WEBVTT - From the Vault: Phobos and Deimos, Part 2 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.800 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:10.680 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:13.600 Time to go into the vault. This is Phobos and Demos, 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:16.200 Part two, picking up where we left off last Saturday. 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:22.239 This originally aired on April. All right, let's jump right in. 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:28.120 Welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:37.640 Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:40.920 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:42.800 we're back with part two of our talk about the 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:46.760 moons of Mars, Phobos and Demos. Now, in the last episode, 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:49.760 we talked a bit about the mythology behind the moons 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:53.560 of Mars, the companions and sons of the war god 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:57.200 Aries the Roman Mars, the god of War, and we 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:59.600 talked about how the names of these came to be 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:02.960 applied to the moons of Mars, these two small objects 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:06.080 that were discovered in the late nineteenth century. We talked 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:09.280 about that discovery story. We talked about some of the 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:13.040 basic properties of Phobos and Demos and why there is 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.399 some question about what their origin was. We're gonna get 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.320 into more detail about that today. And we ended up 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:24.720 talking about a bizarre conspiracy theory about an interesting surface 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:27.760 feature of Phobos that really had nothing to it. But 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.800 the surface feature, known as the Phobos Monolith, is inherently 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.360 very interesting. Yeah, and so in this episode, we're gonna 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:38.160 we're gonna cover more interesting stuff about Phobos and demos, uh, 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.319 stuff about the history of its exploration. We'll get into 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:47.319 another idea that conspiracy theorists seem to really like concerning 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:49.840 one of the two moons. There'll be a dash of 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:53.400 mythology here and there, but it should be a fun ride, now, Robin. 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:56.840 The last episode, we were talking about how close the 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:01.040 moon Phobos is to Mars. It is the loosest moon 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:05.120 to its host planet in the entire Solar System. Uh, 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:07.160 it's so close. I think it's a it's a matter 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:10.720 of you know, just like several thousand kilometers. It's a 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.399 distance that is a little bit longer than the driving 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:18.920 distance between Miami and Vancouver, as we talked about the 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:21.200 last time. So you know, if you if there were 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:24.040 a road between them, you could drive it in two 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:27.800 or three days. And that's incredibly close for a moon 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:30.640 to uh to orbit its host planet. But I found 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:33.000 Another point of comparison that we didn't make in the 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:37.160 last episode that I thought was absolutely astounding, and it's 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:41.840 that the moon Phobos orbits so close to the surface 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:45.360 of Mars that if you are standing near the polar 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:49.560 regions of Mars, sometimes you can't see the Moon even 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.240 when it's on the same side of the planet as you, 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:56.359 because it's blocked by the horizon. It's orbiting down near 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:59.359 the equator and you can't see it over the curvature 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:03.360 of Mars itself. That that's unbelievable. Yeah, that is that 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:05.880 is pretty amazing. And of course, as we discussed, it's 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.040 getting closer to Mars and will eventually, uh you know, 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:12.920 millions and millions of years in the future, will actually 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:16.840 crash into Mars or break up in orbit and become 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:21.320 a new ring around the planet. Yeah, they're gonna tussle. Yeah. 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:24.600 But one of the things we also alluded to in 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.560 the last episode is that these two moons, Phobos and Demos, 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:32.760 have extremely weird properties that really raise questions about where 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:34.840 they come from in the first place. And you can 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:37.560 ask this about moons all throughout the Solar System, like 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:42.160 there is some question about where the moon of Earth 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:44.720 came from those. There's a there's a pretty strong leading 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:48.200 theory that is the giant impact hypothesis, the idea that 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.200 early during the formation of Earth, Earth was hit by 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:56.160 a planetestimal or you know, a Mars sized object roughly, 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:00.200 and that giant impact created a bunch of debris and 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:04.000 eventually the what was left over coalesced into the Earth 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.119 and then the Moon in orbit around the Earth. Indeed, uh, 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:10.720 certain properties of these moons as well discussed here, tend 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.000 to lend themselves more to one interpretation, and other properties 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:18.240 if you focus on those, lend towards another interpretation, which 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:21.640 leads to just a fair amount of you know, continued confusion, 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:25.000 but also intense fascination. Yeah. There's an article about this 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:27.039 that we were both reading that kind of sums up 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:29.400 some of the debate pretty nicely. It was published in 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:32.320 The New York Times by Robin George Andrews in July, 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:37.680 called why the super weird Moons of Mars Fascinates Scientists, 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:40.440 and it briefly goes over some of the arguments either 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:42.920 way is now um. One of the things that points 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:45.640 out is that if you're just to look at the 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:48.960 what the moons appear to be made of you know, 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.720 they're they're sort of physical characteristics in and of themselves. 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:58.000 They look a lot like captured asteroids, asteroids that at 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:01.080 some point would have been bumped off course and then 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:04.160 caught in the gravity well of Mars, so that they 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:08.720 ended up just orbiting Mars permanently. Yeah, the the the 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:12.440 asteroid capture hypothesis, which which which is a popular one, 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:17.279 but it doesn't quite explain everything right now in its favor. 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:19.400 One of the main things that has going for it 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:23.000 is that the material that the Martian moons are made 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:27.159 of looks a lot like asteroid type material. Yeah, so 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:29.720 that they they look like asteroids. They seem to be 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:32.880 composed of the same material as asteroids, And yeah, they 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:35.479 would have just ended up too close to mars gravitational 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:39.440 pull and would have been simply orbitally dominated by the 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:43.760 planet Mars. The god of War says, you too, you 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:47.159 you shattered wrecks. You are now my son's come with me, 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:49.920 right into battle with me. It's like in the cop 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:53.440 movie when you commandeer the vehicle. You know, I'm commandeering 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:55.920 this vehicle, or James Bond gets into somebody's car and 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:58.080 drives off with it, or I guess it would be 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:00.440 more like tying a car to you and making it 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:02.840 swing around you. I guess that analogy isn't that great, 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.640 But yeah, it's it's saying you're coming with me now, right. 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.120 But the other interesting thing is that they have that 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:13.120 kind of throws this off. Is they have near equatorial orbits, 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:15.960 and Is Andrews points out in this article this suggests 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:19.520 that they coalesced from a disc of debris that danced 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.719 around a very young Mars. So it basically it's just 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:27.159 all too neat and tidy surely to be an asteroid capture. 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:29.560 So in other words, like, okay, if there, if it's 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.960 asteroid capture, these are like wildcats. But if they're wildcats, 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:38.160 why are they behaving like orbital house cats? So so 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:41.080 that's that's part of the big confusion here. Yeah, so 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:43.880 you've got some creepy space yukon golds that look like 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:47.840 they're made of roughly asteroid stuff. But the way they 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:50.440 orbit Mars, it's a couple of things actually that their 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:54.800 orbits are near equatorial, meaning that they orbit basically, you know, 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:58.239 not exactly but pretty close to around the equator line 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:01.720 of Mars. You know, in between polls. And then the 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:05.839 other part is that their orbits are nearly perfectly circular. 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.560 And this is just not what you would expect to 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:11.880 see with a captured asteroid. If an asteroid came in 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:16.400 that was originally orbiting the Sun at a different speed 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:18.800 and then it just got stuck in the gravity well 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:22.080 of Mars, what you would probably expect to see is 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:26.280 that its orbit would be more irregular, some more stretched out, right. 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.040 You know, that's often when something gets captured by an 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.400 object and it was originally on its own trajectory, it 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:34.800 tends to have a more stretched out oval type orbit. 0:07:35.080 --> 0:07:37.000 But then the other thing is you would expect its 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:39.920 orbit to be tilted at a steeper angle rather than 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:44.880 neatly orbiting pretty close to its equatorial line. And then 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:47.840 there's one more factor that I think is worth considering. 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.360 This is actually cited in that article in The New 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:54.800 York Times by Robin George Andrews. And Andrews quotes a 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:59.840 Japanese scientist named Tomohiro Usui who points out that also 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:03.520 Mars gravity is pretty weak. I mean, you know, you 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:07.000 can capture an asteroid, but Tamohiro Sui points out that 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:11.440 Mars has like a tenth of Earth's mass, So it's 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:14.680 kind of improbable that it would be able to capture 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:18.360 two asteroids that are traveling by at orbital speeds, you know, 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.920 speeds of orbiting the Sun. So it just seems kind 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:24.960 of unlikely as an origin story for them, and their 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:27.600 orbits really don't seem to match what you would expect 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:32.760 from from asteroid capture. Now, there is another hypothesis that 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:36.600 would make some sense, which is that what if the 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:42.080 moons of Mars were formed from a debris disc that 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:47.160 was kicked up into orbit around Mars after a colossal impact. 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:50.520 So not exactly the same as but but similar to 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:54.040 one of the leading ideas about where the Earth's moon 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:57.880 comes from. There's a giant impact on Mars at some point, 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.520 and that shoots all this stuff in to space around Mars, 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:06.040 which gradually coalesces into a disc that's in orbit around Mars, 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:10.960 and then that disc gravitationally coalesces into solid objects, these 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:14.600 two moons. Now there's some reasons for doubting that as well. 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:16.960 I mean, one idea offered in this article is that 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:19.920 demos is orbit is maybe a little too far out 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:23.520 to be explained that way, but that could possibly be overcome. 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:27.160 One paper I was looking at that supports the idea 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.200 of a giant impact is The original source of Phobos 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:36.679 and Demos was published in Nature Geoscience by Pascal Rosenblatt 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:39.920 at all and it's called accretion of Phobos and Demos 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:45.120 in an extended debris disc stirred by transient moons um 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:48.800 and so that they write in their abstract that quote. 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:52.320 Here we use numerical simulations to suggest that Phobos and 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:55.800 Demos accreeded from the outer portion of a debris disc 0:09:56.280 --> 0:10:00.599 formed after a giant impact on Mars. In our mulations, 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:04.240 larger moons form from material in the denser inner disc 0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:08.400 and migrate outwards due to gravitational interactions with the disc. 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:13.280 The resulting orbital resonances spread outwards and gathered dispersed outer 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:17.920 disc debris, facilitating accretion into two satellites of sizes similar 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:21.600 to Phobos and Demos. The larger inner moons fall back 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:24.440 to Mars after about five million years due to the 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:27.640 title poll of the planet, after which the two outer 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:32.000 satellites evolve into Phobos and Demos like orbits. The proposed 0:10:32.040 --> 0:10:36.319 scenario can explain why Mars has two small satellites instead 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.640 of one large moon. Our model predicts that Phobos and 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:43.079 Demos are composed of a mixture of material from Mars 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.920 and the impact or so. Again, this would be kind 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:49.480 of similar to the Earth's moon origin story. There's a 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:53.160 giant impact on Mars long long ago. It spits out 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:56.600 all this debris into orbit around Mars that forms into 0:10:56.720 --> 0:11:01.840 multiple moons at different orbital distances, and interactions between those 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:06.240 eventually cause inner moons to be destroyed spiraling into Mars 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:09.839 as Phobos will one day do, and then UH, and 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:13.640 then these other objects to coalesce into the current orbits 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:16.480 that we see for Phobos and Demos. So that's one 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:20.600 plausible possibility they've put together. Yeah, and this satisfies some 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:22.680 of the mysteries that we discussed earlier. How can it 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:26.079 be uh and have the qualities of an asteroid capture 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.360 but also have the qualities of something that formed out 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:32.520 of a disk around Mars. Now we've mentioned that Phobos 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:36.240 as its spirals into Mars will probably break apart. I mean, 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:38.720 we mentioned a couple options. It could just crash into Mars. 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:42.079 More of the sources that I was reading seemed to 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:44.559 suggest that the more likely option is that as it 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:47.560 spirals into Mars, it will be sort of ripped apart 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:50.400 by tidal forces and it will break up and become 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:55.640 rings in orbit around Mars. But really interesting question that 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.480 I came across in another study in Nature Geoscience, this 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:02.640 one published in This is the question of what if 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:06.080 this future scenario where Phobos breaks up in orbit around 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:09.760 Mars and becomes rings, what if that has already happened. 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:14.800 Very interesting origin hypothesis for for these two moons. So 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:19.079 this is by Andrew J. Hessel Brock and David A. Minton. Again, 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:23.640 that's Nature Geoscience in seen called an ongoing satellite ring 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:26.920 cycle of Mars and the origins of Phobos and Demos. 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:30.600 Now this uh. This explanation has a similar beginning as 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:33.240 the last one, but some of the details are different. 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:36.640 Again to read from their abstract, the Martian moons Phobos 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:40.240 and Demos may have acreated from a ring of impact debris, 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.360 but explaining their origin from a single giant impact has 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.720 proven difficult. One clue may lie in the orbit of 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.680 Phobos that is slowly decaying as the satellite undergoes tidal 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:55.400 interactions with Mars. In about seventy million years, Phobos is 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:58.640 predicted to reach the location of title, breakup and break 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:02.120 apart to form a new ring around the planet. Here, 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:05.360 we use numerical simulations to suggest that the resulting ring 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:10.080 will viscously spread to eventually deposit about eight percent of 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:14.480 debris onto Mars. The remaining twenty of debris will accrete 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:19.320 into a new generation of satellites. Furthermore, we propose that 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:24.640 this process has occurred repeatedly throughout Martian history. In our simulations, 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:27.840 beginning with a large satellite formed after giant impact with 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.480 early Mars, we find that between three and seven ring 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:35.800 satellite cycles over the past four point three billion years 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.400 can explain Phobos and Demos as they are observed today. 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:43.800 Such a scenario implies the deposition of significant ring material 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:48.439 onto Mars during each cycle. We hypothesize that some anomalous 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:52.079 sedimentary deposits observed on Mars maybe linked to these periodic 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:56.720 episodes of ring deposition. So Phobos or the ancestor of 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:00.400 Phobos could have been once much larger, maybe twenty times 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:04.400 more massive. But then there's this pattern that repeats over time, 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:07.880 almost like you know, the mythological cycle of history, where 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:12.160 there's orbital decay. It's it's going closer and closer down 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:15.959 into Mars. It shatters from tidal forces. It's you know, turned, 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.080 It splits apart into a million pieces, forms a ring 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.360 around Mars. The pieces of the ring then coalesce into 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.440 a moon, and then repeat with the moon getting smaller 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:28.360 every cycle. I love this because if you if you 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:31.400 take it and then apply it to the mythological model 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:34.440 that we've been discussing here, you have Mars, who is 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.440 you know, actually more the the you know, we can 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:41.320 would think more of the Greek war god aries representing 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:44.800 the worst of war, just the the bloodshed and the screams. 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:47.440 Just this awful deity, the god of the screams of 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:49.360 the dying. Yeah, yeah, the god of the screams of 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:51.320 the dying. And so it makes sense that his two 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:54.280 loyal sons who are destined to rebel against him have 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:57.480 always rebelled against him, Like there's a cycle of them 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:02.560 rebelling against the Almighty Fad. They're here being destroyed, breaking up, 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:05.680 but then he reforms them. You know, it's like they're 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:08.560 resurrected to continue to serve them as these kind of 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:12.840 misshapen wraiths. Oh man, Yeah, I love that. Another way 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:14.800 to think about it is if you're talking about a 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.880 god of war. I mean, this is the process of attrition, right, 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:22.400 slowly wearing down your enemy's forces over time. Yeah. Yeah, 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.520 they keep coming back, but each time weaker and weaker. Now, 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:27.680 like many things in space science, this is one of 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:32.720 these great fascinating open questions that really could uh we 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:34.840 could really have a better chance of solving if we 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:37.800 were to have more physical data to work with. And 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:40.240 so this is one of the many reasons that there 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:43.720 have been all these proposed missions to the moons of Mars, 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:46.400 and including that, there's a there's an upcoming mission that 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:49.160 we'll talk about in a bit from the Japanese Space 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:51.720 Agency from Jackson that is planning to go to the 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.400 moons of Mars in I think it's supposed to launch 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:58.880 in twenty four and hopefully arrive in five. But there 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:02.120 we could learn more the composition of these moons, which 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:04.600 could maybe tell us more about their history. But to 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:06.600 come back to that New York Times article we were 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:09.440 talking about, Uh, there's a part of it which says, quote, 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.960 although made of ancient matter, the phobos we see today 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:16.560 may have been assembled just two hundred million years ago. 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.240 If it were confirmed that Phobos is a haphazardly clumped 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:23.960 together mass, it would be a revelation suggesting planets with 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:27.720 rings are the norm for our Solar system. And I 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:29.240 had to think about that for a second, and then 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:31.840 I realized, like, oh, yeah, okay, So if it's normal 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:34.200 for Mars to have a ring and we just happened 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:37.200 to be observing it during one of its you know, 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:41.200 interring periods, one of its ringless periods, that would mean 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:43.840 the majority of planets in our Solar system have rings. 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:48.040 Jupiter as rings, Saturn has huge rings, uh Uranus has rings. 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.120 So you'd realize that rings are the standard and a 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:54.440 planet without rings is actually weirder. Yeah, I guess It's 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:58.000 kind of like thinking about cities, right. Um Imagine you 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:00.960 know most cities have some sort of sprawling suburbs, but 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:03.640 maybe you have a city that doesn't really have suburbs, 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.720 but just has like a a centralized satellite uh town 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:11.399 outside of it, maybe to such satellite towns. Um that 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:13.040 if that was the main thing you saw, you might think, oh, 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:14.720 this is just how it works, this is how cities 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:17.960 are come together. Though, one thing I should point out 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:21.400 from that article that they quote. Again, the Japanese researcher 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:24.520 tell me Hero sue who says that you know, this 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:27.280 that we were just talking about could possibly be true 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:30.200 of Phobos, but at the same time not for Demos. 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:32.200 It's possible that they you know, that they have these 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:35.720 different origins, that they're not exactly the same thing. So 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:39.720 Demos could be much older than Phobos potentially. Uh Suey 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:42.760 says that Demos could be three point five billion years old, 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:46.000 whereas it's it's possible that Phobos is much much younger, 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:49.000 just like two million years old. But again it's one 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:51.199 of those things that it'll be hard to know for 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:54.359 sure until we send something there and maybe even bring 0:17:54.400 --> 0:18:03.840 part of it back. I'm really need to get weird. 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:06.600 Do you want to talk about some weird historical hypotheses 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:13.760 about photos? Yeah, concerning the idea of a hollow Phobos. Now, 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:16.359 one thing I want to stress here is again we'd 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:19.760 love to have physical evidence, physical material to look at 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:23.199 regarding Phobos and Demos, but we don't yet. Hopefully in 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:25.199 the future, but we don't have it now. What we 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:28.439 have are, in addition to various other readings, we have 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:34.280 visual images taken via fly bys and and and Mars missions, 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:36.160 But there was a time where we didn't have those 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:39.879 additional um images. So I want to go back to 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:43.359 the late nineteen fifties and ultimately to the decades preceding that, 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:49.520 and the work of Russian astrophysicist, uh Joseph Shklovsky, who 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:53.879 hypothesized that Phobos might be hollow and even more to 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:59.240 the point, might be an artificial structure. Oh yeah, now 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:04.880 you also Shaklovsky was born nineteen sixteen died nine five. 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:09.320 He was a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist. And we've actually 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:12.600 mentioned him on the show before because he co wrote 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:17.280 and he had for the main credited author on intelligent 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:21.600 Life in the Universe with Carl Sagan in nineteen sixty six. 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:24.159 I believe we discussed it in our Look at Ancient 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:28.879 Astronaut hypothesis, which uh, you know, the basics of which 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:31.359 they went into in this book. Uh in a in 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:34.000 a way, this this book was was kind of pivotal 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.119 to the whole Ancient Aliens movement, even though I have 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:41.240 to stress the Chaklovsky and Sagan they discussed it rather 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:45.760 uh you know, very in a very grounded nature very scientifically. Um. 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:50.240 And it's other authors who really have would run wild 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:52.400 with it and um and just you know, go off 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:54.840 the speculative deep end with it. You know, there's something 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:59.320 I noticed in the in the responsible science journalism of 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:04.760 today that is a kind of automatic, reactive uh opposition 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:08.800 to the subject of like aliens or evidence for aliens. 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.040 And and I get it right, because if you're covering space, 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:15.119 if you're covering astronomy, if you're covering space missions, you know, 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:17.840 in anything having to do with space, one of the 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:20.639 things you're going to be dealing with most often is 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:25.760 people irresponsibly taking some piece of evidence that in no 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:31.119 way really indicates evidence of alien life and saying it's aliens, 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:32.960 and that they're just going to be doing that over 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:35.440 and over again, and then you just end up having 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.280 to spend your career writing article after article of like, no, 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.199 this rock on Mars is not an alien. There's no 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:44.840 reason you have to conclude that. You know, natural wind 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:48.240 erosion can cause features that look strange like this, here's how, 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:50.760 And then you can end up explaining interesting things about 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:53.600 natural science about like how wind erosion can cause something 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:56.760 to look sculpted or designed in a certain way or 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:59.000 you you know, you end up saying like, no, we 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:01.159 we don't have any reason to conclude yet that the 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:04.520 signal coming from this star, even though it's like repeating, 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:06.800 is an alien. And then you can explain stuff about 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:09.440 pulsars and how they work and what we know about them, 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:12.440 and that's all good stuff. But I think because there 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:16.440 is such a tendency for for hoax hype people and 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:20.520 for the public generally to get over excited about something 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:24.760 that's mysterious and say therefore it's aliens, you can start 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:28.680 getting opposed to even playing with the idea of aliens, right. 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:31.480 It starts to become like subject matter that's almost like 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:35.680 inherently revolting to you. Does that make any sense? And 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:38.640 I'm very much like I I very much respect all 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:40.960 the skeptical work, you know, and we do that too, 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:42.639 Like we we end up having to say, like, no, 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:45.399 there's no reason to conclude this is aliens. Nothing we 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:48.919 have ever discovered in space is definitely aliens. There's no 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:51.919 reason to think that there's never even really been a 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:55.919 strong piece of evidence for aliens that we've come across. Uh. 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:58.520 I think there's no reason at all to go from 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:01.560 there to say, so they're for like, don't play around 0:22:01.680 --> 0:22:04.359 with the idea of aliens, Like what would what would 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:06.800 be evidence if we were defined it? Yeah, I mean 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:09.320 it's kind of like with the Muamua. You know, I 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:11.280 think there's gonna be there're gonna be people out there 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:13.240 who are just always going to be convinced that was 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:17.120 a spaceship. It wasn't It was not a spaceship, right, 0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:20.119 But you know, certainly the spaceship interpretation is one that 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:23.960 is you know, way weird, way like easier to fathom 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:27.800 because it's so uh, it's so based in science fiction. 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:29.840 You know, you don't need a breakdown a discussion of 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:33.360 like why this thing was ejected from from some distant 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:38.320 uh interstellar locale, you know. Um, And yeah, it's just 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:41.919 more exciting. But to a certain extent, any coverage of 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:46.440 Mumu will always involve having to to really remind everybody 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:48.840 that there is there's there's no strong evidence that it 0:22:48.880 --> 0:22:51.160 was a spaceship, that it was not a spaceship, but 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:55.240 let's explore these these also these other fascinating ideas and 0:22:55.320 --> 0:22:58.520 hypotheses concerning its origin and its nature. Sure, So, I 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:01.840 mean I feel very attracted kind of the Carl Sagan outlook, 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:04.760 never saying like, oh, yeah, it's aliens when you see 0:23:04.800 --> 0:23:08.639 something you don't understand, but also feeling fully free to 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:12.600 speculate about the idea of aliens because it's an interesting subject. 0:23:12.640 --> 0:23:15.399 I mean, it's fun to think about and and consider 0:23:15.560 --> 0:23:19.240 what the real scientific implications of the existence of aliens 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:21.399 would be, even though you're always going to try to 0:23:21.400 --> 0:23:25.159