Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for an episode from the Vault. This one originally
Speaker 1: aired on A and it is about the moons of Mars,
Speaker 1: Phobos and Demos. Yeah, this one is a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: This is another one of those episodes where we get
Speaker 1: to talk about mythology, but we're also talking about other worlds,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's it's a wonderful balance. This, uh,
Speaker 1: this cocktail of an episode. Get it. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, the production of My Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna
Speaker 1: be bringing you an episode about space objects. And as
Speaker 1: we often do, we're gonna be We're gonna be starting
Speaker 1: off here by talking a little bit about the mythology
Speaker 1: that is related to these space objects. Rob, do you
Speaker 1: mind if I start with a reading from the Iliad? Oh,
Speaker 1: let's do it, okay, So I want to read a
Speaker 1: passage from the Iliad book four, from the excellent translation
Speaker 1: by Caroline Alexander, And this is describing a big host
Speaker 1: of warriors raging for battle. It begins, but the Trojans,
Speaker 1: as the numberless use of a wealthy man, stand in
Speaker 1: their pen to be milked of their white milk, bleeding
Speaker 1: incessantly as they hear the cries of their lambs. So
Speaker 1: the war cries of the Trojans rose through the broad army.
Speaker 1: For the speech of all the men was not the same,
Speaker 1: nor was there one voice, but the tongues were mixed
Speaker 1: in confusion. The men were summoned from many places. These men.
Speaker 1: Aries drove on and gleaming eyed Athena drove the Achaeans,
Speaker 1: and terror and panic and strife raging Insatia, the sister
Speaker 1: and companion of man, slaughtering Aries. She is small when
Speaker 1: she first rises up, but in the end she leans
Speaker 1: her head against the heavens even as she strides upon
Speaker 1: the earth. Oh, I love that section about the bad
Speaker 1: sister there. And she's small when she first rises up,
Speaker 1: but then when she she gets big, she leans her
Speaker 1: head against the heavens and got her feet on the earth.
Speaker 1: So uh. That is referring to one of the companions
Speaker 1: of Aries, the the god of war. In this passage
Speaker 1: it is written in this translation as strife the abstract concept.
Speaker 1: But in the Greek, of course, strife is also the
Speaker 1: goddess Heiress, and I love that final couplet about her.
Speaker 1: But there are a couple of other concepts that are
Speaker 1: mentioned there that also have personifications. It's not just Heiress,
Speaker 1: the goddess of strife. There's also terror and panic that
Speaker 1: are driven on by aries, and these concepts have the
Speaker 1: godly personifications of the god's phobos and demos. So phobos
Speaker 1: and deem ohs are each an abstract concept representing a
Speaker 1: human state of mind or something you might witness on
Speaker 1: the battlefield or leading up to it, but they're also
Speaker 1: these heavenly persons in the Greek mythology, and to read
Speaker 1: another passage from the Iliad about their their representations, also
Speaker 1: from the Caroline Alexandra translation. Then he took up his man,
Speaker 1: surrounding much emblazoned forceful shield, a thing of beauty, around
Speaker 1: which ran tin rings of bronze, and on it twenty
Speaker 1: pale shining discs of tin, and in the very center
Speaker 1: was one of dark enameled blue. And crowning this a
Speaker 1: snake bristling gorgon face stared out with dreadful glare, Terror
Speaker 1: and Route about her and the shields Baldric was of silver,
Speaker 1: and on it a blue dark serpent writhed with three
Speaker 1: heads turned in all directions, growing from a single neck.
Speaker 1: So here this actually ties back into the episodes that
Speaker 1: we re aired pretty recently. I think about the Gorgon
Speaker 1: Medusa and how uh the the head of the gorgon
Speaker 1: of of Medusa is widely represented in in Greek art
Speaker 1: and in Greek literature as a feature of Greek art,
Speaker 1: mentioned in the literature as this, like this thing that
Speaker 1: would be on the aegis of Athena or of Zeus,
Speaker 1: a terrifying image looking out at you, but mentioned alongside
Speaker 1: the face of the gorgon. Here are Terror and Route. Again,
Speaker 1: I think these would be Phobos and Demos. Yeah, Phobos
Speaker 1: and Demos. So, like you said, this episode we're getting spacey,
Speaker 1: we're also getting a little mytho mythological here, especially at
Speaker 1: the start. Phobos and Demos are the names of the
Speaker 1: two moons of the planet Mars uh and so this
Speaker 1: this marks return for us uh in in the past.
Speaker 1: I want to say, it's been a couple of years
Speaker 1: at least now we did episodes exploring the moons of Jupiter,
Speaker 1: and then other another episode or episodes exploring the moons
Speaker 1: of Saturn. And we always intended to venture onto other moons,
Speaker 1: and here we are now exploring the moons of Mars,
Speaker 1: much like the space agencies of Earth. We have long
Speaker 1: wanted to return a sample from the moons of Mars
Speaker 1: and and have failed to do so. But you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the time has finally come. Don't curse this. We
Speaker 1: might have a technological problem during the recording or retrieval
Speaker 1: of this episode. Uh So, I'm so excited to be
Speaker 1: talking about a this gorgeous couple of space turn ups
Speaker 1: in orbit around Mars. And uh and so this is
Speaker 1: going to be the first of a pair of episodes.
Speaker 1: Be sure to join us for both. Yes, uh and
Speaker 1: even though it deals with two moons, it's just gonna be.
Speaker 1: It's very much a part one in part two. It's
Speaker 1: not like one episode is Phobos in one episode is Demos,
Speaker 1: as you will see. But before we even get back
Speaker 1: into Phobos and Demos, I want to start by talking
Speaker 1: just a bit about our naming of Mars itself. Um So,
Speaker 1: today we you know, largely refer to the fourth planet
Speaker 1: from the sun as Mars. But of course Mars can
Speaker 1: be seen in the nights sky without the aid of
Speaker 1: a telescope. So it's gone by many names and has
Speaker 1: been factored into numerous pantheons and cosmological systems throughout human history. Right, Mars,
Speaker 1: because it is it can be observed through naked eye astronomy.
Speaker 1: It was known to the ancient Mesopotamians. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: the god nergal Uh, a god of of plague and war,
Speaker 1: the one that kind of evolved apparently from a war
Speaker 1: god into a another world deity. But this was a
Speaker 1: This was a deity that was recognized by the Sumerians. Likewise,
Speaker 1: the Greeks knew it as the star of Aries, and
Speaker 1: we'll of course talk more about areas here in a bit.
Speaker 1: In Hinduism, Mars was associated with Mangala, a god of
Speaker 1: war that interestingly seems to encompass aspects of war related
Speaker 1: to anger and hot headedness, but also to stability and balance.
Speaker 1: And then the ancient Egyptians connected Mars to Horace, the
Speaker 1: celestial falcon and embodiment of kingship. Geraldine Pinch points out
Speaker 1: in Egyptian mythology that Egypt's earliest kings were depicted as
Speaker 1: hawks praying on their enemies. So here once once more
Speaker 1: we can easily connect this to a motif of warfare,
Speaker 1: um uh, well of one former that or another. Uh.
Speaker 1: Though interestingly enough, in Chinese traditions, Mars was apparently merely
Speaker 1: associated with the element of fire. Oh yeah, because in
Speaker 1: the Chinese astronomical traditions that different heavenly bodies tend to
Speaker 1: be associated with like the elements of Earth. Right, so
Speaker 1: like one planet will be fire, one planet will be
Speaker 1: would one planet will be metal or something else? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: So they're important within um, you know, Chinese cosmology and
Speaker 1: Chinese astrology, though I've also read it argued that the
Speaker 1: planets have will have maybe less of a significance in
Speaker 1: Chinese cosmology versus uh, their their place especially in um
Speaker 1: in in you know, some of these other models that
Speaker 1: were looking at here where they're closely associated with very
Speaker 1: important gods. Coming back to the idea that some of
Speaker 1: the earliest kings of Egypt were depicted as hawks praying
Speaker 1: on their enemies, I was just thinking how good it
Speaker 1: would be if you just made a slight rotation on
Speaker 1: that and they were portrayed as vultures vomiting on their enemies. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's it's not not that huge of a difference, right,
Speaker 1: and also seems kind of fitting so and and it
Speaker 1: would be in keeping with with what we've been discussing here, right,
Speaker 1: because so far we we've been talking about connections to
Speaker 1: ideas of blood and fire. And of course this inevitably
Speaker 1: seems to stem from the fact that Mars appears as
Speaker 1: a red quote unquote star in the night sky. Even
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, where we have terrible light pollution at night,
Speaker 1: you can often go out and see that that red,
Speaker 1: gleaming eye of Mars out there in the distance. I
Speaker 1: think my eyes must be a little bad because I've
Speaker 1: never personally been able to notice the redness of Mars
Speaker 1: when I've looked at it with the naked eye, But
Speaker 1: I believe other people do see it. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's faint, but it's it's noticeable, you know,
Speaker 1: like you can you can tell that there's something different
Speaker 1: going on compared to all the other stars in the sky.
Speaker 1: It stands out. And since it has that red color,
Speaker 1: you know, it makes sense to associate it with blood
Speaker 1: and fire and violence and all of these things tied
Speaker 1: up with it. So the name Mars, of course uh
Speaker 1: arises from the Roman tradition. And roughly speaking, you can
Speaker 1: say that the Roman god of war is Mars, and
Speaker 1: then the Greek god of war is Aries, and these
Speaker 1: are basically two names for the same thing. But it's
Speaker 1: it's really worth driving home that then Mars differs from Aries,
Speaker 1: and that while Aries was a god of brutality and
Speaker 1: war in its most base and chaotic state, which I
Speaker 1: think is is is well represented in in the in
Speaker 1: the and in in his usage in the Iliad, the
Speaker 1: Roman Mars, however, had a different character. He was warfare
Speaker 1: as just and orderly, you know. He he was warfare
Speaker 1: that brings um a sense of balance to the world
Speaker 1: that you know, warfare is viewed by an imperial culture.
Speaker 1: You know, war is the instrument that demonstrates your greatness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mars is therefore a military deity that maintains order and
Speaker 1: protects agriculture. Mars is uh Is is very closely associated
Speaker 1: with agriculture in the Roman tradition. Um, so he upholds
Speaker 1: while Aries threatens and tears down Um. And so it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting because they are like two sides of the
Speaker 1: same thing, which which I think the Hindu god Mangala
Speaker 1: seems to encompass both of these aspects. Here we see
Speaker 1: this divergence in Arias and uh in mars Um. I
Speaker 1: was I was reading a little bit more. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a book called Classical Mythology a to z Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's quite good. And in one of the ways they
Speaker 1: describe Aries is that he is he's a lord or
Speaker 1: a god of the screams of the dying. Uh so
Speaker 1: you know it's it's not so so. Yeah, mars Is
Speaker 1: is the god of of war is great, War is good?
Speaker 1: And then Aries is the war? What is it good for? Uh? Deity?
Speaker 1: You know, he's just um he he is the worst
Speaker 1: of the pantheon. Uh he is Aries, the lord of
Speaker 1: the screams of the dying. Sounds very like a seventies
Speaker 1: exploitation movie epithet for him, right, you know, he's um
Speaker 1: Aries and Aries again. Yeah, and I guess it does
Speaker 1: come to like, you know, Aries is the very nature
Speaker 1: and heart of war and violence, where mars is more like,
Speaker 1: what what use can war be put to? What does it?
Speaker 1: What does it do? What can it accomplish, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: very much a whitewashing of war. Now, as with Jupiter
Speaker 1: that we you know, which we discussed in our recent episode,
Speaker 1: Mars has many epithets or aspects um. So instead of
Speaker 1: having you know, a whole bunch of different deities representing
Speaker 1: different shades of the same thing, you have different versions of,
Speaker 1: say Jupiter, and in this case, there are different versions
Speaker 1: of Mars as well, such as Mars grativ Us, the
Speaker 1: marching Mars. So this would be the Mars that a
Speaker 1: soldier in the field would swear by, because you know,
Speaker 1: as with Jupiter, deities are important for swearing and making
Speaker 1: oaths and so forth. Another major Mars is is Mars Pader,
Speaker 1: protector of agriculture. And this, of course is is literally
Speaker 1: Mars the Father. And this is also very notable because
Speaker 1: in Roman myth he is the father. Uh, Mars is
Speaker 1: the father of Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome.
Speaker 1: So in the Roman tradition, Mars isn't just the god
Speaker 1: of of noble war. He is also the ancestor of
Speaker 1: the Roman people. He is the patriarch of the empire exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he yeah, he is the empire. Um. Now this
Speaker 1: is this is where it gets kind of curious, right,
Speaker 1: and I imagine a number of people are already thinking
Speaker 1: about this. So in the Roman tradition, the primary war
Speaker 1: god Mars has two highly important sons, Romulus and Remus.
Speaker 1: So wouldn't it make more sense to name the two
Speaker 1: moons of Mars after Romulus and Remus rather than going
Speaker 1: to the Greek hopping over to the Greek tradition and
Speaker 1: drawing on the two uh, two of the sons of Aries.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that imply that one of the moons has to
Speaker 1: kill the other moon. Um, well, you know, as we'll
Speaker 1: get into in this episode of the next that's not
Speaker 1: a crazy idea considering the House of Mars over there.
Speaker 1: Orbitally speaking, I may be remembering my mythology wrong. I
Speaker 1: think things go bad for Remus. Well, um, it's worth
Speaker 1: worth noting. Outside of Star trek Lore, Romulus is the
Speaker 1: outer moon of the main Belt asteroid eighties seven Sylvia,
Speaker 1: and Remus is the inner moon. Sylvia is named for
Speaker 1: Rea Sylvia, the mythical mother of the founders of Rome. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, kind of this was all filled
Speaker 1: in later. Well, while while we're doing a round up.
Speaker 1: I should also mention that that passage from the Iliad
Speaker 1: I read at the top that had that great couplet
Speaker 1: about airis the goddess of strife. Uh, there is actually
Speaker 1: an object name for Airess as well. It's the dwarf
Speaker 1: planet Airis that is not quite a planet, but is
Speaker 1: a nearly nearly spherical asteroid. Yeah, I guess it's Uh. Basically,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna keep finding new things to name. Uh.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're out there, any members of
Speaker 1: the Greek Roman pantheon and you don't have something named
Speaker 1: after you yet, just hold on, Just be patient, um
Speaker 1: and mortal beings that you are, We'll get around to
Speaker 1: you eventually. Wait a second, I feel like I just
Speaker 1: said something wrong. I think I called Airis an asteroids. Uh,
Speaker 1: Heiress is not an asteroid. A Airis is a nearly
Speaker 1: spherical trans Neptunian object. Apologies about that, you pologizing to
Speaker 1: the planet or the deity. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: roped in by strife here. Want to make an enemy
Speaker 1: of strife, all right? So yeah, obviously instead of naming
Speaker 1: Mars's two moons after Romulus and Remus, uh, the traditions
Speaker 1: of drawing on the names of two of the many
Speaker 1: children of Aries in Greek mythology. So partnered with Aphrodite,
Speaker 1: he fathered Demos Phobos of course, and we'll get into
Speaker 1: them in a second, but also Aros or love uh,
Speaker 1: Antros requitted love, and Harmonia, who represents harmony uh. And
Speaker 1: he's also said to have produced other children by other mothers.
Speaker 1: So there's you know, there's a there's a vast brood.
Speaker 1: Now I believe Aries Uh. Isn't it the case that
Speaker 1: Aphrodite was actually married to have faced Us, the forge god,
Speaker 1: the the equivalent of the Roman vulcan, and that Aries
Speaker 1: is sort of her lover on the side or are
Speaker 1: they officially an item later on? There's a lot of
Speaker 1: drama there, but it seems are to call a myth
Speaker 1: about he faced Us making like a net of chains
Speaker 1: to catch them in the act or something. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it fits the nature of Arias again, he's he's
Speaker 1: really the scum of the pantheon here um. But let's
Speaker 1: talk a bit about the twins. Demos and Phobos, both
Speaker 1: deities very much in the Greek tradition of war gods.
Speaker 1: While Demos is traditionally associated with terror and dread. Phobos
Speaker 1: is fear and panic, though both of them may be
Speaker 1: collectively thought of as deities of fear. Uh. They ride
Speaker 1: beside their father into battle, along with the goddess of
Speaker 1: discord Heiress so who he mentioned already, But the twin
Speaker 1: brothers of Fear are referred to in several key works.
Speaker 1: We already mentioned the Iliad. They also show up in Hesiods,
Speaker 1: the Shield of Heracles and um if if memory serves,
Speaker 1: I think in the Shield of Heracles, they actually like
Speaker 1: their their father is wounded on the battlefield and they
Speaker 1: drag him off the battlefield. So they're very much his
Speaker 1: his pendence, his personal guard, the warriors that go into
Speaker 1: battle beside him. Um. But they are also just horrifying specters,
Speaker 1: you know, they are gods of trauma and the psychological
Speaker 1: dimensions of war. Um. But they do seem to revolve
Speaker 1: around their father on the battlefield in a way befitting
Speaker 1: of moons. So perhaps they're ultimately a better fit, uh
Speaker 1: than the Roman figures of Romulus and Remus. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say that. I mean, I think one thing that's
Speaker 1: interesting about them is that they represent two distinct types
Speaker 1: of fear that are things that you need to manage
Speaker 1: differently if you're writing horror fiction, say like that Phobos
Speaker 1: Phobos is is panic. Phobos is sometimes translated as route, right,
Speaker 1: like getting routed in battle. You're just like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're terrified and you're running away, whereas Demos is dread,
Speaker 1: the terror that builds in anticipation of of something horrible. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh And I also think probably more fitting because
Speaker 1: Romilis and Remus are a little more they're a little
Speaker 1: more fleshed out as as figures, whereas Demos and Phobos
Speaker 1: are a bit more abstract, you know, like we don't
Speaker 1: have as many tales about them and stories about them
Speaker 1: that that uh, you know, that stick with us. They
Speaker 1: are more you know, harshly formed they are, and then
Speaker 1: that they themselves are these kind of like fragile, fractured
Speaker 1: nightmare beings. Um. And I think that's very befitting of
Speaker 1: the sort of moons that we're going to be talking about,
Speaker 1: uh in these episodes. Sorry, one thing I just got
Speaker 1: distracted wondering about. Wait a minute, are are the moons
Speaker 1: of Mars especially scary as moons? Not in the way
Speaker 1: that I can think of but they are rather mysterious.
Speaker 1: I think they are some of the weirdest, most mysterious
Speaker 1: objects in the Solar system. You can sort of looking
Speaker 1: at it sideways, connect that sense of mystery to a
Speaker 1: kind of creepiness about them. Yeah, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: I would. I would say that less frightening as more
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, mysterious. And also, like you clearly the
Speaker 1: product of violence, and in the case of one of
Speaker 1: the moons, like you know, just destined for destruction is
Speaker 1: just on a on a collision course with destruction. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, I think it pairs well with
Speaker 1: this idea of like two shattered beings that serve this
Speaker 1: horrible god they you know, that represents some of the
Speaker 1: worst aspects of of mortals except in immortal form um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I will come back throughout these episodes with
Speaker 1: comparisons to the mythic twins, the double Grima worm tongues
Speaker 1: of the Mars system. Yeah, yeah, imagine there's some other
Speaker 1: good comparisons to make. Yeah, like you know, the sons
Speaker 1: of some you know, awful ruler. There might be a
Speaker 1: good Dune reference in there somewhere. I'm not sure. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see, like they're the beast Ribon and Uh and
Speaker 1: fade route the Yeah, though, I don't know. Fate has
Speaker 1: a lot of things together in ways that these these
Speaker 1: two don't, so I'm not sure. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the discovery of Phobos and Demos. Like we said,
Speaker 1: Mars has been something that people throughout human history have
Speaker 1: looked up and seen and attributed various meanings and interpretations too,
Speaker 1: But not so with Phobos and demos. Uh. These we
Speaker 1: were not to be discovered for some time. Right. You
Speaker 1: have to get well into the age of the telescope
Speaker 1: to be able to see these objects from Earth because
Speaker 1: they are both very small and very close to Mars.
Speaker 1: And when you're looking at Mars in the night sky,
Speaker 1: it's reflecting a lot of light and it's sort of
Speaker 1: going to to blast out any small objects nearby it.
Speaker 1: You're just not going to be able to distinguish them
Speaker 1: from it. Yeah, So it just simply wasn't possible. Um.
Speaker 1: They these two moons were discovered though, in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven by American astronomer ASoft Hall, who lived eight nine
Speaker 1: through nineteen oh seven. Now, Hall was was large as
Speaker 1: an interesting character because, for one thing, he was largely
Speaker 1: self taught astronomer. He was not a gentleman scientist of
Speaker 1: the day, but rather the impoverished son of a clockmaker.
Speaker 1: His father died when he was young, so he had
Speaker 1: to leave school, uh, in order to be He was
Speaker 1: going to become an apprentice to a carpenter, but later
Speaker 1: on he ended up taking math classes at New York
Speaker 1: Central College, and from there he took a job at
Speaker 1: the Harvard College Observatory and then became an assistant astronomer
Speaker 1: at the US Naval Observatory, and eventually he was made
Speaker 1: a professor. So he had a really interesting career path,
Speaker 1: you know, an ascension story. So uh, you know, on
Speaker 1: one hand, it's it's just neat to see that kind
Speaker 1: of trajectory with an individual who plays into the history
Speaker 1: of astronomy like this. So the way it went down
Speaker 1: is in eighteen seventy seven, during Mars Closest Approach, his wife,
Speaker 1: Angeline Stickney, who was a mathematician and a suffragist, encouraged
Speaker 1: him to engage in the search for the Martian moons,
Speaker 1: and and to keep engaging in the search because he
Speaker 1: had in his writings. He apparently loses this saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's just seemed to be so such a
Speaker 1: small chance of him seeing anything. Um, you know, he
Speaker 1: was considering just giving it up, but his wife encouraged
Speaker 1: him on, and so he thought he made out Martian
Speaker 1: moons on August tenth, but he couldn't be sure, you know,
Speaker 1: it was I think the weather was weird that night,
Speaker 1: so he didn't have the clarity that he wanted. But
Speaker 1: then on August twelve he discovered Demos, and on August eighteenth,
Speaker 1: he discovered Phobos. Both both of these discoveries were made
Speaker 1: using equipment at the U. S. Naval Observatory in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Interesting now, since he found them, he got
Speaker 1: to name them. But as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: there's not much more to it than that. I don't
Speaker 1: you know. I couldn't find anything about him having any
Speaker 1: real reasoning for choosing these two names over Romulus and Remus. Uh,
Speaker 1: if he ever considered other names, if he if he
Speaker 1: named them in an error, I don't know. Um. I
Speaker 1: think ultimately they're good names, though, just really scared. That
Speaker 1: night he'd been reading some ec comics or what would
Speaker 1: be correct for the time period. He was reading The
Speaker 1: Great God Pan or whatever. Actually I don't know if
Speaker 1: that was out of the time. I mean, ultimately, he
Speaker 1: you know, he could have tried to call them Tweedle
Speaker 1: dumb and tweedled d So I guess it's just as
Speaker 1: well that he went with Phobos and Demos. Now, this
Speaker 1: is an interesting little side note. I can't find a
Speaker 1: what felt to me like a really solid source on this,
Speaker 1: but a profile of his wife, Stickney on the official U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy page used to state that as she was helping
Speaker 1: her husband with the calculations and all of this, she
Speaker 1: asked for a man's wages compensation and he refused so
Speaker 1: she quit. Um. Oh yeah, I think you know, it's
Speaker 1: not like it's really hard to say. I couldn't find
Speaker 1: any more information about this, so I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is a joke, uh, if this is you know,
Speaker 1: totally made up, or you know, if what we're talking
Speaker 1: about was a serious argument or more of like kind
Speaker 1: of a fun story that you know that that that
Speaker 1: spouses tell. I don't know. But at the very least,
Speaker 1: though Phobos is the largest crater ended up being named
Speaker 1: for her, Stickney Crater, which we'll get back to in
Speaker 1: a bit. So, you know, I guess ultimately her work
Speaker 1: paid in exposure at least now. Um, others were looking
Speaker 1: for those moons as well and speculating about their existence.
Speaker 1: And I ran across a really interesting story about all
Speaker 1: this that I read on Stephen Novella's neurological blog, And
Speaker 1: this concerns the moons of Mars and Gulliver's travels. Gulliver's Travels.
Speaker 1: But Jonathan Swift, Yeah, so that would be long before
Speaker 1: this discuss This would be over a hundred years before
Speaker 1: the discovery of the moons, right, Yeah, this goes bad.
Speaker 1: This book came out in seventy And have have you
Speaker 1: ever read Gulliver's travel Yeah, it's been a long time.
Speaker 1: I read it in college. Um, I took a class
Speaker 1: in college, so we read a lot of like John
Speaker 1: Dryden and Alexander Pope and and and Swift and uh,
Speaker 1: I think we read Gulliver's Travels for that class, or
Speaker 1: if not, we read large sections of it. It's one
Speaker 1: that I've never read. I'm just sort of familiar with
Speaker 1: it bits and pieces that I've absorbed through through other sources. Well,
Speaker 1: so Gulliver's Travels, if you've never read it. Here, it's
Speaker 1: about a it's largely satirical, but it's about a sailor
Speaker 1: who goes to these weird lands that end up being
Speaker 1: sort of humorous portraits of things that Swift Swift observed
Speaker 1: about the world. So they're the lily Putians who are tiny.
Speaker 1: And then I think at some point he goes to
Speaker 1: a place called brobb ding Nag, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: this full of giants. And then he also goes to
Speaker 1: a place where I don't remember the name of it,
Speaker 1: but it's the place where the yahoo's are, where the
Speaker 1: idea of the yah Who's comes from these like a
Speaker 1: sort of sort of cross apes. Well. At one point
Speaker 1: in the book, the Lilliputians catch him up on things
Speaker 1: and inform him that quote. They have likewise discovered two
Speaker 1: lesser stars or satellites, which revolve around Mars, where all
Speaker 1: the innermost is distant from the center of the primary
Speaker 1: exactly three of his diameters and the outmost five. The
Speaker 1: former revolves in the space of ten hours and the
Speaker 1: later in twenty one and a half. Holy cow, that's
Speaker 1: not that far off. Yeah, and that this is what
Speaker 1: m Novella writes about in this blog post. He points
Speaker 1: out quote Phobos and Demos have orbits which are about
Speaker 1: one point four and three point five diameters from Mars center, respectively.
Speaker 1: The Houtians gave figures of three and five. The periods
Speaker 1: of Phobos and Demos are seven point seven and thirty
Speaker 1: point three hours, respectively, while while the Laputians reported ten
Speaker 1: and twenty one point five. These figures are correct to
Speaker 1: within an order of magnitude, which is another way of
Speaker 1: saying that they are wrong. They are reasonable guesses, obviously,
Speaker 1: but do not betray any special knowledge, because basically what
Speaker 1: he's exploring in this blog post is like the question
Speaker 1: what did Swift know? Like why is Swift? Why did
Speaker 1: Swift get this right? Or sort of right or mostly right,
Speaker 1: depending on how you're you're skewing it, Rob, I realized
Speaker 1: I may have led you astray by talking about the
Speaker 1: lily Putians, because I think there are actually two different things.
Speaker 1: They're the Lilliputians and the Laputans. And I think this
Speaker 1: is the Laputans, okay. I think the people of Laputa
Speaker 1: are on a flying island, whereas the lily Pucians are
Speaker 1: somewhere else. They're they're the people who are tiny compared
Speaker 1: to our apologies to the the Putians and the LiTi Pucians. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I ended up going When you mentioned Lily Pucians, I
Speaker 1: ended up going with them because it makes me think
Speaker 1: of Oliver Sacks talking about the Lily Putians in his
Speaker 1: book Hallucinations. Oh, I don't recall that having to do
Speaker 1: with like seeing tiny people. Uh okay, as hallucinations sometimes
Speaker 1: do to I think I can't remember that tied into
Speaker 1: migraines or not. But anyway, fabus book Hallucinations. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really interesting. So I guess the question is like,
Speaker 1: how how close do you have to be in guessing
Speaker 1: stuff like this to to really be impressive? I don't know.
Speaker 1: This seems pretty impressive for not actually knowing anything. Well,
Speaker 1: Novella points out that, first of all, it could just
Speaker 1: be an educated guess um based for starters on how
Speaker 1: Mercury and Venus have zero moons, Earth has one, and
Speaker 1: then Jupiter and Saturn were known to have many moons. Therefore,
Speaker 1: perhaps two felt about right, you know, like you needed
Speaker 1: something between one and many? Uh so why not too? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1: And of course, yeah, you said that it was known
Speaker 1: that these outer planets had many moons, like we've known
Speaker 1: that Jupiter had moons since Galileo. Right, But Novella presents
Speaker 1: another idea that is pretty interesting. Uh and this this
Speaker 1: gets kind of this is a really weird concept of
Speaker 1: because it has to do with uh anagrams and um
Speaker 1: and so forth. But the idea here is that Swift
Speaker 1: may have gotten the notion from Johann Kepler, who concluded
Speaker 1: at one point that Mars had two moons based on
Speaker 1: a misunderstood cryptic anagram the Galileo devised. What so basically,
Speaker 1: in Kepler's sixteen ten memoir, he misconstrued this anagram that
Speaker 1: Galileo put together. You know all these these uh, these
Speaker 1: letters that you're supposed to rearrange into their proper form,
Speaker 1: that he had sent his friends announcing the discovery of
Speaker 1: Saturn's rings. And instead of getting and I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: read the the original phrase here, but instead of getting
Speaker 1: I have observed the highest most distant planet, Saturn to
Speaker 1: have a triple form, instead he got hail twin companionship,
Speaker 1: children of Mars, or I agreet you double knob, children
Speaker 1: of Mars. I agreet you double knob. Sure that's what
Speaker 1: he was writing. Yeah, so in anyway, that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Um Novella also points out that Voltaire also wrote about
Speaker 1: Mars having two moons in the seventeen fifty two book Micromegas.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quote from that quote. But
Speaker 1: let us now return to our travel ers. Upon leaving Jupiter,
Speaker 1: they traversed a space of around one hundred million leagues
Speaker 1: and approached the planet Mars, which as we know, is
Speaker 1: five times smaller than our own. They swung by two
Speaker 1: moons that cater to this planet, but have escaped the
Speaker 1: notice of our astronomers. I know very well that Father
Speaker 1: Castel will write, perhaps even agreeably enough, against the existence
Speaker 1: of these two moons. But I rely on those who
Speaker 1: reasoned by analogy. These good philosophers know how unlikely it
Speaker 1: would be for Mars so far from the Sun to
Speaker 1: have gotten by with less than two moons. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I guess this is a work of fiction as well. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think of of similar I've read Voltaire, but
Speaker 1: not this particular work, but you know, a similar satire
Speaker 1: and fantasy. Well, good job, Jonathan Swift. Yeah uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so he basically got it right. But anyway that none
Speaker 1: of this has anything you know, directly to do with
Speaker 1: the nature of Demos and Phobos, but it's it's interesting nonetheless.
Speaker 1: All right, well, maybe we should talk about some of
Speaker 1: the physical characterists six of Phobos. All right, Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna mostly start with Phobos, and we'll get into
Speaker 1: Demos a bit more in the second episode, as well
Speaker 1: as more stuff about Phobos, because ultimately they are twins
Speaker 1: um and they have a lot in common. So if
Speaker 1: Phobos represents the psyche ravage by war in Uh in
Speaker 1: Greek mythology, then it might be fitting, you know, given
Speaker 1: the nature of the moon named after him, because you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a shattered wreck destined to battle its
Speaker 1: father and perish in the conflict. Now, Phobos is the
Speaker 1: larger of Mars's two moons. It is seventeen by fourteen
Speaker 1: by eleven miles or twenty seven by twenty two by
Speaker 1: eighteen kilometers in diameter, and its shape is is pretty irregular.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like whatever whatever you're imagining. If you
Speaker 1: haven't seen an image of Phobos, it doesn't look like that.
Speaker 1: It looks more like a space potato. Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: people say potato. I would say kind of turnip, or
Speaker 1: if it is a potato. It's not a Russet potato.
Speaker 1: I think it's more like a Yukon gold. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't look very spherical. Um now, it seems to be
Speaker 1: made of C type rock similar to blackish carbonaceous chondrite asteroids.
Speaker 1: And it is, uh, it's absolutely battle scarred. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just there are various tracks on it caused by
Speaker 1: landslides that have occurred, it seems, but it's its surface
Speaker 1: has just been bombarded into dust by impacts. Uh. And
Speaker 1: its largest crater again is named for Stickney, and it
Speaker 1: is um six point two miles or ten kilometers in
Speaker 1: diameter and seems to have been almost violent enough to
Speaker 1: have just destroyed it outright. Yeah, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: picture it in your head, the Stickney crater is so
Speaker 1: large that it essentially is one side of this moon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, yeah, it's just it looks really beat up,
Speaker 1: and it even has these these things that look very
Speaker 1: much like battle scars, like it's been scratched by an
Speaker 1: enormous space cat and these were likely caused by uh,
Speaker 1: you know, various could visions and violence as well. So
Speaker 1: it's just totally beat up. But like the son of
Speaker 1: a brutal war. God, it just keeps going on. It's
Speaker 1: just it keeps clinging to life and uh, and keeps orbiting.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's father. It completes three orbits per day
Speaker 1: and uh. And it has also has the tightest orbit
Speaker 1: of any known moon, orbiting at a mere six thousand
Speaker 1: kilometers or three thousand, seven hundred miles. To put that
Speaker 1: in comparison, our moon is two hundred and thirty eight thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty five miles away or three d
Speaker 1: eighty four thousand, four hundred kilometers away. Yeah, so Phobos
Speaker 1: is really close to the surface of Mars. Demos is
Speaker 1: a good bit farther out, but Phobos. The distance from
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars to Phobos is actually comparable to
Speaker 1: distances between recognizable landmarks on the surface of the Earth.
Speaker 1: Like if there was a road you could drive from
Speaker 1: Mars to Phobos in a couple of days. Like for comparison,
Speaker 1: Google Maps tells me that the dry having distance between
Speaker 1: Miami and Vancouver. So basically, you know, sort of diagonally
Speaker 1: across North America, I mean, not even all the way
Speaker 1: up to Alaska. Uh, that's about thirty four hundred miles
Speaker 1: or roughly kilometers, so just a little bit shorter than
Speaker 1: the distance from Mars to Phobos. Phobos is right in there, right. So,
Speaker 1: while we've joked about extraterrestrial skies and how large planets
Speaker 1: sometimes appear in the sky in various movies or works
Speaker 1: of sci fi art if it's like Battle for Indoor
Speaker 1: or basically any location in the video game No Man Sky,
Speaker 1: despite all that, Mars would actually be quite huge in
Speaker 1: the sky of Phobos if you were standing on its surface.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I actually looked this up to see if
Speaker 1: I could find somebody who had done like a scale
Speaker 1: attempt to create that view, and I could not find it.
Speaker 1: Maybe it exists somewhere out there, but yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be absolutely huge because to look at it from the
Speaker 1: other way, Phobos is, as moons go, extremely tiny. I
Speaker 1: mean it's again you're looking at like like twenty some
Speaker 1: thing kilometers in width depending on which side is facing you. Um, so,
Speaker 1: so this is much much smaller than moons were familiar with,
Speaker 1: like Earth's moons or like the Earth's single moon. I
Speaker 1: didn't mean to suggest the multiple or the larger moons
Speaker 1: of Jupiter or something like that, but from the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars, Phobos appears relatively large. I think I remember
Speaker 1: reading somewhere that it was it looks about a third
Speaker 1: as big as the Moon usually looks from the surface
Speaker 1: of Earth, but it's so much smaller. And the reason
Speaker 1: it looks that big is just how close it is.
Speaker 1: And here's the an added factor at all this, it's
Speaker 1: getting closer. Uh. Phobos edges closer to Mars at a
Speaker 1: rate of six ft or one point eight meters every century,
Speaker 1: So in fifty million years it will probably either crash
Speaker 1: into Mars or break up and become a ring of
Speaker 1: debris around Mars. I hope it goes the ring route. Personally, yeah,
Speaker 1: either way, I think I really like the mythic synergy
Speaker 1: of this because I can easily imagine, you know, this
Speaker 1: terror using war god Phobos just being destined to fight
Speaker 1: his own terrible father and perish one way or another
Speaker 1: in the attempt. You know, yeah, you're not gonna win, dude, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he but he has to, like it's his nature,
Speaker 1: like this is this is what he's been been, you know,
Speaker 1: raised and traumatized to do. What else could possibly happen? Now,
Speaker 1: of course, given the time frame involved here, fifty million years.
Speaker 1: You know, humans don't have to worry about you know,
Speaker 1: it's not one of these things we're like, oh, we
Speaker 1: better not try and land anything on Phobos because it's
Speaker 1: it's doomed, won't you know not, you know, not anytime soon. Um.
Speaker 1: And there have been some proposals that have sought to
Speaker 1: use Phobos as a kind of staging ground for the
Speaker 1: exploration of Mars itself, you know, perhaps for robotics for example. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of we can talk more
Speaker 1: about this in the second episode in this series, but
Speaker 1: there are a lot of reasons that Phobos might be
Speaker 1: really a great place to try to stage space missions.
Speaker 1: One reason, for example, is that it would be if
Speaker 1: you're trying to get something back from Mars or to
Speaker 1: another place in the Solar System from Mars, it's much
Speaker 1: easier to get off of Phobos than it is to
Speaker 1: get off of the surface of Mars itself. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's basically it's like a you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a space station. Um. Now, Phobos has
Speaker 1: no atmosphere. Um. And also gravity on Phobos, uh is
Speaker 1: pretty weak. According to NASA quote, Phobos has only one
Speaker 1: one thousand as much gravitational pull as Earth. A one
Speaker 1: fifty pounds or sixty eight kilogram person would weigh two
Speaker 1: ounces or sixty eight grams there. Um. Yet they do
Speaker 1: point out that NASA's Mars Global Surveyor has shown evidence
Speaker 1: of landslides. You know, we mentioned that that earlier of
Speaker 1: boulders and dust that's fallen back down to the surface
Speaker 1: after being blasted due to various impacts. So the gravity
Speaker 1: there is in play, but it is, you know, it is.
Speaker 1: It is slight compared to the avity of Earth or
Speaker 1: certainly other uh moons out there. Right. Phobos is about
Speaker 1: the mass that if you were to jump on Phobos,
Speaker 1: you could jump really high, but you would eventually fall
Speaker 1: back down right now, Like our moon, the twins of
Speaker 1: Mars are both locked with the same face pointed at
Speaker 1: their planet. Uh. The day side gets reasonably warm from
Speaker 1: human perspective. I think I saw it compared in in
Speaker 1: one NASA document to a a winter day in Chicago,
Speaker 1: while the night side gets extremely cold. Uh. Though again
Speaker 1: there's no atmosphere, so we're talking about surface temperatures here. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no air to do anything. They're right
Speaker 1: the air can't hold the warmth you're just talking about,
Speaker 1: like being blasted by radiation, and I guess whatever is
Speaker 1: radiating back up off of the rock beneath your feet.
Speaker 1: All right, So in discussing Phobos, we should point out
Speaker 1: as well, and we'll probably get more into this maybe
Speaker 1: in the second episode. Is that as of today, as
Speaker 1: of this recording, no one has actually been to Phobos,
Speaker 1: certainly not in person, but even attempts to send probes
Speaker 1: directly to Phobos have failed for various reasons. The Russians
Speaker 1: made two attempts in the late eighties Phobos one and two. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those failed seemingly, I think for technical reasons, and then
Speaker 1: in eleven they attempted to send another one um Phobos
Speaker 1: grunt to Phobos. That's felled f O b O S
Speaker 1: g r U n T in uh. The the at
Speaker 1: least the English language literature. It was going to collect
Speaker 1: two grams of soil, but that didn't quite work out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a proposed sample return mission. Would have been
Speaker 1: really cool if we could have gotten some of Phobos
Speaker 1: back here to Earth to study. But it failed. I
Speaker 1: think it actually was it failed in orbit before it
Speaker 1: began its journey to Mars and just ended up stuck
Speaker 1: in Earth orbit without the ability to travel. Now, various
Speaker 1: other missions have been proposed and are being considered ard
Speaker 1: but nothing is launched as of this recording. UM. But
Speaker 1: missions to Mars have and will continue to capture images
Speaker 1: of the moons. Uh, you know if for starters, like
Speaker 1: once again, it's it's fairly visible in the sky if
Speaker 1: you catch it at the right time. So that has
Speaker 1: been one of the ways that we've captured images of it.
Speaker 1: Also the fly bys. Oh, one thing I forgot to
Speaker 1: mention about Phobos Grunt was actually, uh, it was a
Speaker 1: Russian mission, but it was also a joint venture with
Speaker 1: the Chinese Space Program and so the Chinese had part
Speaker 1: part of the mission as well. And then also part
Speaker 1: of what they were going to do was they were
Speaker 1: going to they had some micro organisms aboard and they
Speaker 1: were going to study how the round trip from the
Speaker 1: from Earth to the moons of Mars and then back
Speaker 1: to Earth affected these micro organisms that were on the payload.
Speaker 1: I think the Planetary Society had a had a small
Speaker 1: uh experiment that was aboard as well. Yeah, yeah, was
Speaker 1: that the was that the micro organisms that may have
Speaker 1: been actually yes, yeah, but a any rate it did
Speaker 1: not come to pass. Uh, So we did not get
Speaker 1: to bring anything back from the surface of Phobos. We
Speaker 1: didn't get to have any thing directly investigate the surface
Speaker 1: of Phobos, which is a shame, because there there's some
Speaker 1: interesting features there to say the least. Oh. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: if we were to begin a curiosity tour of the
Speaker 1: surface of Phobos, I think one of the top things
Speaker 1: to look at would be the Phobos Monolith. Monolith. You
Speaker 1: say monolith, I say, so, there is a giant rock
Speaker 1: on the surface of Phobos against the relatively smooth, cratered background.
Speaker 1: And I mean smooth, not because not because it's like
Speaker 1: a featureless surface. There are many craters, but it's not
Speaker 1: very craggy, if that makes any sense. It is, uh.
Speaker 1: It is kind of dust covered and dimpled but not
Speaker 1: not not sharp angles. And against this relatively smooth background,
Speaker 1: there is this rock that stands out like a white
Speaker 1: tower in the great dust, and it shines really bright
Speaker 1: in the sun and it casts this long looming tail
Speaker 1: of shade across the ground behind it. And judging by
Speaker 1: the length of its shadow, some astronomers have estimated that
Speaker 1: this rock is about ninety meters tall or about three
Speaker 1: hundred feet, and for this reason, some media outlets describe
Speaker 1: it as building sized. I guess that's reasonable. If it's
Speaker 1: like three d feet tall, it's like a small office building.
Speaker 1: But you're you're you're also bringing to mind certain ideas
Speaker 1: about what it might be when you say it's building sized. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's like if I were to say it was
Speaker 1: it's giant robot sized. Yeah. Uh So this rock has
Speaker 1: come to be known as the Phobos monolith, and it
Speaker 1: is one of the geologic features of our solar system
Speaker 1: that is genuinely exquisitely interesting, but you know, like so
Speaker 1: many others, in many cases appreciated for all the wrong reasons. Uh.
Speaker 1: The the it's aliens crowd loves this rock, now, why
Speaker 1: would that be. Well, a major point of departure here
Speaker 1: seems to be originally a c SPAN clip, which is
Speaker 1: not where you might expect, you know, sort of conspiracy
Speaker 1: minded ideas to originate from c SPAN. You generally pretty uh,
Speaker 1: pretty dry and pretty by the numbers. Yeah, I oh,
Speaker 1: I like c Span And actually I would say there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with this clip. It's just people misinterpreting a
Speaker 1: clip or selectively quoting from a clip. So this originally
Speaker 1: I think aired in July of two thousand nine, that's
Speaker 1: at least when the version I found was uploaded. But
Speaker 1: in this clip, the revered American astronaut Buzz Aldren, who
Speaker 1: of course, along with Neil Armstrong, was one of the
Speaker 1: first two human beings to walk on the Moon, that
Speaker 1: was during the Apollo eleven landing in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: He is being interviewed on the c SPAN program Washington Journal,
Speaker 1: and I believe this was in the context of originally
Speaker 1: talking about human colonization of Earth's Moon, but Aldren starts
Speaker 1: talking about the general impetus for exploration of looking at
Speaker 1: things that people find curious or inspiring about the about
Speaker 1: the Solar system at large, and using that sort of
Speaker 1: like public rapture about strange and interesting features of the
Speaker 1: Solar system to to motivate scientific exploration of them, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just say returning to the Moon exclusively. And
Speaker 1: Aldrin says, quote, we should go boldly where man has
Speaker 1: not gone before. Fly by the comets, visit asteroids, visit
Speaker 1: the moon of Mars. There's a monolith. They're a very
Speaker 1: unusual structure on this little potato shaped object that goes
Speaker 1: around Mars once in seven hours. When people find out
Speaker 1: about that, they're gonna say, who put that there? Who
Speaker 1: put that there? Now, it seems like when the alien
Speaker 1: websites clipped this out, they stopped the quote right there
Speaker 1: and then they, you know, slap a headline on it,
Speaker 1: like buzz alder and let's slip the alien conspiracy. Of course,
Speaker 1: the next thing Aldren says is, well, the universe put
Speaker 1: it there, or if you choose, God put it there,
Speaker 1: and then he moves on to other topics. You can
Speaker 1: look this clip up yourself. So obviously Aldern is not
Speaker 1: alleging that this monolith is of artificial origin. He's not
Speaker 1: only not alleging that he's explicitly saying the exact opposite,
Speaker 1: it is of natural origin. But of course that's not
Speaker 1: going to stop the usual suspects from using this clip
Speaker 1: as evidence of the alien cover up conspiracy. Uh And so,
Speaker 1: of course, the the Internet's favorite hoax hype man and
Speaker 1: general disinformation source Alex Jones, has it several times tried
Speaker 1: to suggest that buzz Aldren might be saying he believes
Speaker 1: it was made by aliens like uh. During a two
Speaker 1: thousand nine interview, and that might actually be the weirdest
Speaker 1: thing here is that Alex Jones actually did do an
Speaker 1: interview with Buzz Aldren in two thousand nine. I guess
Speaker 1: at the time nobody really knew who Alex Jones was.
Speaker 1: But during this interview, Jones tried to suggest that buzz
Speaker 1: Aldren might believe that this monolith was made by aliens,
Speaker 1: and in a more recent clip I found Jones is
Speaker 1: saying that Aldren actually told him in that two thousand
Speaker 1: nine interview that the Phobos monolith was quote sending a
Speaker 1: transmission and quote it's all Egypt. There's aliens and everything else.
Speaker 1: It's all Egypt. Yeah, it's all Egypt. There's aliens and
Speaker 1: everything else. And I saw that, I was like, what
Speaker 1: what could he even be referring to? Like, I didn't
Speaker 1: believe that Aldren had actually said that, but I wonder, like,
Speaker 1: what's he basing this claim on. So I said, what
Speaker 1: the heck, I'll actually look it up and the result
Speaker 1: was hilarious. So again, the weirdest thing about this to
Speaker 1: me is that at some point Alex Jones actually did
Speaker 1: interview the second person to walk on the Moon. Um,
Speaker 1: but so in the interview, he does ask Aldrin about this,
Speaker 1: and Aldrin says the exact opposite of what Jones claims.
Speaker 1: So Jones asks him, while if I'm not mistaken, I
Speaker 1: think showing him a picture of the wrong object. I
Speaker 1: think he's showing him a picture of an object from
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars. But he says, what does this
Speaker 1: look like to you? And Aldrin respond on he says,
Speaker 1: it's a big, big, tall rock. Now I can say,
Speaker 1: maybe it looks like a crude construction device by some
Speaker 1: creatures who practiced on Phobos and then landed in Egypt
Speaker 1: and built the Pyramids. And then he starts laughing and says,
Speaker 1: I don't really believe that, but some people are liable
Speaker 1: to think that. So Aldrin is making fun of and
Speaker 1: then explicitly rejecting the claim that Jones attributes to him.
Speaker 1: Not only did he not say what Jones claims, he
Speaker 1: says literally exactly the opposite. This is interesting. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a real real cherry picking of you know picking. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like like he's saying, I'm not saying it's aliens at all,
Speaker 1: it's actually this, but he's but then it's like he
Speaker 1: said the word aliens in the sentence, so he's basically
Speaker 1: saying it's aliens. Well, the claim that Jones is referring
Speaker 1: to their is Aldrin making fun of people like Alex Jones.
Speaker 1: He's saying, like, you know, I could say that the
Speaker 1: this was aliens practicing building the pyramids, and you know,
Speaker 1: you have to admit like that idea, even though it
Speaker 1: raises additional questions, is a fantastic idea, and you should
Speaker 1: see why people would be drawn to it and wanted
Speaker 1: to be true. I mean, what does it mean? What
Speaker 1: what would it mean for ancient Egypt? What would it
Speaker 1: mean for life in our solar system? It brings so
Speaker 1: many sort of vague, half form but promising science fiction
Speaker 1: ideas to mind. I have so many funny questions about
Speaker 1: So here's one random thought. If there were actually a
Speaker 1: conspiracy to cover up the existence of an alien office
Speaker 1: building or a practice pyramid on the surface of Phobos,
Speaker 1: why would buzz Aldren know about it? Like, do you
Speaker 1: all retired astronauts just get a regular digest of the
Speaker 1: alien cover up? You know, like they get a dossier
Speaker 1: every week. It's like, here's all the alien evidence we've
Speaker 1: covered up in the past quarter well, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this a little bit. On one hand, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: kind of the loose idea that well, they were they
Speaker 1: were part of the space exploration and system, you know,
Speaker 1: so perhaps they have privileged information or they've been to space,
Speaker 1: so maybe they know about space, but you know, in
Speaker 1: secret ways. But then I also was thinking, well, maybe
Speaker 1: this goes back, Maybe this is deeper, like maybe this
Speaker 1: connects to a lot of our mythological ideas about people
Speaker 1: who are you know, taken up that ascend into heaven
Speaker 1: you know, so here is, or or have descended into
Speaker 1: the underworld. So here is a case where someone has
Speaker 1: literally traveled to what you could easily classify as another world.
Speaker 1: They have traveled beyond our world to another and returned.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's it's amazing, don't get me wrong. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the the lunar missions were incredible technological achievements
Speaker 1: and and achievements of just a human courage and ingenuity. Um,
Speaker 1: but they were not other worldly journeys. But I wonder
Speaker 1: if the two you know, become uh you know, wound
Speaker 1: together in the sort of the collective imagination, like you know,
Speaker 1: I had to I had within the you know, the
Speaker 1: time or two that we've been around astronauts or spoken
Speaker 1: to an astronaut, it has entered my mind like this
Speaker 1: person has left the earth. You know. It's like in
Speaker 1: in a not in a you know, I you know,
Speaker 1: I know that I'm I'm talking to an accomplished human
Speaker 1: being when we're doing this, But there's there's a part
Speaker 1: of me that is like, this person's maybe not completely
Speaker 1: human anymore, like they're not completely of earth because they
Speaker 1: have left Earth, you know, you know, in an you know,
Speaker 1: like unformed way, This bipedal primate like me has been
Speaker 1: touched by the gods. Now, yeah, so I wonder if
Speaker 1: you know, to to some extent we were sort of
Speaker 1: hardwired to make those connections due to our our myths
Speaker 1: and our you know, our religious um stories, etcetera. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I can see that tendency. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I think with this kind of thing, the logic is
Speaker 1: very loose. And on one hand, I mean, I would
Speaker 1: say with somebody like Alex Jones, I mean, he just
Speaker 1: this is just a person with a propensity to spread lies.
Speaker 1: But I would say as for the the broader, uh
Speaker 1: tenacity of this misunderstanding about this object, on the surface
Speaker 1: of Phobos. I think maybe part of the misunderstanding might
Speaker 1: just come from the word monolith. This would tie back
Speaker 1: to back into the idea you brought up when I
Speaker 1: was first introducing the subject about calling it building sized,
Speaker 1: which I mean, I guess it is also calling it
Speaker 1: a monolith. I mean, this object does appear to be
Speaker 1: a monolith. That is a literally accurate description. It's a
Speaker 1: single piece of rock. But unfortunately, by its association with
Speaker 1: two thousand one of Space Odyssey, that word now has
Speaker 1: some baggage, you know, of of associations with artificial origin.
Speaker 1: Of course, there are tons of natural monoliths on Earth.
Speaker 1: The world is full of them. But when you say monolith,
Speaker 1: I think, especially in anybody who's who's ever seen a
Speaker 1: science fiction film or anything that has any derivative of
Speaker 1: science fiction, has has a certainly a way of two
Speaker 1: thousand and one of Space Odyssey, and so you think
Speaker 1: of the monolith. Right. So if that's causing confusion for you,
Speaker 1: you could just say the huge rock on Phobos. Uh.
Speaker 1: But anyway, whether or not you would expect a retired
Speaker 1: astronaut to have any special insight on this subject, it
Speaker 1: is absolutely false that Aldrin claimed that Phobos. The Phobos
Speaker 1: monolith was of artificial origin, he said, the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: So that leads to the question what is its real origin?
Speaker 1: And I found a good article on the BBC from
Speaker 1: s by Colin Barriss that tried to look into this question. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: given that there's this huge, weird looking boulder jutting up
Speaker 1: out of the surface of Phobos, where did it come from? Well, again,
Speaker 1: according to our best images, the monolith does appear to
Speaker 1: be some kind of giant boulder. It's about ninety ms
Speaker 1: or roughly three hundred feet tall, as I said, and
Speaker 1: it's on a surface region of Phobos that is otherwise uh,
Speaker 1: free of large craggy features like this. I was trying
Speaker 1: to communicate exactly what I meant when I smooth isn't
Speaker 1: quite the right word, because it has all these craters
Speaker 1: and dimples in it. But the craters and everything look
Speaker 1: relatively I don't know, rounded, as as the surfaces of
Speaker 1: dusty objects in space often do. And this thing looks
Speaker 1: I guess you would say. The angles appear uncharacteristically sharp.
Speaker 1: So imagine a you know, office building sized boulder in
Speaker 1: the middle of a field in Kansas that otherwise has
Speaker 1: some kind of big soft craters in it. Now, the
Speaker 1: Phobos monolith has not really been the subject of much
Speaker 1: high profile scientific study, but it seems consistent with surface
Speaker 1: features that are produced by normal natural processes on the
Speaker 1: surface of moons and planets. So this could be a
Speaker 1: giant boulder that fell off of, say the edge of
Speaker 1: a crater in a in a rock slide or something
Speaker 1: like that. And furthermore, there is pretty clear evidence that
Speaker 1: whatever Phobos itself is, it has at various points in
Speaker 1: the past experienced asteroid impacts, so the monolith could also
Speaker 1: be a giant shard of rock that was ejected from
Speaker 1: some past impact. But then Barris draws attention to another
Speaker 1: really interesting option, which is that the Phobos monolith could
Speaker 1: also possibly be a chunk of Mars itself, and as
Speaker 1: as evidence of this, he points to the precedent of
Speaker 1: a study by Kenneth R. Ramsley and James W. Head,
Speaker 1: the third published in the journal Planetary and Space Science
Speaker 1: in two thousand thirteen called Mars Impact Ejecta in the
Speaker 1: Regular of Phobos Bulk Concentration and Distribution. Basically, the idea
Speaker 1: is that the surface of Phobos is blanketed in little
Speaker 1: bits of Mars, and I think mostly these would just
Speaker 1: be very small particles, but they could include larger particles.
Speaker 1: And the authors estimate based on some calculations that the
Speaker 1: bulk concentration of Mars ejective fragments in the upper Phobos
Speaker 1: regulars is about two hundred and fifty parts per millions.
Speaker 1: So if you're looking at the stuff on the surface
Speaker 1: of Phobos, about two hundred and fifty parts per million
Speaker 1: of that stuff is actually stuff that's from the planet Mars.
Speaker 1: And this again would come from uh from impacts. Like
Speaker 1: the majority of it is going to be smaller particles,
Speaker 1: but when objects strike the surface of Mars with high energy,
Speaker 1: bits of Mars sometimes get blasted into orbit, and some
Speaker 1: of those bits are going to end up settling on
Speaker 1: the surface of Phobos. And of course this brings us
Speaker 1: back again to what we were talking about earlier. Remember
Speaker 1: that Phobos orbits very close to the surface of Mars
Speaker 1: compared to most moons, so you can imagine that it's
Speaker 1: easier for parts of Mars to end up on the
Speaker 1: surface of Phobos than it would be for parts of
Speaker 1: the surface of a planet to end up on a moon.
Speaker 1: That's orbiting much farther away. But Barris mentions another possibility,
Speaker 1: writing quote Alternatively, the Phobos monolith might not have formed
Speaker 1: during an impact. It could be a rare chunk of
Speaker 1: the moon solid bedrock, poking up through a surface that
Speaker 1: is otherwise mostly strewn with loose debris. So imagine that
Speaker 1: kind of a Devil's tower of Phobos, like poking up
Speaker 1: out of where everything else around it has is covered
Speaker 1: with enough dust to look pretty smooth. And Barriss writes
Speaker 1: that if this is true, if it's you know, some
Speaker 1: some feature of the underlying rock of Phobos, if it's
Speaker 1: a devil's tower kind of thing. Uh. If this is true,
Speaker 1: studying the monolith could actually help us solve some of
Speaker 1: the mysteries about the origin of Phobos, like where did
Speaker 1: these strange moons come from in the first place, which
Speaker 1: I guess maybe we'll come back to at the beginning
Speaker 1: of part two of this series. But just a couple
Speaker 1: of other notes about the Phobos monolith. One is that
Speaker 1: it looks really cool and you should look it up,
Speaker 1: but source your images carefully. I was coming across a
Speaker 1: lot of photos on the web that seem to be
Speaker 1: labeled as if they are the Phobos Monolith, but I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure they're not. Some of them just look like
Speaker 1: they're from a movie or something, and I think others
Speaker 1: are pictures of things that are actually on the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars itself. But then one other thing I found
Speaker 1: out was that Les Claypool and Sean O. O. Lennon
Speaker 1: have an album that is named after the Phobos Monolith.
Speaker 1: Rob I sent you a link. Did you have a
Speaker 1: chance to listen or not? I have not had a
Speaker 1: chance to listen to it yet. I haven't heard any
Speaker 1: of Claypool stuff with with Oh, no, I've I'm of course,
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with Primus and NF Scene, Primus Live. And
Speaker 1: I'm I'm familiar with his work with uh with with
Speaker 1: Trey Anastasio in Oyster Head. Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have some some good stuff there too, But no, I haven't.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard Phobos Monolith. Well. I only got to
Speaker 1: listen to a little bit. But it is very weird,
Speaker 1: but with less of the cheese related humor that you
Speaker 1: associate with older less Claypool works. It seems a little
Speaker 1: a little more sober perhaps, uh and actually a little
Speaker 1: a little more sober and has some relatively scientifically accurate lyrics.
Speaker 1: I can't vouch for the whole thing, but the part
Speaker 1: I was listening to was talking about the Phobos monolith
Speaker 1: and buzz Aldrin, and I think everything that it said
Speaker 1: about the everything I recall it saying about the monolith
Speaker 1: and the moon was scientifically correct. Quote the monolith of Phobos,
Speaker 1: it stares buzz in the eye. It bids him question
Speaker 1: while we live and do or die? Okay, checks out. Wait, wait,
Speaker 1: that's not the part I was thinking. Maybe that went
Speaker 1: by me. I remember him talking about He had some
Speaker 1: part about the moon being sort of tat or shaped,
Speaker 1: which seems reasonable, even though we maybe turnip is better.
Speaker 1: I think he also mentioned that its orbit is decaying
Speaker 1: over time, so it's moving closer to Mars, which is true. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well the next two lines are the monolith of Phobos,
Speaker 1: it stares buzz in the eye on a tat shaped
Speaker 1: moon that's falling from the sky. Okay, so that's that's
Speaker 1: that's more accurate. Yeah, And and then there's also some
Speaker 1: part about it like it. It doesn't say it's aliens,
Speaker 1: It just says that like the monolith raises a bunch
Speaker 1: of questions, which is true. It does raise questions. It
Speaker 1: some genuine and scientific uh, others not so much. Um,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, still, I mean it's it is something
Speaker 1: like the monolith of Phobos as real. As we've said, Uh,
Speaker 1: you just need to be be careful about what image
Speaker 1: you're you're pulling up of it and uh and what
Speaker 1: interpretation you're reading regarding it. Now. As we've mentioned already,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest mysteries about Phobos and demos is
Speaker 1: where these moons come from in the first place? What
Speaker 1: is their origin? Because they have a number of features
Speaker 1: that seem to be, at least on the surface level,
Speaker 1: contradictory and point off in different directions when you're looking
Speaker 1: for an origin story. And I think maybe that's where
Speaker 1: we should start when we come back in part two.
Speaker 1: Where do these moons come from? And how were they made? Yeah? So,
Speaker 1: so join us. Will also be some some at least
Speaker 1: from today's standpoint, kind of out there sounding hypotheses about
Speaker 1: about what what what these moons are. Uh, so it'll
Speaker 1: be it'll be fun. So join us in our next
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow your mind as we continue
Speaker 1: our exploration of Phobos and demos the Moons of Mars.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to check out
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you know
Speaker 1: where to find them. Core episodes come out Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: In the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed Monday's
Speaker 1: we do a bit of listener mail. Wednesdays that's when
Speaker 1: we do the artifact. On Friday's we do a little
Speaker 1: weird house cinema where we we set most of the
Speaker 1: science aside and just talk about a weird movie. And
Speaker 1: on the weekend we do a little bit of uh,
Speaker 1: a little vault episode. We do a little rerun for you.
Speaker 1: So that's what six days out of seven, and on
Speaker 1: the seventh day we rest or, we run an ad sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, we get ready for the first day again. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, huge, thanks as always to our wonderful audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other to suggest a topic for the future, we're
Speaker 1: just to say hello. You can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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