began its

39:17

journey to Mars and just ended up stuck

39:19

in Earth orbit without the ability to

39:22

travel. Now, various other missions

39:24

have been proposed and are being considered,

39:27

but nothing is launched as of this recording.

39:30

But missions to Mars have and will

39:32

continue to capture images of the moons. Uh.

39:34

You know if for starters like once again,

39:37

it's it's fairly visible in the sky if you catch

39:39

it at the right time. So that has been one of the

39:41

ways that we've captured images of it. Also the fly

39:44

bys. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention about

39:46

Phobos Grunt was actually uh, it was

39:49

a Russian mission, but it was also a joint

39:51

venture with the Chinese Space program,

39:54

and so the Chinese had part part of the

39:57

mission as well. And then also part

39:59

of what they were going to do was they were going

40:01

to they had some microorganisms

40:03

aboard and they were going to study how the

40:06

round trip from the from Earth

40:08

to the moons of Mars and then back to Earth affected

40:11

these microorganisms that were on the payload.

40:13

I think the Planetary Society had us had a

40:15

a small uh experiment

40:18

that was aboard as well. Yeah, yeah, was

40:20

that the was that the micro organisms that

40:22

may have been actually yes, yeah, but anyday,

40:25

right, it did not come to pass. Uh.

40:27

So we did not get to bring anything

40:29

back from the surface of Phobos. We

40:32

didn't get to have any thing

40:34

directly investigate the surface of

40:36

Phobos, which is a shame, because

40:38

there there's some interesting features

40:40

there, to say the least. Oh. Yeah, So if we

40:42

were to begin a curiosity

40:45

tour of the surface of Phobos,

40:47

I think one of the top things

40:50

to look at would be the Phobos

40:52

monolith. Monolith. You say

40:55

monolith, I say, so there

40:57

is a giant rock on the surface

40:59

of Phobos against the relatively

41:02

smooth cratered background, and

41:04

I mean smooth, not because not because

41:06

it's like a featureless surface. There are many craters,

41:09

but it's not very craggy, if that makes

41:11

any sense. It is, uh. It is kind of

41:13

dust covered and dimpled, but not

41:16

not not sharp angles. And

41:18

against this relatively smooth background,

41:22

there is this rock that stands out

41:24

like a white tower in the gray dust,

41:27

and it shines really bright in the sun and

41:29

it casts this long looming

41:31

tail of shade across the ground behind

41:34

it. And judging by the length of its

41:36

shadow, some astronomers have estimated

41:38

that this rock is about ninety meters

41:40

tall or about three hundred feet, and

41:43

for this reason, some media outlets

41:45

describe it as building sized. I

41:48

guess that's reasonable if it's like three feet

41:50

tall, it's like a small office building. But

41:52

you're you're you're also bringing to mind

41:55

certain ideas about what it might be when you say

41:57

it's building sized, yes, And that's

41:59

like if I would have say, where it's giant robot

42:01

size. Yeah. Uh.

42:04

So this rock has come to be known as

42:06

the Phobos Monolith, and it is one of

42:08

the geologic features of our solar system

42:10

that is genuinely exquisitely interesting,

42:13

but you know, like so many others, in

42:15

many cases, appreciated for all the wrong

42:17

reasons. Uh. The the it's aliens

42:19

crowd loves this rock, now, why

42:22

would that be. Well, a major

42:24

point of departure here seems to be originally

42:27

a c SPAN clip, which

42:30

is not where you might expect, you know, sort

42:32

of conspiracy minded

42:35

ideas to originate from c SPAN. You

42:37

generally pretty uh, pretty dry

42:39

and pretty by the numbers. Yeah, I oh, I

42:41

like c SPAN And actually I would say there's

42:44

nothing wrong with this clip. It's just people

42:46

misinterpreting a clip or selectively

42:49

quoting from a clip. So this originally

42:51

I think aired in July of two thousand

42:54

nine, that's at least when the version I found was

42:56

uploaded. But in this clip, the

42:58

revered American ast not buzz Aldren,

43:01

who, of course, along with the Alarmstrong,

43:03

was one of the first two human beings to walk on the Moon

43:05

that was during the Apollo eleven landing in nineteen

43:08

sixty nine. He is

43:10

being interviewed on the c SPAN program

43:13

Washington Journal, and I

43:15

believe this was in the context of originally

43:18

talking about human colonization of Earth's

43:20

Moon, but Aldrin

43:22

starts talking about the general

43:24

impetus for exploration of looking

43:27

at things that people find curious or inspiring

43:30

about the about the Solar system at large,

43:32

and using that sort of like public

43:34

rapture about strange and interesting

43:37

features of the Solar system to to

43:39

motivate scientific exploration of them,

43:42

as opposed to just say returning to the moon exclusively.

43:46

And Aldrin says, quote, we

43:48

should go boldly where man has not gone

43:50

before. Fly by the comets, visit

43:52

asteroids, visit the moon

43:55

of Mars. There's a monolith.

43:57

They're a very unusual structure

43:59

on this little potato shaped object

44:02

that goes around Mars once in seven

44:04

hours. When people find out about

44:06

that, they're gonna say, who put that there?

44:08

Who put that there? Now, it seems

44:10

like when the alien websites clipped this

44:13

out, they stopped the quote right there

44:15

and then they, you know, slap a headline

44:17

on it like buzz alder and let's slip the alien

44:20

conspiracy. Of course, the next thing

44:22

Aldern says is, well, the universe

44:24

put it there, or if you choose, God

44:26

put it there. And then he moves on to

44:28

other topics. You can look this clip

44:31

up yourself, so obviously Aldern

44:33

is not alleging that this monolith is

44:36

of artificial origin. He's

44:38

not only not alleging that he's explicitly saying

44:40

the exact opposite, it is of natural origin.

44:43

But of course that's not going to stop the usual suspects

44:45

from using this clip as evidence

44:48

of the alien cover up conspiracy. Uh.

44:51

And so of course, the the Internet's favorite

44:53

hoax hype man and general disinformation

44:56

source, Alex Jones, has it several times

44:58

tried to suggest that buzz Aldren

45:01

might be saying he believes it was made by

45:03

aliens, like uh during a

45:05

two thousand nine interview, And that might actually

45:08

be the weirdest thing here is that Alex

45:10

Jones actually did do an interview with buzz

45:12

Aldren in two thousand nine. I guess at the time nobody

45:15

really knew who Alex Jones was. But

45:17

during this interview, Jones tried to suggest

45:20

that buzz Aldren might believe that

45:22

this monolith was made by aliens.

45:24

And in a more recent clip, I found Jones

45:27

is saying that Aldren actually

45:29

told him in that two thousand nine

45:32

interview that the Phobos monolith

45:34

was quote sending a transmission and

45:37

quote it's all Egypt. There's aliens

45:39

and everything else. It's

45:41

all Egypt. Yeah, it's all Egypt. There's

45:43

aliens and everything else. And I saw that, I

45:46

was like, what what could he even be

45:48

referring to? Like, I didn't believe

45:50

that Aldren had actually said that, but

45:52

I wonder, like, what's he basing this claim

45:54

on. So I said, what the heck, I'll actually

45:56

look it up, and the result was hilarious.

45:59

So again, the weirdest thing about this to me is

46:01

that at some point Alex Jones

46:03

actually did interview the second person to walk

46:05

on the Moon. Um. But so in the

46:08

interview he does ask Aldern about this,

46:10

and Aldrin says the exact opposite of

46:12

what Jones claims. So Jones asks

46:14

him, while, if I'm not mistaken, I

46:16

think showing him a picture of the wrong object.

46:19

I think he's showing him a picture of an object from

46:21

the surface of Mars. But he says,

46:23

what does this look like to you? And Aldrin

46:26

responds he says, it's a big, big,

46:28

tall rock. Now I can

46:30

say, maybe it looks like a crude construction

46:33

device by some creatures who practiced

46:35

on Phobos and then landed in Egypt

46:37

and built the pyramids, and then he starts

46:39

laughing and says, I don't really believe

46:42

that, but some people are liable to think

46:44

that. So Aldrin is making

46:46

fun of and then explicitly rejecting

46:48

the claim that Jones attributes to him. Not

46:51

only did he not say what Jones claims,

46:53

he says literally exactly the opposite.

46:56

This is interesting. Yeah, it's a real real cherry

46:58

picking of you

47:01

know. Yeah,

47:03

like like he's saying, I'm not saying

47:05

it's aliens at all, it's actually this, but

47:08

he's but then it's like he said the word aliens

47:10

in the sentence, so

47:12

he's basically saying it's aliens. Well, the claim

47:15

that Jones is referring to their is Aldrin

47:17

making fun of people like Alex Jones.

47:20

He's saying, like, you know, I could say that the this

47:22

was aliens practicing building the

47:25

pyramids, and you know, you have to

47:27

admit, like that idea, even

47:29

though it raises additional questions,

47:32

is a fantastic idea and you should see why

47:34

people would be drawn to it and wanted to be true.

47:36

I mean, what does it mean? What what would it mean

47:39

for ancient Egypt? What would it mean for life

47:41

in our solar system. It brings so many

47:43

sort of vague, half

47:46

form but promising science fiction

47:48

ideas to mind. I have

47:50

so many funny questions about So

47:52

here's one random thought. If

47:55

there were actually a conspiracy

47:57

to cover up the existence of an alien

48:00

office building or a practice

48:02

pyramid on the surface of Phobos,

48:05

why would buzz Aldren know about

48:07

it? Like, do you all retired astronauts

48:09

just get a regular digest of the alien cover

48:12

up? You know, like they get a dossier every

48:14

week. It's like, here's all the alien evidence

48:16

we've covered up in the past quarter. Well,

48:19

I was thinking about this a little bit.

48:21

On one hand, Yeah, this kind of the loose idea

48:23

that well, they were they were part of the space

48:25

exploration system, you

48:27

know, so perhaps they have privileged

48:29

information or they've been to space,

48:32

so maybe they know about space, but you

48:34

know, in secret ways. But then I also

48:37

was thinking, well, maybe this goes back, Maybe

48:39

this is deeper, like maybe this connects to a lot of

48:42

our mythological ideas about people

48:44

who are you know, taken up that ascend

48:46

into heaven you know, so here is, or or

48:49

have descended into the underworld. So here

48:51

is a case where someone has literally

48:54

traveled to what you could

48:56

easily classify as another world. They

48:59

have traveled on our world to another

49:01

and returned. And you

49:03

know, it's it's amazing, don't get me wrong.

49:06

Uh. You know, the the lunar

49:08

missions were incredible technological

49:11

achievements and and achievements of just a human

49:14

courage and ingenuity. Uh,

49:17

but they were not other worldly

49:19

journeys. But I wonder if the two you

49:22

know, become uh you know, wound

49:25

together in the sort of the collective

49:27

imagination like you know, I

49:29

had to I had with in the you know, the time or two

49:31

that we've been around astronauts or

49:33

spoken to an astronaut, it has entered my

49:36

mind like this person has left

49:38

the Earth. You know. It's like in

49:40

in a not in a you know, I you

49:43

know, I know that I'm I'm talking to an

49:45

accomplished human being when we're

49:47

doing this, But there's there's a part

49:49

of me that is like this

49:51

person's maybe not completely human anymore,

49:53

Like they're not completely of Earth because they have left

49:56

Earth, you know, you know, in an you

49:58

know, like unformed way. This

50:01

bipedal primate like me has been touched

50:03

by the gods. Now, so I

50:05

wonder if you know, to some extent we were

50:08

sort of hardwired to make those connections

50:10

due to our our myths and our you

50:12

know, our religious um stories, et cetera.

50:15

Oh yeah, I mean I can see that tendency. I mean

50:17

again, I think with this kind of thing, the logic is

50:19

very loose. And on one hand, I mean, I

50:21

would say with somebody like Alex Jones, I mean,

50:23

he just this is just a person with a propensity

50:26

to spread lies. But I would say, as for the the

50:28

broader, uh tenacity

50:30

of this misunderstanding about this object

50:32

on the surface of Phobos, I think

50:34

maybe part of the misunderstanding

50:37

might just come from the word monolith.

50:39

This would tie back to back into

50:42

the idea you brought up when I was first introducing

50:44

the subject about calling it building sized,

50:46

which I mean, I guess it is also calling

50:49

it a monolith. I mean, this

50:51

object does appear to be a monolith.

50:53

That is a literally accurate description.

50:55

It's a single piece of rock. But unfortunately,

50:58

by its association with two thousand

51:00

one of Space Odyssey, that word

51:03

now has some baggage, you know of

51:05

of associations with artificial origin.

51:08

Of course, there are tons of natural monoliths

51:10

on Earth. The world is full of them. But when

51:12

you say monolith, I think especially

51:15

in anybody who's who's ever seen a science

51:17

fiction film or

51:19

anything that has any derivative of science

51:22

fiction has has a certainly a way of two thousand

51:24

and one of Space Odyssey, and so you think of the

51:27

monolith, right. So if that's causing

51:29

confusion for you, you could just say the huge

51:31

rock on Phobos. Uh. But

51:34

anyway, whether or not you would expect a

51:36

retired astronaut to have any special insight

51:38

on this subject, it is absolutely false

51:41

that Aldrin claimed that Phobos the Phobos

51:43

monolith was of artificial origin. He said

51:45

the exact opposite. So that leads

51:47

to the question what is its real origin?

51:51

And I found a good article on the BBC

51:53

from Steen by Colin Barriss that

51:55

tried to look into this question. Okay, so

51:58

given that there's this huge, weird king

52:00

boulder jutting up out of the surface of Phobos,

52:03

where did it come from? Well, again,

52:05

according to our best images, the monolith

52:08

does appear to be some kind of giant

52:10

boulder. It's about ninety ms or

52:12

roughly three hundred feet tall, as I said, and

52:14

it's on a surface region of Phobos

52:17

that is otherwise uh, free

52:19

of large craggy features like this.

52:21

I was trying to communicate exactly what I meant when I smooth

52:25

isn't quite the right word, because it has all

52:27

these craters and dimples in it. But the

52:29

craters and everything look relatively

52:31

I don't know, rounded, as as

52:33

the surfaces of dusty

52:36

objects in space often do. And

52:38

this thing looks I guess you would say, the

52:40

angles appear uncharacteristically

52:43

sharp. So imagine a you

52:45

know, office building sized boulder in

52:47

the middle of a field in Kansas that otherwise

52:50

has some kind of big soft craters

52:53

in it. Now, the Phobos monolith

52:55

has not really been the subject of much high

52:57

profile scientific study, but it

53:00

seems consistent with surface features

53:02

that are produced by normal natural

53:05

processes on the surface of moons and planets.

53:07

So this could be a giant boulder that fell

53:10

off of, say, the edge of a crater in

53:12

a in a rock slide or something like that.

53:15

And Furthermore, there is pretty clear evidence

53:17

that whatever Phobos itself is, it

53:20

has at various points in the past

53:22

experienced asteroid impacts, so

53:25

the monolith could also be a giant shard

53:28

of rock that was ejected from

53:30

some past impact. But then

53:33

Barris draws attention to another really interesting

53:35

option, which is that the Phobos monolith

53:37

could also possibly be

53:40

a chunk of Mars itself,

53:43

and as as evidence of this, he points

53:45

to the precedent of a study by Kenneth

53:47

R. Ramsley and James W. Head, the third

53:50

published in the journal Planetary and

53:52

Space Science in two thousand thirteen

53:55

called Mars Impact Ejecta in

53:57

the Regular I of Phobos Bulk Concentration

53:59

and Distribution. Basically, the idea

54:02

is that the surface of Phobos is blanketed

54:04

in little bits of Mars, and I think

54:06

mostly these would just be very small particles,

54:09

but they could include larger particles.

54:11

And the author's estimate, based on some calculations

54:14

that the bulk concentration of

54:17

Mars ejective fragments in the upper

54:19

Phobos regular is about two

54:21

hundred and fifty parts per millions. So if you're

54:23

looking at the stuff on the surface of Phobos,

54:26

about two hundred and fifty parts per million

54:29

of that stuff is actually stuff that's from

54:31

the planet Mars. And this again

54:33

would come from uh from impacts,

54:36

like the majority of it is going to be smaller particles.

54:38

But when objects strike the surface

54:41

of Mars with high energy, bits

54:43

of Mars sometimes get blasted

54:45

into orbit, and some of those bits

54:47

are going to end up settling on the surface of

54:49

Phobos. And of course this brings us

54:52

back again to what we were talking about earlier. Remember

54:54

that Phobos orbits very close

54:56

to the surface of Mars compared to

54:58

most moons, so you can imagine and that is easier

55:01

for parts of Mars to end up on

55:03

the surface of Phobos than it would be for parts

55:05

of the surface of a planet to end up on a moon that's

55:08

orbiting much farther away. But

55:10

Barris mentions another possibility, writing

55:12

quote alternatively, the Phobos monolith

55:15

might not have formed during an impact. It

55:17

could be a rare chunk of the Moon's solid

55:19

bedrock poking up through a surface

55:21

that is otherwise mostly strewn with

55:24

loose debris. So imagine that kind

55:26

of a Devil's tower of Phobos like

55:28

poking up out of where everything

55:30

else around it has is covered with enough

55:32

dust to look pretty smooth. And

55:35

Barris writes that if this is true, if it's

55:37

you know, some some feature of the underlying

55:40

rock of Phobos, if it's a Devil's tower kind

55:42

of thing. Uh. If this is true, studying

55:44

the monolith could actually help us solve

55:47

some of the mysteries about the origin of

55:49

Phobos, like where did

55:51

these strange moons come from in the first

55:53

place, which I guess maybe we'll come back to at the beginning

55:56

of part two of this series. But

55:58

just a couple of other notes about the Phobos A with one

56:00

is that it looks really cool and you should look

56:02

it up, but source your images carefully.

56:05

I was coming across a lot of photos

56:07

on the web that seem to be labeled

56:09

as if they are the Phobos monolith, but I'm pretty

56:11

sure they're not. Some of them just look like they're from

56:14

a movie or something, and I think others are

56:16

pictures of things that are actually on the surface

56:18

of Mars itself. But then one

56:20

other thing I found out was

56:22

that Less Claypool and sean

56:25

On O Lennon have an album that is named

56:27

after the Phobos Monolith. Rob, I sent you a

56:29

link. Did you have a chance to listen or not. I

56:32

have not had a chance to listen to it yet. I haven't heard

56:34

any of Claypool stuff with with Oh no,

56:36

I've I'm, of course I'm familiar with Primus

56:38

and nfccen Primus Live, and

56:41

I'm I'm familiar with his

56:43

work with uh with

56:45

with Trey Anastasio in Oyster

56:48

Head. Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah, that

56:50

some some good stuff there too, But no, I haven't. I

56:52

haven't heard Phobos Monolith. Well,

56:54

I only got to listen to a little bit, but it

56:57

is very weird, but with less of

56:59

the cheese real related humor that you associate

57:01

with older less claypool works. It seems

57:04

a little a little more sober perhaps,

57:06

uh and actually a little a little more

57:08

sober, and has some relatively

57:11

scientifically accurate lyrics. I can't vouch

57:13

for the whole thing, but the part I was listening to was

57:15

talking about the Phobos monolith and

57:17

Buzz altern and I think everything that it said

57:20

about the everything I recall it saying

57:22

about the monolith and the moon was scientifically

57:24

correct. Quote

57:27

the monolith of Phobos, it stars

57:29

buzz in the eye, It bids him question

57:32

while we live and do or die? Okay,

57:35

checks out. Wait,

57:38

wait, that's not the part I was thinking. Maybe that went by

57:41

me. I remember him talking about he

57:43

had some part about the moon being sort

57:45

of tat or shaped, which seems reasonable, even

57:47

though we maybe turnip is better. And

57:49

I think he also mentioned that its

57:51

orbit is decaying over time, so it's

57:54

moving closer to Mars, which is true. Yeah.

57:56

Yeah, Well the next two lines are the monolith

57:58

of Phobos, it stars buzz and the I on

58:00

a tator shaped moon that's falling from the sky.

58:03

Okay, so that's that's that's more accurate.

58:05

Yeah, And and then there's also some part about

58:07

it like it. It doesn't say it's aliens. It just says

58:10

that like the monolith raises a bunch of questions,

58:12

which is true. It does raise questions. It some

58:16

genuine and scientific uh,

58:18

others not so much. Um,

58:21

but but yeah, still, I mean it's it is

58:23

something like the monolith of Phobos

58:26

is real. As we've said, Uh, you

58:28

just need to be be careful about what image

58:30

you're you're pulling up of it and uh

58:33

and what interpretation you're reading regarding

58:36

it. Now. As we've mentioned already, one of the biggest

58:38

mysteries about Phobos and Demos

58:41

is where these moons come from

58:43

in the first place, What is their origin,

58:46

because they have a number of features that seem

58:48

to be at least on the surface

58:50

level, contradictory and point

58:52

off in different directions when you're looking for an

58:54

origin story. And I think maybe that's where

58:56

we should start when we come back in part two, where

58:59

do these moon come from? And how were they made?

59:02

Yeah? So so join us. Will also be some

59:05

some at least from today's

59:07

standpoint, kind of out there sounding hypotheses

59:10

about about what what

59:13

what these moons are. Uh so it'll

59:15

be it'll be fun. So join us. In our next

59:17

episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind is we continue

59:20

our exploration of Phobos and demos

59:22

the moons of Mars. In

59:25

the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes

59:27

of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you know where to find

59:29

them. Core episodes come out Tuesdays and Thursdays

59:32

in the Stuff to Bow Your Mind podcast feed. Monday's

59:35

we do a bit of listener mail. Wednesdays

59:37

that's when we do the artifact. On Friday's

59:40

we do a little weird house cinema where we we set

59:42

most of the science aside and just talk about a

59:44

weird movie. And on

59:46

the weekend we do a little bit of uh a

59:49

little vault episode. We do a little rerun for

59:52

you. So that's what six days out

59:54

of seven and on the seventh day we rest or,

59:56

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right, huge, thanks as always to our

1:00:05

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1:00:07

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