1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:05,240
Speaker 1: My Welcome to scoff to Blow Your Mind, the production

2
00:00:05,240 --> 00:00:14,160
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to

3
00:00:14,160 --> 00:00:17,280
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

4
00:00:17,360 --> 00:00:19,280
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our

5
00:00:19,320 --> 00:00:23,080
Speaker 1: talk about the moons of Mars, Phobos and Demos. Now,

6
00:00:23,079 --> 00:00:25,400
Speaker 1: in the last episode, we talked a bit about the

7
00:00:25,480 --> 00:00:29,760
Speaker 1: mythology behind the moons of Mars, the companions and sons

8
00:00:29,800 --> 00:00:33,080
Speaker 1: of the war god Aries the Roman Mars, the god

9
00:00:33,120 --> 00:00:36,120
Speaker 1: of War, and we talked about how the names of

10
00:00:36,159 --> 00:00:38,720
Speaker 1: these came to be applied to the moons of Mars,

11
00:00:38,760 --> 00:00:41,800
Speaker 1: these two small objects that were discovered in the late

12
00:00:41,880 --> 00:00:45,880
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. We talked about that discovery story. We talked

13
00:00:45,880 --> 00:00:48,960
Speaker 1: about some of the basic properties of Phobos and Demos

14
00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:53,080
Speaker 1: and why there is some question about what their origin was.

15
00:00:53,080 --> 00:00:55,200
Speaker 1: We're going to get into more detail about that today.

16
00:00:55,760 --> 00:00:59,520
Speaker 1: And we ended up talking about a bizarre conspiracy theory

17
00:00:59,680 --> 00:01:03,960
Speaker 1: about out an interesting surface feature of Phobos that really

18
00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:06,400
Speaker 1: had nothing to it, but the surface feature known as

19
00:01:06,440 --> 00:01:10,240
Speaker 1: the Phobos monolith, is inherently very interesting. Yeah, and so

20
00:01:10,280 --> 00:01:13,120
Speaker 1: in this episode we're gonna we're gonna cover more interesting

21
00:01:13,120 --> 00:01:16,800
Speaker 1: stuff about Phobos. And demos uh stuff about the history

22
00:01:16,800 --> 00:01:21,039
Speaker 1: of its exploration. We'll get into another idea that conspiracy

23
00:01:21,160 --> 00:01:25,920
Speaker 1: theorists seem to really like concerning one of the two moons.

24
00:01:26,240 --> 00:01:29,080
Speaker 1: There'll be a dash of mythology here and there, but

25
00:01:29,120 --> 00:01:31,400
Speaker 1: it should be a fun ride, now, Robin, the last episode,

26
00:01:31,400 --> 00:01:35,640
Speaker 1: we were talking about how close the moon Phobos is

27
00:01:35,720 --> 00:01:39,279
Speaker 1: to Mars. It is the closest moon to its host

28
00:01:39,319 --> 00:01:43,160
Speaker 1: planet in the entire Solar System. Uh. It's so close.

29
00:01:43,160 --> 00:01:45,200
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a matter of you know,

30
00:01:45,319 --> 00:01:49,280
Speaker 1: just like several thousand kilometers. It's a distance that is

31
00:01:49,680 --> 00:01:53,240
Speaker 1: a little bit longer than the driving distance between Miami

32
00:01:53,280 --> 00:01:56,920
Speaker 1: and Vancouver, as we talked about the last time. So

33
00:01:57,440 --> 00:01:59,640
Speaker 1: you know, if you if there were a road between them,

34
00:01:59,680 --> 00:02:02,560
Speaker 1: you could drive it in two or three days. And

35
00:02:02,640 --> 00:02:06,360
Speaker 1: that's incredibly close for a moon to UH to orbit

36
00:02:06,400 --> 00:02:09,120
Speaker 1: its host planet. But I found another point of comparison

37
00:02:09,160 --> 00:02:11,280
Speaker 1: that we didn't make in the last episode that I

38
00:02:11,320 --> 00:02:16,680
Speaker 1: thought was absolutely astounding, and it's that the moon Phobos

39
00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:20,560
Speaker 1: orbits so close to the surface of Mars that if

40
00:02:20,639 --> 00:02:24,760
Speaker 1: you are standing near the polar regions of Mars sometimes

41
00:02:24,919 --> 00:02:27,520
Speaker 1: you can't see the Moon even when it's on the

42
00:02:27,560 --> 00:02:30,840
Speaker 1: same side of the planet as you because it's blocked

43
00:02:30,840 --> 00:02:34,600
Speaker 1: by the horizon. It's orbiting down near the equator and

44
00:02:34,680 --> 00:02:37,840
Speaker 1: you can't see it over the curvature of Mars itself.

45
00:02:38,240 --> 00:02:41,560
Speaker 1: That that's unbelievable. Yeah, that is. That is pretty amazing.

46
00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:43,920
Speaker 1: And of course, as we discussed, it's getting closer to

47
00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:48,160
Speaker 1: Mars and will eventually, uh you know, millions and millions

48
00:02:48,160 --> 00:02:52,120
Speaker 1: of years in the future, will actually crash into Mars

49
00:02:52,320 --> 00:02:55,440
Speaker 1: or break up in orbit and become a new ring

50
00:02:55,720 --> 00:03:00,400
Speaker 1: around the planet. Yeah, they're gonna tussle. Yeah. But one

51
00:03:00,440 --> 00:03:02,200
Speaker 1: of the things we also alluded to in the last

52
00:03:02,200 --> 00:03:04,880
Speaker 1: episode is that these two moons, Phobos and Demos, have

53
00:03:05,080 --> 00:03:10,200
Speaker 1: extremely weird properties that really raised questions about where they

54
00:03:10,240 --> 00:03:12,320
Speaker 1: come from in the first place. And you can ask

55
00:03:12,400 --> 00:03:15,040
Speaker 1: this about moons all throughout the Solar System, like there

56
00:03:15,160 --> 00:03:19,959
Speaker 1: is some question about where the moon of Earth came from.

57
00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:22,760
Speaker 1: Those there's a there's a pretty strong leading theory that

58
00:03:22,919 --> 00:03:26,679
Speaker 1: is the giant impact hypothesis, the idea that early during

59
00:03:26,720 --> 00:03:30,720
Speaker 1: the formation of Earth, Earth was hit by a planetestimal

60
00:03:30,800 --> 00:03:34,280
Speaker 1: or you know, a Mars sized object roughly, and that

61
00:03:34,400 --> 00:03:38,320
Speaker 1: giant impact created a bunch of debris and eventually the

62
00:03:38,560 --> 00:03:41,560
Speaker 1: what was left over coalesced into the Earth and then

63
00:03:41,600 --> 00:03:44,800
Speaker 1: the Moon in orbit around the Earth. Indeed, uh, certain

64
00:03:44,840 --> 00:03:48,080
Speaker 1: properties of these moons as well discussed here, tend to

65
00:03:48,120 --> 00:03:51,640
Speaker 1: lend themselves more to one interpretation, and other properties if

66
00:03:51,640 --> 00:03:55,800
Speaker 1: you focus on those, lend towards another interpretation, which leads

67
00:03:55,840 --> 00:03:58,880
Speaker 1: to just a fair amount of you know, continued confusion,

68
00:03:59,040 --> 00:04:02,240
Speaker 1: but also inten fascination. Yeah, there's an article about this

69
00:04:02,280 --> 00:04:04,280
Speaker 1: that we were both reading that kind of sums up

70
00:04:04,320 --> 00:04:06,640
Speaker 1: some of the debate pretty nicely. It was published in

71
00:04:06,680 --> 00:04:09,560
Speaker 1: The New York Times by Robin George Andrews in July,

72
00:04:11,080 --> 00:04:14,920
Speaker 1: called Why the super weird Moons of Mars Fascinate Scientists,

73
00:04:14,920 --> 00:04:17,680
Speaker 1: and it briefly goes over some of the arguments either

74
00:04:17,720 --> 00:04:20,159
Speaker 1: way is now um. One of the things that points

75
00:04:20,160 --> 00:04:22,880
Speaker 1: out is that if you're just to look at the

76
00:04:23,520 --> 00:04:26,200
Speaker 1: what the moons appear to be made of, you know,

77
00:04:26,279 --> 00:04:29,960
Speaker 1: they're they're sort of physical characteristics in and of themselves.

78
00:04:30,320 --> 00:04:35,240
Speaker 1: They look a lot like captured asteroid's asteroids that at

79
00:04:35,279 --> 00:04:38,320
Speaker 1: some point would have been bumped off course and then

80
00:04:38,520 --> 00:04:41,400
Speaker 1: caught in the gravity well of Mars so that they

81
00:04:41,480 --> 00:04:45,960
Speaker 1: ended up just orbiting Mars. Permanently. Yeah, the the the

82
00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:49,680
Speaker 1: asteroid capture hypothesis, which which which is a popular one,

83
00:04:49,880 --> 00:04:54,480
Speaker 1: but it doesn't quite explain everything right now in its favor.

84
00:04:54,800 --> 00:04:56,640
Speaker 1: One of the main things that has going for it

85
00:04:56,720 --> 00:05:00,320
Speaker 1: is that the material that the Martian moons are made

86
00:05:00,360 --> 00:05:04,400
Speaker 1: of looks a lot like asteroid type material. Yeah, so

87
00:05:04,440 --> 00:05:06,960
Speaker 1: that they they look like asteroids. They seem to be

88
00:05:07,040 --> 00:05:10,120
Speaker 1: composed of the same material as asteroids. And yeah, they

89
00:05:10,120 --> 00:05:12,719
Speaker 1: would have just ended up too close to mars gravitational

90
00:05:12,760 --> 00:05:16,680
Speaker 1: pull and would have been simply orbitally dominated by the

91
00:05:16,720 --> 00:05:21,000
Speaker 1: planet Mars. The god of war says, you too, you

92
00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:24,280
Speaker 1: you shattered Rex. You are now my son's come with

93
00:05:24,320 --> 00:05:26,880
Speaker 1: me right into battle with me. It's like in the

94
00:05:26,920 --> 00:05:30,000
Speaker 1: cop movie when you commandeer the vehicle. You know, I'm

95
00:05:30,080 --> 00:05:33,080
Speaker 1: commandeering this vehicle, or James Bond gets into somebody's car

96
00:05:33,120 --> 00:05:35,160
Speaker 1: and drives off with it. Or I guess it would

97
00:05:35,160 --> 00:05:37,560
Speaker 1: be more like tying a car to you and making

98
00:05:37,560 --> 00:05:39,719
Speaker 1: it swing around you. I guess that an analogy isn't

99
00:05:39,760 --> 00:05:41,920
Speaker 1: that great, But yeah, it's it's saying you're coming with

100
00:05:41,920 --> 00:05:45,040
Speaker 1: me now, right. But the other interesting thing is that

101
00:05:45,080 --> 00:05:47,920
Speaker 1: they have that kind of throws this off, is they

102
00:05:47,920 --> 00:05:51,880
Speaker 1: have near equatorial orbits, and Is Andrews points out in

103
00:05:51,880 --> 00:05:55,159
Speaker 1: this article, this suggests that they coalesced from a disc

104
00:05:55,240 --> 00:05:59,080
Speaker 1: of debris that danced around a very young Mars. So

105
00:05:59,120 --> 00:06:02,440
Speaker 1: it basically it's just all too neat and tidy surely

106
00:06:02,760 --> 00:06:06,279
Speaker 1: to be an asteroid capture. So, in other words, like, okay,

107
00:06:06,279 --> 00:06:08,800
Speaker 1: if there, if it's asteroid capture, these are like wildcats.

108
00:06:09,120 --> 00:06:12,360
Speaker 1: But if they're wildcats, why are they behaving like orbital

109
00:06:12,360 --> 00:06:16,760
Speaker 1: house cats? So yeah, so that's that's part of the

110
00:06:16,760 --> 00:06:19,599
Speaker 1: big confusion here. Yeah, so you've got some creepy space

111
00:06:19,680 --> 00:06:23,560
Speaker 1: yukon golds that look like they're made of roughly asteroid stuff.

112
00:06:23,720 --> 00:06:26,640
Speaker 1: But the way they orbit Mars, it's a couple of

113
00:06:26,680 --> 00:06:30,120
Speaker 1: things actually, that their orbits are near equatorial, meaning that

114
00:06:30,400 --> 00:06:33,680
Speaker 1: they orbit basically, you know, not exactly, but pretty close

115
00:06:33,720 --> 00:06:36,800
Speaker 1: to around the equator line of Mars, you know, in

116
00:06:36,839 --> 00:06:39,880
Speaker 1: between its poles. And then the other part is that

117
00:06:39,920 --> 00:06:44,320
Speaker 1: their orbits are nearly perfectly circular. And this is just

118
00:06:44,440 --> 00:06:47,400
Speaker 1: not what you would expect to see with a captured asteroid.

119
00:06:47,440 --> 00:06:51,599
Speaker 1: If an asteroid came in that was originally orbiting the

120
00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:54,680
Speaker 1: Sun at a different speed and then it just got

121
00:06:54,760 --> 00:06:57,520
Speaker 1: stuck in the gravity well of Mars. What you would

122
00:06:57,520 --> 00:07:00,760
Speaker 1: probably expect to see is that it's orbit would be

123
00:07:00,800 --> 00:07:04,400
Speaker 1: more irregular, some more stretched out, right. You know, that's

124
00:07:04,400 --> 00:07:07,080
Speaker 1: often when something gets captured by an object and it

125
00:07:07,160 --> 00:07:10,120
Speaker 1: was originally on its own trajectory, it tends to have

126
00:07:10,120 --> 00:07:12,720
Speaker 1: a more stretched out oval type orbit. But then the

127
00:07:12,760 --> 00:07:14,800
Speaker 1: other thing is you would expect its orbit to be

128
00:07:14,840 --> 00:07:18,960
Speaker 1: tilted at a steeper angle rather than neatly orbiting pretty

129
00:07:18,960 --> 00:07:22,800
Speaker 1: close to its equatorial line. And then there's one more

130
00:07:22,880 --> 00:07:25,760
Speaker 1: factor that I think is worth considering. This is actually

131
00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:28,200
Speaker 1: cited in that article in The New York Times by

132
00:07:28,280 --> 00:07:33,520
Speaker 1: Robin George Andrews. And Andrews quotes a Japanese scientist named

133
00:07:33,520 --> 00:07:38,680
Speaker 1: Tomohiro Usui who points out that also Mars gravity is

134
00:07:38,720 --> 00:07:42,360
Speaker 1: pretty weak. I mean, you know, you can capture an asteroid,

135
00:07:42,400 --> 00:07:45,640
Speaker 1: but Tomohiro Sue points out that Mars has like a

136
00:07:45,800 --> 00:07:50,280
Speaker 1: tenth of Earth's mass, so it's kind of improbable that

137
00:07:50,360 --> 00:07:53,520
Speaker 1: it would be able to capture two asteroids that are

138
00:07:53,560 --> 00:07:56,840
Speaker 1: traveling by at orbital speeds, you know, speeds of orbiting

139
00:07:56,880 --> 00:08:00,160
Speaker 1: the Sun. So it just seems kind of unlikely as

140
00:08:00,200 --> 00:08:03,240
Speaker 1: an origin story for them and their orbits really don't

141
00:08:03,280 --> 00:08:07,400
Speaker 1: seem to match what you would expect from from asteroid capture. Now,

142
00:08:07,520 --> 00:08:12,480
Speaker 1: there is another hypothesis that would make some sense, which

143
00:08:12,560 --> 00:08:15,960
Speaker 1: is that what if the moons of Mars were formed

144
00:08:16,240 --> 00:08:21,440
Speaker 1: from a debris disc that was kicked up into orbit

145
00:08:21,520 --> 00:08:25,760
Speaker 1: around Mars after a colossal impact. So not exactly the

146
00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:29,120
Speaker 1: same as but but similar to one of the leading

147
00:08:29,520 --> 00:08:32,320
Speaker 1: ideas about where the Earth's moon comes from. There's a

148
00:08:32,400 --> 00:08:36,079
Speaker 1: giant impact on Mars at some point, and that shoots

149
00:08:36,080 --> 00:08:40,479
Speaker 1: all this stuff into space around Mars, which gradually coalesces

150
00:08:40,520 --> 00:08:43,920
Speaker 1: into a disc that's in orbit around Mars, and then

151
00:08:43,960 --> 00:08:49,080
Speaker 1: that disk gravitationally coalesces into solid objects, these two moons.

152
00:08:49,600 --> 00:08:52,240
Speaker 1: Now there's some reasons for doubting that as well. I mean,

153
00:08:52,360 --> 00:08:55,360
Speaker 1: one idea offered in this article is that Demos's orbit

154
00:08:55,440 --> 00:08:58,199
Speaker 1: is maybe a little too far out to be explained

155
00:08:58,280 --> 00:09:02,120
Speaker 1: that way, but that could possibly be overcome. One paper

156
00:09:02,160 --> 00:09:04,960
Speaker 1: I was looking at that supports the idea of a

157
00:09:05,040 --> 00:09:07,959
Speaker 1: giant impact as the original source of Phobos and Demos

158
00:09:08,080 --> 00:09:14,280
Speaker 1: was published in Nature Geoscience by Pascal Rosenblatt at All,

159
00:09:14,440 --> 00:09:17,480
Speaker 1: and it's called accretion of Phobos and Demos in an

160
00:09:17,480 --> 00:09:23,080
Speaker 1: extended debris disc stirred by transient moons um and so

161
00:09:23,440 --> 00:09:26,480
Speaker 1: that they write in their abstract that quote. Here we

162
00:09:26,600 --> 00:09:30,679
Speaker 1: use numerical simulations to suggest that Phobos and Demos accreted

163
00:09:30,760 --> 00:09:34,360
Speaker 1: from the outer portion of a debris disc formed after

164
00:09:34,480 --> 00:09:38,720
Speaker 1: a giant impact on Mars. In our simulations, larger moons

165
00:09:38,800 --> 00:09:42,320
Speaker 1: form from material in the denser inner disc and migrate

166
00:09:42,360 --> 00:09:46,880
Speaker 1: outwards due to gravitational interactions with the disc. The resulting

167
00:09:46,960 --> 00:09:51,360
Speaker 1: orbital resonances spread outwards and gathered dispersed outer disc debris,

168
00:09:51,440 --> 00:09:55,800
Speaker 1: facilitating accretion into two satellites of sizes similar to Phobos

169
00:09:55,800 --> 00:09:59,440
Speaker 1: and Demos. The larger inner moons fall back to Mars

170
00:09:59,480 --> 00:10:02,400
Speaker 1: after about five million years due to the title pull

171
00:10:02,480 --> 00:10:06,160
Speaker 1: of the planet, after which the two outer satellites evolve

172
00:10:06,200 --> 00:10:09,959
Speaker 1: into Phobos and Demos like orbits. The proposed scenario can

173
00:10:10,000 --> 00:10:14,000
Speaker 1: explain why Mars has two small satellites instead of one

174
00:10:14,120 --> 00:10:17,480
Speaker 1: large moon. Our model predicts that Phobos and Demos are

175
00:10:17,480 --> 00:10:20,640
Speaker 1: composed of a mixture of material from Mars and the

176
00:10:20,679 --> 00:10:23,760
Speaker 1: impact or so Again, this would be kind of similar

177
00:10:23,800 --> 00:10:27,720
Speaker 1: to the Earth's moon origin story. There's a giant impact

178
00:10:27,760 --> 00:10:30,720
Speaker 1: on Mars long long ago. It spits out all this

179
00:10:30,840 --> 00:10:34,920
Speaker 1: debris into orbit around Mars that forms into multiple moons

180
00:10:34,960 --> 00:10:39,959
Speaker 1: at different orbital distances, and then interactions between those eventually

181
00:10:40,080 --> 00:10:43,679
Speaker 1: cause inner moons to be destroyed spiraling into Mars as

182
00:10:43,679 --> 00:10:47,320
Speaker 1: Phobos will one day do, and then uh, and then

183
00:10:47,480 --> 00:10:51,000
Speaker 1: these other objects to coalesce into the current orbits that

184
00:10:51,080 --> 00:10:54,280
Speaker 1: we see for Phobos and Demos. So that's one plausible

185
00:10:54,320 --> 00:10:57,959
Speaker 1: possibility they've put together. Yeah, and this satisfies some of

186
00:10:58,000 --> 00:11:00,760
Speaker 1: the mysteries that we discussed earlier. How can it be uh,

187
00:11:01,080 --> 00:11:03,840
Speaker 1: have the qualities of an asteroid capture, but also have

188
00:11:03,880 --> 00:11:06,760
Speaker 1: the qualities of of something that formed out of a

189
00:11:06,840 --> 00:11:10,240
Speaker 1: desk around Mars. Now we've mentioned that Phobos as its

190
00:11:10,240 --> 00:11:13,560
Speaker 1: spirals into Mars will probably break apart. I mean, we

191
00:11:13,600 --> 00:11:16,000
Speaker 1: mentioned a couple options. It could just crash into Mars.

192
00:11:16,360 --> 00:11:19,319
Speaker 1: More of the sources that I was reading seemed to

193
00:11:19,360 --> 00:11:21,800
Speaker 1: suggest that the more likely option is that as it

194
00:11:21,880 --> 00:11:24,800
Speaker 1: spirals into Mars, it will be sort of ripped apart

195
00:11:24,840 --> 00:11:27,640
Speaker 1: by tidal forces and it will break up and become

196
00:11:27,840 --> 00:11:32,840
Speaker 1: rings in orbit around Mars. But really interesting question that

197
00:11:32,880 --> 00:11:35,720
Speaker 1: I came across in another study in Nature Geoscience, this

198
00:11:35,760 --> 00:11:39,880
Speaker 1: one published in This is the question of what if

199
00:11:39,880 --> 00:11:43,360
Speaker 1: this future scenario where Phobos breaks up in orbit around

200
00:11:43,360 --> 00:11:47,000
Speaker 1: Mars and becomes rings. What if that has already happened.

201
00:11:47,880 --> 00:11:52,040
Speaker 1: Very interesting origin hypothesis for for these two moons. So

202
00:11:52,120 --> 00:11:56,360
Speaker 1: this is by Andrew J. Hessel Brock and David A. Minton. Again,

203
00:11:56,440 --> 00:12:00,880
Speaker 1: that's nature geoscience in seen called an ongoing satellite ring

204
00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:04,280
Speaker 1: cycle of Mars and the origins of Phobos and Demos.

205
00:12:04,640 --> 00:12:07,839
Speaker 1: Now this uh. This explanation has a similar beginning as

206
00:12:07,880 --> 00:12:10,480
Speaker 1: the last one, but some of the details are different.

207
00:12:10,600 --> 00:12:13,880
Speaker 1: Again to read from their abstract, the Martian moons Phobos

208
00:12:13,880 --> 00:12:17,440
Speaker 1: and Demos may have accreated from a ring of impact debris,

209
00:12:17,720 --> 00:12:20,600
Speaker 1: but explaining their origin from a single giant impact has

210
00:12:20,640 --> 00:12:23,960
Speaker 1: proven difficult. One clue may lie in the orbit of

211
00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:27,960
Speaker 1: Phobos that is slowly decaying as the satellite undergoes tidal

212
00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:32,640
Speaker 1: interactions with Mars. In about seventy million years, Phobos is

213
00:12:32,679 --> 00:12:35,880
Speaker 1: predicted to reach the location of tidal breakup and break

214
00:12:35,920 --> 00:12:39,360
Speaker 1: apart to form a new ring around the planet. Here

215
00:12:39,400 --> 00:12:42,600
Speaker 1: we use numerical simulations to suggest that the resulting ring

216
00:12:42,640 --> 00:12:47,320
Speaker 1: will viscously spread to eventually deposit about eight percent of

217
00:12:47,360 --> 00:12:51,720
Speaker 1: debris onto Mars. The remaining twenty of debris will accrete

218
00:12:51,760 --> 00:12:56,560
Speaker 1: into a new generation of satellites. Furthermore, we propose that

219
00:12:56,640 --> 00:13:00,880
Speaker 1: this process has occurred repeatedly throughout martian His story. In

220
00:13:00,920 --> 00:13:04,480
Speaker 1: our simulations, beginning with a large satellite formed after giant

221
00:13:04,520 --> 00:13:07,800
Speaker 1: impact with early Mars, we find that between three and

222
00:13:07,960 --> 00:13:12,040
Speaker 1: seven ring satellite cycles over the past four point three

223
00:13:12,160 --> 00:13:15,760
Speaker 1: billion years can explain Phobos and Demos as they are

224
00:13:15,800 --> 00:13:20,079
Speaker 1: observed today. Such a scenario implies the deposition of significant

225
00:13:20,200 --> 00:13:24,680
Speaker 1: ring material onto Mars during each cycle. We hypothesize that

226
00:13:24,800 --> 00:13:28,560
Speaker 1: some anomalous sedimentary deposits observed on Mars maybe linked to

227
00:13:28,600 --> 00:13:33,280
Speaker 1: these periodic episodes of ring deposition. So Phobos or the

228
00:13:33,320 --> 00:13:36,679
Speaker 1: ancestor of Phobos could have been once much larger, maybe

229
00:13:36,720 --> 00:13:40,679
Speaker 1: twenty times more massive. But then there's this pattern that

230
00:13:40,760 --> 00:13:44,200
Speaker 1: repeats over time, almost like you know, the mythological cycle

231
00:13:44,280 --> 00:13:48,520
Speaker 1: of history, where there's orbital decay. It's it's going closer

232
00:13:48,559 --> 00:13:51,960
Speaker 1: and closer down into Mars. It shatters from tidal forces,

233
00:13:52,320 --> 00:13:55,200
Speaker 1: it's you know, turned, it splits apart into a million pieces,

234
00:13:55,600 --> 00:13:58,560
Speaker 1: forms a ring around Mars. The pieces of the ring

235
00:13:58,640 --> 00:14:01,520
Speaker 1: then coalesce into a move and then repeat with the

236
00:14:01,559 --> 00:14:04,840
Speaker 1: Moon getting smaller every cycle. I love this because if

237
00:14:04,920 --> 00:14:06,960
Speaker 1: you if you take it and then apply it to

238
00:14:06,960 --> 00:14:11,240
Speaker 1: the mythological model that we've been discussing here, you have Mars,

239
00:14:11,280 --> 00:14:14,439
Speaker 1: who is you know, actually more the the you know,

240
00:14:14,480 --> 00:14:17,520
Speaker 1: we can would think more of the Greek war god

241
00:14:17,600 --> 00:14:21,120
Speaker 1: aries representing the worst of war, just the the bloodshed

242
00:14:21,160 --> 00:14:24,080
Speaker 1: and the screams. Just this awful deity, the god of

243
00:14:24,160 --> 00:14:26,000
Speaker 1: the screams of the dying. Yeah, yeah, the god of

244
00:14:26,040 --> 00:14:28,080
Speaker 1: the screams of the dying. And so it makes sense

245
00:14:28,080 --> 00:14:30,640
Speaker 1: that his two loyal sons who are destined to rebel

246
00:14:30,680 --> 00:14:33,520
Speaker 1: against him have always rebelled against him. Like there's a

247
00:14:33,600 --> 00:14:38,920
Speaker 1: cycle of them rebelling against the Almighty Father here, being destroyed,

248
00:14:39,120 --> 00:14:42,560
Speaker 1: breaking up, but then he reforms them. You know, it's

249
00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:45,440
Speaker 1: like they're resurrected to continue to serve them as these

250
00:14:45,520 --> 00:14:48,760
Speaker 1: kind of misshapen wraiths. Oh man, yeah, I love that.

251
00:14:49,520 --> 00:14:51,720
Speaker 1: Another way to think about it is if you're talking

252
00:14:51,760 --> 00:14:53,560
Speaker 1: about a god of war, I mean, this is the

253
00:14:53,600 --> 00:14:57,960
Speaker 1: process of attrition, right, slowly wearing down your enemy's forces

254
00:14:58,000 --> 00:15:01,160
Speaker 1: over time. Yeah, yeah, they coming back, but each time

255
00:15:01,320 --> 00:15:04,200
Speaker 1: weaker and weaker. Now, like many things in space science,

256
00:15:04,440 --> 00:15:07,920
Speaker 1: this is one of these great fascinating open questions that

257
00:15:08,040 --> 00:15:11,200
Speaker 1: really could uh, we could really have a better chance

258
00:15:11,240 --> 00:15:13,760
Speaker 1: of solving if we were to have more physical data

259
00:15:13,840 --> 00:15:16,240
Speaker 1: to work with. And so this is one of the

260
00:15:16,280 --> 00:15:19,520
Speaker 1: many reasons that there have been all these proposed missions

261
00:15:19,600 --> 00:15:22,320
Speaker 1: to the moons of Mars, and including that, there's a

262
00:15:22,440 --> 00:15:24,560
Speaker 1: there's an upcoming mission that we'll talk about in a

263
00:15:24,600 --> 00:15:27,800
Speaker 1: bit from the Japanese Space Agency from Jackson that is

264
00:15:27,840 --> 00:15:30,600
Speaker 1: planning to go to the moons of Mars in I

265
00:15:30,600 --> 00:15:33,640
Speaker 1: think it's supposed to launch in four and hopefully arrive

266
00:15:33,680 --> 00:15:38,080
Speaker 1: in But there we could learn more about the composition

267
00:15:38,120 --> 00:15:40,720
Speaker 1: of these moons, which could maybe tell us more about

268
00:15:40,760 --> 00:15:42,840
Speaker 1: their history. But to come back to that New York

269
00:15:42,880 --> 00:15:45,560
Speaker 1: Times article we were talking about, Uh, there's a part

270
00:15:45,560 --> 00:15:48,520
Speaker 1: of it which says, quote, although made of ancient matter,

271
00:15:48,880 --> 00:15:51,680
Speaker 1: the Phobos we see today may have been assembled just

272
00:15:51,920 --> 00:15:55,360
Speaker 1: two hundred million years ago. If it were confirmed that

273
00:15:55,440 --> 00:15:58,800
Speaker 1: Phobos is a haphazardly clumped together mass, it would be

274
00:15:58,840 --> 00:16:02,960
Speaker 1: a revelation suggesting planets with rings are the norm for

275
00:16:02,960 --> 00:16:05,800
Speaker 1: our Solar system. And I had to think about that

276
00:16:05,840 --> 00:16:08,040
Speaker 1: for a second, and then I realized, like, oh, yeah, okay,

277
00:16:08,080 --> 00:16:10,360
Speaker 1: so if it's normal for Mars to have a ring,

278
00:16:10,440 --> 00:16:13,600
Speaker 1: and we just happened to be observing it during one

279
00:16:13,600 --> 00:16:17,120
Speaker 1: of its you know, interring periods, one of its ringless periods.

280
00:16:18,000 --> 00:16:20,280
Speaker 1: That would mean the majority of planets in our Solar

281
00:16:20,280 --> 00:16:23,640
Speaker 1: system of rings. Jupiter as rings, Saturn has huge rings,

282
00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:27,240
Speaker 1: uh Uranus has rings. So you'd realize that rings are

283
00:16:27,400 --> 00:16:31,280
Speaker 1: the standard and a planet without rings is actually weirder. Yeah,

284
00:16:31,320 --> 00:16:34,200
Speaker 1: I guess it's kind of like thinking about cities, right. UM.

285
00:16:34,360 --> 00:16:38,080
Speaker 1: Imagine you know, most cities have some sort of sprawling suburbs,

286
00:16:38,120 --> 00:16:40,400
Speaker 1: but maybe you have a city that doesn't really have

287
00:16:40,440 --> 00:16:44,200
Speaker 1: suburbs but just has like a a centralized satellite uh

288
00:16:44,680 --> 00:16:48,520
Speaker 1: town outside of it, maybe to such satellite towns. Um.

289
00:16:48,560 --> 00:16:49,880
Speaker 1: But if that was the main thing you saw, you

290
00:16:49,920 --> 00:16:51,360
Speaker 1: might think, oh, this is just how it works, This

291
00:16:51,400 --> 00:16:54,480
Speaker 1: is how cities are come together. Though, one thing I

292
00:16:54,520 --> 00:16:56,720
Speaker 1: should point out from that article that they quote again

293
00:16:56,800 --> 00:17:00,920
Speaker 1: the Japanese researcher tell my hero Sui who uh says

294
00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:03,160
Speaker 1: that you know, this that we were just talking about

295
00:17:03,200 --> 00:17:06,280
Speaker 1: could possibly be true of Phobos, but at the same time,

296
00:17:06,359 --> 00:17:08,919
Speaker 1: not for demos. It's possible that they you know, that

297
00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:11,760
Speaker 1: they have these different origins that they're not exactly the

298
00:17:11,800 --> 00:17:16,119
Speaker 1: same thing. So Demos could be much older than Phobos. Potentially,

299
00:17:16,359 --> 00:17:18,880
Speaker 1: uh Suey says that Demos could be three point five

300
00:17:18,960 --> 00:17:22,359
Speaker 1: billion years old, whereas it's it's possible that Phobos is

301
00:17:22,480 --> 00:17:25,560
Speaker 1: much much younger, just like two million years old. But

302
00:17:25,680 --> 00:17:28,000
Speaker 1: again it's one of those things that it'll be hard

303
00:17:28,040 --> 00:17:30,800
Speaker 1: to know for sure until we send something there and

304
00:17:30,840 --> 00:17:40,400
Speaker 1: maybe even bring part of it back. Than I'm ready

305
00:17:40,520 --> 00:17:42,080
Speaker 1: to get weird. Do you want to talk about some

306
00:17:42,160 --> 00:17:48,679
Speaker 1: weird historical hypotheses about Phobos? Yeah, concerning the idea of

307
00:17:48,720 --> 00:17:52,439
Speaker 1: a hollow Phobos. Now, one thing I want to stress

308
00:17:52,440 --> 00:17:56,040
Speaker 1: here is again we'd love to have physical evidence, physical

309
00:17:56,080 --> 00:17:59,000
Speaker 1: material to look at regarding Phobos and Demos, but we

310
00:17:59,040 --> 00:18:01,399
Speaker 1: don't yet. Hopefully in the future, but we don't have

311
00:18:01,480 --> 00:18:04,440
Speaker 1: it now. What we have are, in addition to to

312
00:18:04,520 --> 00:18:08,960
Speaker 1: various other readings, we have visual images taken via fly

313
00:18:09,119 --> 00:18:12,240
Speaker 1: bys and and and Mars missions. But there was a

314
00:18:12,280 --> 00:18:15,760
Speaker 1: time where we didn't have those additional um images. So

315
00:18:15,880 --> 00:18:18,720
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the late nineteen fifties

316
00:18:18,760 --> 00:18:21,560
Speaker 1: and ultimately to the decades preceding that, and the work

317
00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:28,800
Speaker 1: of Russian astrophysicist uh Yosef Shaklovsky, who hypothesized that phobos

318
00:18:28,920 --> 00:18:32,160
Speaker 1: might be hollow and even more to the point, might

319
00:18:32,240 --> 00:18:39,199
Speaker 1: be an artificial structure. Oh yeah, Now, Yoso Shaklovsky was

320
00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:44,680
Speaker 1: born nineteen sixteen died five. He was a Soviet astronomer

321
00:18:44,720 --> 00:18:47,520
Speaker 1: and astrophysicist. And we've actually mentioned him on the show

322
00:18:47,560 --> 00:18:51,040
Speaker 1: before because he co wrote and he had for the

323
00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:56,120
Speaker 1: main credited author on intelligent Life in the Universe with

324
00:18:56,200 --> 00:19:00,000
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan in nineteen sixty six. I believe we discussed

325
00:19:00,080 --> 00:19:04,720
Speaker 1: it in our Look at Ancient Astronaut hypothesis, which you know,

326
00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:07,600
Speaker 1: the basics of which they went into in this book.

327
00:19:07,960 --> 00:19:10,280
Speaker 1: And in a in a way this this book was

328
00:19:10,280 --> 00:19:13,160
Speaker 1: was kind of pivotal to the whole Ancient Aliens movement,

329
00:19:13,400 --> 00:19:16,400
Speaker 1: even though I have to stress the Chaklovsky and say

330
00:19:16,400 --> 00:19:19,879
Speaker 1: Agan they discussed it rather uh, you know, very in

331
00:19:19,920 --> 00:19:24,440
Speaker 1: a very grounded nature, very scientifically. Um. And it's other

332
00:19:24,520 --> 00:19:28,200
Speaker 1: authors who really have would run wild with it and

333
00:19:28,280 --> 00:19:30,560
Speaker 1: um and just you know, go off the speculative deep

334
00:19:30,680 --> 00:19:32,959
Speaker 1: end with it. You know, there's something I notice in

335
00:19:33,080 --> 00:19:38,040
Speaker 1: the in the responsible science journalism of today that is

336
00:19:38,040 --> 00:19:43,600
Speaker 1: a kind of automatic, reactive opposition to the subject of

337
00:19:43,760 --> 00:19:47,200
Speaker 1: like aliens or evidence for aliens, and and I get

338
00:19:47,240 --> 00:19:50,520
Speaker 1: it right, because if you're covering space, if you're covering astronomy,

339
00:19:50,560 --> 00:19:53,280
Speaker 1: if you're covering space missions, you know, in anything having

340
00:19:53,280 --> 00:19:55,680
Speaker 1: to do with space, one of the things you're going

341
00:19:55,720 --> 00:19:59,960
Speaker 1: to be dealing with most often is people your respond

342
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:03,520
Speaker 1: sibly taking some piece of evidence that in no way

343
00:20:03,880 --> 00:20:08,359
Speaker 1: really indicates evidence of alien life and saying it's aliens,

344
00:20:08,400 --> 00:20:10,200
Speaker 1: and that they're just going to be doing that over

345
00:20:10,240 --> 00:20:12,680
Speaker 1: and over again, and then you just end up having

346
00:20:12,680 --> 00:20:15,520
Speaker 1: to spend your career writing article after article of like, no,

347
00:20:16,119 --> 00:20:19,439
Speaker 1: this rock on Mars is not an alien. There's no

348
00:20:19,480 --> 00:20:22,080
Speaker 1: reason you have to conclude that. You know, natural wind

349
00:20:22,119 --> 00:20:25,480
Speaker 1: erosion can cause features that look strange like this, here's how,

350
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:28,040
Speaker 1: And then you can end up explaining interesting things about

351
00:20:28,119 --> 00:20:30,840
Speaker 1: natural science about like how wind erosion can cause something

352
00:20:30,880 --> 00:20:34,000
Speaker 1: to look sculpted or designed in a certain way, or

353
00:20:34,240 --> 00:20:36,119
Speaker 1: you you know, you end up saying like, no, we

354
00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:38,399
Speaker 1: we don't have any reason to conclude yet that the

355
00:20:38,480 --> 00:20:41,760
Speaker 1: signal coming from this star, even though it's like repeating,

356
00:20:41,880 --> 00:20:44,040
Speaker 1: is an alien. And then you can explain stuff about

357
00:20:44,040 --> 00:20:46,240
Speaker 1: pulsars and how they work and what we know about

358
00:20:46,280 --> 00:20:49,399
Speaker 1: them and that's all good stuff. But I think because

359
00:20:49,520 --> 00:20:53,159
Speaker 1: there is such a tendency for for hoax hype people

360
00:20:53,400 --> 00:20:57,320
Speaker 1: and for the public generally to get over excited about

361
00:20:57,400 --> 00:21:01,720
Speaker 1: something that's mysterious and say, therefore it's aliens, you can

362
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:05,920
Speaker 1: start getting opposed to even playing with the idea of aliens, right.

363
00:21:05,960 --> 00:21:08,760
Speaker 1: It starts to become like subject matter that's almost like

364
00:21:08,840 --> 00:21:12,920
Speaker 1: inherently revolting to you. Does that make any sense? And

365
00:21:13,359 --> 00:21:15,879
Speaker 1: I'm very much like I I very much respect all

366
00:21:15,920 --> 00:21:18,200
Speaker 1: the skeptical work, you know, and we do that too,

367
00:21:18,359 --> 00:21:19,919
Speaker 1: Like we we end up having to say, like, no,

368
00:21:20,040 --> 00:21:22,639
Speaker 1: there's no reason to conclude this is aliens. Nothing we

369
00:21:22,720 --> 00:21:26,159
Speaker 1: have ever discovered in space is definitely aliens. There's no

370
00:21:26,200 --> 00:21:29,159
Speaker 1: reason to think that there's never even really been a

371
00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:33,199
Speaker 1: strong piece of evidence for aliens that we've come across. Uh.

372
00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:35,480
Speaker 1: I think that there's no reason at all to go

373
00:21:35,600 --> 00:21:38,800
Speaker 1: from there to say, so therefore, like, don't play around

374
00:21:38,920 --> 00:21:41,600
Speaker 1: with the idea of aliens, Like what would what would

375
00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:44,040
Speaker 1: be evidence if we were defined it? Yeah, I mean

376
00:21:44,040 --> 00:21:46,560
Speaker 1: it's kind of like with the Uamua, you know. I

377
00:21:46,600 --> 00:21:48,520
Speaker 1: think there's gonna be There're gonna be people out there

378
00:21:48,520 --> 00:21:50,520
Speaker 1: who are just always going to be convinced that was

379
00:21:50,520 --> 00:21:54,360
Speaker 1: a spaceship. It wasn't. It was not a spaceship, right,

380
00:21:54,560 --> 00:21:57,359
Speaker 1: But you know, certainly the spaceship interpretation is one that

381
00:21:58,320 --> 00:22:01,560
Speaker 1: is you know, way weird, way easier to fathom because

382
00:22:01,560 --> 00:22:05,280
Speaker 1: it's so uh, it's so based in science fiction. You know,

383
00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:07,480
Speaker 1: you don't need a breakdown a discussion of like why

384
00:22:07,560 --> 00:22:13,080
Speaker 1: this thing was ejected from from some distant uh interstellar locale,

385
00:22:13,280 --> 00:22:16,560
Speaker 1: you know. Um, And yeah, it's just more exciting. But

386
00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:20,399
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, any coverage of Mumu will always

387
00:22:20,440 --> 00:22:24,359
Speaker 1: involve having to to really remind everybody that there is

388
00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:26,720
Speaker 1: there's there's no strong evidence that it was a spaceship,

389
00:22:26,760 --> 00:22:29,480
Speaker 1: that it was not a spaceship, but let's explore these

390
00:22:29,760 --> 00:22:33,879
Speaker 1: these also these other fascinating ideas and hypotheses concerning its

391
00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:36,400
Speaker 1: origin and its nature. Sure, so, I mean I feel

392
00:22:36,480 --> 00:22:39,080
Speaker 1: very attracted to kind of the the Carl Sagan outlook,

393
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:42,000
Speaker 1: never saying like, oh, yeah, it's aliens when you see

394
00:22:42,040 --> 00:22:45,879
Speaker 1: something you don't understand, but also feeling fully free to

395
00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:49,840
Speaker 1: speculate about the idea of aliens because it's an interesting subject.

396
00:22:49,880 --> 00:22:52,639
Speaker 1: I mean, it's fun to think about and and consider

397
00:22:52,800 --> 00:22:56,480
Speaker 1: what the real scientific implications of the existence of aliens

398
00:22:56,480 --> 00:22:58,639
Speaker 1: would be even though you're always going to try to

399
00:22:58,640 --> 00:23:02,399
Speaker 1: remain skeptical and grounded and not interpret every new piece

400
00:23:02,440 --> 00:23:05,800
Speaker 1: of information about the universe that you can't currently explain

401
00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:09,679
Speaker 1: as an artifact of an alien civilization, right right. And

402
00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:11,240
Speaker 1: then the second was great with this. You know, he

403
00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:14,000
Speaker 1: was always open to exploring those big questions and those

404
00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:17,560
Speaker 1: those those um, you know, the more radical questions, but

405
00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:20,440
Speaker 1: doing so in a balanced way. We're saying, well, okay,

406
00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:23,600
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about it. Yes, it could you know,

407
00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:27,400
Speaker 1: aliens certainly could exist, They could have visited the Earth.

408
00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:30,800
Speaker 1: There could be evidence of it in the historical record.

409
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:34,159
Speaker 1: But what would that look like, what specifically would we

410
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:37,439
Speaker 1: be looking for? Um? But that is a far healthier

411
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:40,320
Speaker 1: approach in my opinion. Yeah, And for me, I think

412
00:23:40,359 --> 00:23:44,320
Speaker 1: it's just like important to just always emphasize the lines between,

413
00:23:44,840 --> 00:23:49,680
Speaker 1: you know, factual reporting and intellectual play. Yes. Now, interestingly enough,

414
00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:53,439
Speaker 1: in in this book and in question here Sholowsky and

415
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:56,800
Speaker 1: say again they described phobos and demos as quote, the

416
00:23:56,920 --> 00:23:59,920
Speaker 1: chariot horses of the god of war. Um. And I'm

417
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:03,920
Speaker 1: I'm unclear on where that comes from exactly than being

418
00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:08,000
Speaker 1: horses as opposed to or in addition to being the

419
00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:10,600
Speaker 1: sons of Arias. But I think it still checks out,

420
00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:14,240
Speaker 1: you know, whether their war horses or or of sons,

421
00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:16,879
Speaker 1: that they're kind of treated like war horses. Yeah, I

422
00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:19,000
Speaker 1: mean Areas could have had some horse sons that would

423
00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:23,000
Speaker 1: make sense. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Another bit that

424
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:25,120
Speaker 1: they note in the book, and I do want to

425
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:27,600
Speaker 1: continue to drive on this is the nineteen sixty six

426
00:24:27,720 --> 00:24:31,680
Speaker 1: book um quote. Thus, if we neglect the artificial satellites

427
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:34,080
Speaker 1: of Earth, Phobos is the only known moon in the

428
00:24:34,119 --> 00:24:36,919
Speaker 1: Solar System with a period of revolution about its planet,

429
00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 1: which is less than the period of rotation of the

430
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:42,560
Speaker 1: planet itself. Yeah. So it takes Earth's moon roughly a

431
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: month to orbit the Earth, right, Uh, it takes less

432
00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 1: than a day for Phobos. Two less than a Martian

433
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 1: day for Phobos to orbit Mars. I think it orbits

434
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 1: like three points something times every Martian day, And by

435
00:24:56,520 --> 00:25:00,679
Speaker 1: very nature, a Martian day is one rotation, so it's

436
00:25:00,760 --> 00:25:02,879
Speaker 1: kind of it's easy to miss that that that point.

437
00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:04,480
Speaker 1: So I like the way that it really drove that

438
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 1: home here. So if you're you're clocking in at work

439
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 1: for your your Martian work day. Oh there goes Phobos,

440
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 1: and then maybe you could look at Phobos again to

441
00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:14,800
Speaker 1: know when it's time to go home. Yeah. Now, if

442
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:18,600
Speaker 1: it wasn't already obvious from the association with Sagan, I

443
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:22,000
Speaker 1: want to be clear that Shaklovsky was no quack. In fact,

444
00:25:22,040 --> 00:25:26,160
Speaker 1: there's a crater on Phobos named for him, Shaklovsky Crater.

445
00:25:26,680 --> 00:25:30,160
Speaker 1: But he was. He was understandably intrigued and confused by

446
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:32,960
Speaker 1: the Martian moons for decades, for the reasons that we've

447
00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:37,879
Speaker 1: already stated. Um. Sagan in nineteen sixty six described Shakowsky's

448
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:41,120
Speaker 1: ideas concerning uh, the idea of a hollow Phobos as

449
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:45,800
Speaker 1: quote uh the only serious extant arguments supporting intelligent life

450
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 1: on Mars now to now. Certainly, additional information eventually discredited

451
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,440
Speaker 1: this notion, um. But it's interesting to look at how

452
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:57,159
Speaker 1: he got there. And the book was Sagan contains a

453
00:25:57,200 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: fair amount of of math and technical information. It's not

454
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,000
Speaker 1: it's not, you know, certainly not a technical paper, but

455
00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 1: it's certainly not the wide audience work of science communication

456
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 1: that we often associate with with Sagan. Solo books and

457
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: articles to come, but they they break down this idea

458
00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 1: in a great deal again based on data from nineteen

459
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: sixty six and before so Schklovsky's idea of a hollow

460
00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 1: Phobos and then eventually tying that to speculation about alien life.

461
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: This is something that is no longer an option given

462
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 1: what we know about Phobos today. But we're exploring this

463
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: as a historical curiosity of a hypothesis. Yes, yes, so, Uh,

464
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:39,120
Speaker 1: here's the here's one of the main points here. I'm

465
00:26:39,119 --> 00:26:41,639
Speaker 1: gonna read from from the article and uh, and I

466
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:45,280
Speaker 1: should mention as well that in these some of these quotes, um,

467
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: they'll be using I, and I think we're very much

468
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 1: that I is referring to shakovski quote. But how can

469
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:55,920
Speaker 1: a natural satellite have such a low density. The material

470
00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:58,200
Speaker 1: of which it is made must have a certain amount

471
00:26:58,280 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 1: of rigidity, so that cohe if forces will be stronger

472
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:04,520
Speaker 1: than the gravitational tide forces of Mars, which will tend

473
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:09,400
Speaker 1: to disrupt the satellite. Such rigidity would ordinarily exclude densities

474
00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:12,919
Speaker 1: below about zero point one Graham's per centimeter to the

475
00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: negative third power. Thus, only one possibility remains. Could Phobos

476
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:22,240
Speaker 1: be indeed rigid on the outside but hollow on the inside.

477
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:26,480
Speaker 1: A natural satellite cannot be a hollow object. Therefore, we

478
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: are led to the possibility that Phobos and possibly Demos

479
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: as well, maybe artificial satellites of Mars. And if so,

480
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: quote they would be artificial satellites on a scale surpassing

481
00:27:38,119 --> 00:27:42,440
Speaker 1: the fondest dreams of contemporary rocket engineers. Now again, this

482
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:46,199
Speaker 1: hypothesis is no longer really viable given the evidence that

483
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:49,520
Speaker 1: we have available to us today. But what what a

484
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: wild and wonderful idea? Yeah and uh and Chicolo assually

485
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:56,439
Speaker 1: continues to to to back this up and make some

486
00:27:56,520 --> 00:27:58,720
Speaker 1: arguments around it. I'm gonna roll through some of them here.

487
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 1: First of all, he says, this idea might seem fantastic

488
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:05,920
Speaker 1: at first glance, but it demands serious consideration because a

489
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:11,879
Speaker 1: technologically advanced civilization would certainly be capable of manufacturing and

490
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:16,199
Speaker 1: launching such an advanced satellite. And if Mars did not

491
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 1: have any natural moons, the establishment of artificial moons would

492
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:25,680
Speaker 1: be a greatly important endeavor to any native civilization, or presumably,

493
00:28:25,720 --> 00:28:28,440
Speaker 1: and this is just my reading of it, any civilization

494
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:31,480
Speaker 1: that took a strong interest in the planet. Further More,

495
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:33,960
Speaker 1: Shaklovsky says it it would be much easier for a

496
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:38,200
Speaker 1: Martian presence to launch a satellite than for you know,

497
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 1: earthlings to launch a satellite. Due to the reduced Martian gravity,

498
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:45,959
Speaker 1: less work is required to get something into orbit. And

499
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 1: also quote, conceivably, the capture and hollowing of a small

500
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:53,280
Speaker 1: asteroid might be technically more feasible than the construction in

501
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:57,360
Speaker 1: orbit of an artificial satellite with material brought from the surface.

502
00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 1: In our future, uh he says, we too might construct

503
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 1: such artificial satellites, and if we pass on into extinction, well,

504
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:09,479
Speaker 1: those satellites might remain. And if so quote, we cannot

505
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:13,480
Speaker 1: reasonably assess these possibilities. But it does seem conceivable that

506
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 1: the lifetime of our artificial satellites may exceed the lifetime

507
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 1: of our civilization. These satellites would then remain as unique

508
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 1: and striking monuments to a vanished species which had once

509
00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:29,320
Speaker 1: flourished on the planet Earth. So hypothetically, if Mars had

510
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:32,600
Speaker 1: once harbored advanced life forms and they developed an advance

511
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 1: enough civilization, they might have established such artificial satellites, perhaps

512
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 1: some hundreds of millions of years ago. So again, to

513
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:43,200
Speaker 1: be very clear, it is not currently the case that

514
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: there is evidence to the points strongly to an artificial

515
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:49,320
Speaker 1: origin for these moons, though of course all the interesting

516
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: mysteries about their natural origins remain. But to add to

517
00:29:53,360 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 1: the the beauty of this idea, uh, there's another fact

518
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 1: about Phobos I wanted to add, which is that it

519
00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: is thought to have a a very thick layer of

520
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: powdery regulars all around the outside of it, So it has, uh,

521
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 1: it's it's often thought to be very deep. I've read

522
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:14,880
Speaker 1: estimates that it's like a hundred meters deep, So it's like,

523
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:18,560
Speaker 1: you know, over three hundred feet deep of this powdery,

524
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:23,440
Speaker 1: dusty material, this regulars on the outside of it, which

525
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:26,920
Speaker 1: which gives the possibility that if in this alternate universe

526
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:31,360
Speaker 1: scenario where these moons were artificial creations of ancient technology,

527
00:30:31,600 --> 00:30:35,720
Speaker 1: you could literally maybe uncover surface features of them indicating

528
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 1: artificial origin by dusting, by moving the dust away, you know,

529
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 1: like like the movie scene where you wipe the sand

530
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:44,640
Speaker 1: off of a sign and see the writing on it,

531
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 1: dust off of the the artifact and determine what it is,

532
00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:51,680
Speaker 1: except I guess would be a hundred meters of dust,

533
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:56,400
Speaker 1: So that'd be that's that's mega dust. Now, you know,

534
00:30:56,440 --> 00:31:00,080
Speaker 1: we were talking about the difference between you know, comeing

535
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:05,240
Speaker 1: up with a controversial hypothesis versus just running wild with

536
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: radical ideas. And it seems it seems like Shaklovsky was

537
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 1: mindful of this as well, because he points out that

538
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 1: that there are stronger and less favorable versions of this

539
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:19,120
Speaker 1: kind of line of thinking. He points out that Soviet

540
00:31:19,160 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: researcher and someone who's who would later come to be

541
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:25,960
Speaker 1: known as the father of Russian ufo ology, Felix Ziegel,

542
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:30,520
Speaker 1: had an even more extreme notion. Uh, perhaps phobos and demos.

543
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 1: Ziegel argued, perhaps they weren't discovered by the astronomer Herschel

544
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:39,560
Speaker 1: during the favorable Martian opposition. That means, you know, the

545
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 1: closeness of Mars to Earth and therefore it's increased um

546
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:49,640
Speaker 1: visibility via telescope. Uh, perhaps Herschel didn't discover these moons

547
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:53,960
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty two and instead they were discovered by

548
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 1: this by a smaller telescope in eighteen seventy seven, because

549
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 1: they were not there in a teen sixty two. Rather,

550
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:06,280
Speaker 1: they were launched after eighteen sixty two by an existing

551
00:32:06,440 --> 00:32:10,959
Speaker 1: Mars civilization, and therefore, uh, we're there to be discovered

552
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:16,840
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven seems implausible, yes, And Silklowski dismisses

553
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 1: this notion for several reasons, in part because the naval

554
00:32:20,600 --> 00:32:24,520
Speaker 1: telescope that was actually used to discover the moons, while smaller,

555
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:28,080
Speaker 1: was still superior to Herschels. And he contends that if yeah,

556
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:30,960
Speaker 1: the Shilklaski is very into this idea that the moons

557
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:33,160
Speaker 1: could be artificial, but he's like, the only way this

558
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:36,000
Speaker 1: works is if they were also ancient. There's no way

559
00:32:36,040 --> 00:32:40,600
Speaker 1: that these were just launched in the past few years. Uh.

560
00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 1: And part of that also comes down to, you know,

561
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: we've discussed this in terms before, like one of the

562
00:32:45,280 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 1: rules of of of observing the cosmos is to realize

563
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:52,760
Speaker 1: that or to work from the vantage point that we

564
00:32:52,800 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 1: have we do not have a privileged place in the universe, uh,

565
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:00,720
Speaker 1: in space or in time. So the idea that we

566
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:04,680
Speaker 1: just happened to be looking at Mars one day and

567
00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:06,560
Speaker 1: there were no moons, and then we're looking at it

568
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:09,400
Speaker 1: years later and there are moons because they were launched

569
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 1: in the interim, that's just it's just too perfect. It's

570
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:15,440
Speaker 1: it's just too unlikely. And this is actually one of

571
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 1: the reasons that Klowski says that that he thinks that,

572
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: you know, another reason that that Phobos could have potentially

573
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:25,719
Speaker 1: been some sort of artificial creation. He points out that

574
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:28,800
Speaker 1: it's eventual crash into Mars means that we are in

575
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 1: the unlikely position of viewing the moon during its final days. Um.

576
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 1: I mean, you can argue that we're not really talking

577
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 1: about days, We're talking about millions and millions of years. Uh.

578
00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:42,800
Speaker 1: It's just astronomically speaking, their days. Uh. And he argued

579
00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:46,680
Speaker 1: that it was quote an unlikely but not impossible coincidence. Now,

580
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 1: all of this being said, Chicosi also insisted that if

581
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: ancient Mars was truly this advanced, advanced enough to create

582
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: huge artificial satellites and either construct them in orbit, make

583
00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:02,200
Speaker 1: them out of asteroids, or launched them into orbit around Mars,

584
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 1: then we will We're bound to eventually discover evidence of

585
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:10,880
Speaker 1: this civilization, not only you know, via the satellites of Mars,

586
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:14,440
Speaker 1: but also Mars itself during the future exploration of the

587
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:17,680
Speaker 1: red planet and as far as the moons themselves go,

588
00:34:18,120 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 1: he said, well, eventually we're going to conduct fly bys

589
00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: and the and the images that we gain from these

590
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: this will shed light on them. Will they have special

591
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: shapes for example, And of course the answer would prove

592
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:32,879
Speaker 1: to be yes, but also sort of no as well,

593
00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:37,000
Speaker 1: because as we've discussed, like, Phobos does have an unusual shape,

594
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:39,200
Speaker 1: but is it is it a special shape? Is it?

595
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:45,040
Speaker 1: Is it a shape that that screams um artificial construction? Um?

596
00:34:45,160 --> 00:34:47,839
Speaker 1: I think pretty much everybody would argue no. I can't

597
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:50,080
Speaker 1: wait to read the articles about how no, actually the

598
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:53,280
Speaker 1: shape of a Yukon gold potato is the perfect shape

599
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:57,239
Speaker 1: for for an orbital launch platform or whatever. This thing

600
00:34:57,280 --> 00:34:59,319
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a space elevator, and I think

601
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:03,120
Speaker 1: that's what some of it's aliens people are saying today, that, uh,

602
00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 1: that that Phobos was an ancient Martian space elevator. Once again,

603
00:35:07,280 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: there is no strong evidence of this, is I mean,

604
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 1: it's find a play around, have fun speculating about that.

605
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:16,799
Speaker 1: But you know, understand the difference between playing with an

606
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:19,759
Speaker 1: idea and saying like that there's actually strong evidence for it.

607
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:24,800
Speaker 1: There is not, right, Yeah, because because certainly Sholkovsky ultimately

608
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:28,480
Speaker 1: contended that while his own hypothesis was scientifically sound at

609
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:30,920
Speaker 1: the time, though there were some uh, there were some

610
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:34,600
Speaker 1: arguments and some and certainly some opposition to his ideas

611
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:36,200
Speaker 1: and people saying, well, I don't think we need to

612
00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:39,920
Speaker 1: go that far and trying to explain Phobos. Um. Sholkovsky

613
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 1: still acknowledged that future explorations would put his hypothesis to

614
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 1: the test, and that it very well could prove incorrect.

615
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 1: And if it proved incorrect, though, then it would have

616
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 1: still served the purpose of forcing people to think about

617
00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:59,920
Speaker 1: the sorts of advanced work that aliens cultures would have

618
00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:03,600
Speaker 1: constructed or could have constructed, and what would remain of them,

619
00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:06,760
Speaker 1: and therefore what we could potentially look for, uh, in

620
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:12,799
Speaker 1: terms of of evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence and extraterrestrial life. Yeah.

621
00:36:12,800 --> 00:36:14,040
Speaker 1: And of course, one of the signs of a good

622
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 1: hypothesis is that it makes specific predictions that can be

623
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:21,320
Speaker 1: tested in the future, right and uh, you know, And

624
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:23,920
Speaker 1: again this means nothing to people who want to run

625
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 1: wild with the idea that Phobos is hollow and as

626
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 1: an ancient space elevator. I was looking around briefly and

627
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:31,720
Speaker 1: I ran across one of these pages and they referred

628
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:34,800
Speaker 1: to shak Lasky here, but they referred to his quote

629
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:39,840
Speaker 1: unquote findings, uh as if he had proven uh, you know,

630
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:45,080
Speaker 1: without any doubt that Phobos was a hollow artificial satellite,

631
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:48,839
Speaker 1: and that just that is absolutely not the case, exactly right.

632
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:52,520
Speaker 1: But coming back to the original thing leading people off

633
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:56,840
Speaker 1: in this direction, while it's not indication of an artificial origin,

634
00:36:57,239 --> 00:37:00,760
Speaker 1: there is something interesting about the composition of these moons.

635
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:03,120
Speaker 1: I mean, so like, if you look at Phobos, it

636
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: has weird density. It seems very low density for a

637
00:37:08,200 --> 00:37:11,279
Speaker 1: moon or an object of this type. So that leads

638
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 1: to other questions like what would be the cause of

639
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:16,719
Speaker 1: this low density in the moon if it's not you know,

640
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:19,600
Speaker 1: a hollow alien spaceship or something, which again it's not,

641
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:23,120
Speaker 1: and what would be the implications of that low density?

642
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:25,719
Speaker 1: And this leads us into our next section because we

643
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:28,640
Speaker 1: have some current hypotheses that hold that the density problem

644
00:37:28,719 --> 00:37:32,879
Speaker 1: is likely solved by in some cases large spaces within

645
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: Phobos that are not areas that were hollowed out by

646
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:40,600
Speaker 1: an ancient civilization, but could be due to just the

647
00:37:40,600 --> 00:37:43,520
Speaker 1: the the structural qualities of Phobos itself, the way it

648
00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: came together as essentially a big old heap of space junk, right,

649
00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:50,720
Speaker 1: And this ties into something else I was reading actually,

650
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:54,279
Speaker 1: so I was looking at a NASA feature from by

651
00:37:54,280 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Zubritzky called Mars Moon, Phobos is slowly falling up heart. So,

652
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:05,560
Speaker 1: as we mentioned already, Phobos is doomed to spiral into

653
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:08,239
Speaker 1: Mars and either crash into it or break up and

654
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: become rings. This will probably not happen for tens of

655
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:14,920
Speaker 1: millions more years. Actually, the estimates I've seen for this

656
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 1: or sort of all over the place. Some say this

657
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:20,120
Speaker 1: will happen in thirty to fifty million years, some say

658
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: fifty million years, some say a hundred million years. Um.

659
00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 1: So I don't think that there's an actual really tight,

660
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:30,800
Speaker 1: you know limit on that pin down, but it seems somewhere,

661
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 1: you know, thirty to a hundred million years from now

662
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:35,840
Speaker 1: it is expected to break apart into a ring or

663
00:38:35,880 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: crash into Mars. Probably more likely break apart into a ring,

664
00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:42,759
Speaker 1: which is still pretty close in astronomical time. Uh yeah,

665
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:46,160
Speaker 1: well again, we're only looking at the end days astronomically.

666
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:48,520
Speaker 1: From a human standpoint, this is so far in the

667
00:38:48,560 --> 00:38:51,799
Speaker 1: future that it's it's it's hard to imagine that these

668
00:38:51,840 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 1: will truly be humans that observe it, if humans are

669
00:38:54,719 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 1: around to observe it at all. Right, but you remember

670
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:00,200
Speaker 1: last time, how we talked about we were looking at

671
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:02,920
Speaker 1: surface features of Phobos, and one of the things we

672
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:06,120
Speaker 1: talked about where the cat scratches, you know, these long

673
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 1: grooves along the surface of the Moon. And so what

674
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:14,719
Speaker 1: explains those grooves. Well, in this article it quotes a

675
00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:18,879
Speaker 1: researcher named Terry Herford of NASA Goddard who says, we

676
00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 1: think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the

677
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:26,239
Speaker 1: first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves.

678
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:31,399
Speaker 1: And so Zubritsky writes that quote, phobos grooves were long

679
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:35,040
Speaker 1: thought to be fractures caused by the impact that formed

680
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 1: the Stickney Crater. Remember the Stickney Crater is that huge

681
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:41,399
Speaker 1: crater on one face side of Phobos that was named

682
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:46,319
Speaker 1: after Angeline Stickney, who worked on observing Mars during the

683
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies along with her husband ASoft Hall. But coming

684
00:39:49,719 --> 00:39:52,840
Speaker 1: back to this article, so the idea was that you

685
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:55,920
Speaker 1: had this crater caused by a collision with Phobos long ago.

686
00:39:56,400 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 1: Quote that collision was so powerful it came close to

687
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:04,560
Speaker 1: shatter Phobos. However, scientists eventually determined that the grooves don't

688
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:08,360
Speaker 1: radiate outward from the crater itself, but from a focal

689
00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:13,040
Speaker 1: point nearby. More recently, researchers have proposed that the grooves

690
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:17,200
Speaker 1: may instead be produced by many smaller impacts of material

691
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: ejected from Mars, But new modeling by Herford and colleagues

692
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:24,719
Speaker 1: supports the view that the grooves are more like stretch

693
00:40:24,840 --> 00:40:29,440
Speaker 1: marks that occur when Phobos gets deformed by tidal forces.

694
00:40:29,960 --> 00:40:33,720
Speaker 1: Now these would be tidal forces caused by its close

695
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 1: orbit around Mars. Now remember, tidal forces occur when there

696
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 1: is a significant difference in gravitational forces felt by different

697
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 1: parts of the same object. So when something is orbiting

698
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:49,080
Speaker 1: close to a huge object, it will often experience tidal forces.

699
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 1: A very extreme case of tidal forces would be the

700
00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:56,319
Speaker 1: idea of spaghettification, the much celebrated way of dying as

701
00:40:56,360 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 1: you go into a black hole. As the if you're

702
00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:04,600
Speaker 1: falling feet first, the the gradient of gravitational uh forces

703
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 1: that you feel as you fall into the black hole

704
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:09,759
Speaker 1: are so extreme that the difference between the forces on

705
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:12,200
Speaker 1: your feet and the forces on your head would sort

706
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:14,839
Speaker 1: of stretch you out like a noodle. But in more

707
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 1: mundane scenarios, tidal forces are also responsible for things like

708
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 1: the actual tides right you know, as as Earth and

709
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:26,200
Speaker 1: the Moon orbit each other. They exert gravitational influences that

710
00:41:26,239 --> 00:41:29,279
Speaker 1: are not evenly distributed on the entire sphere of the

711
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 1: other body, but they pull like specifically at the at

712
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:37,200
Speaker 1: the facing equatorial region of the other body, right, And

713
00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: so this results in tides in the water on Earth.

714
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:42,760
Speaker 1: But also you can see that the spheres of Earth

715
00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:45,120
Speaker 1: and the Moon are also kind of they kind of

716
00:41:45,160 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 1: bulge out at the middle around the regions where they're

717
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:50,840
Speaker 1: they're most pulled on by the other body. Now, in

718
00:41:50,840 --> 00:41:53,840
Speaker 1: the case of Phobos, it was once thought that tidal

719
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:57,600
Speaker 1: forces should not be strong enough to be stretching apart

720
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:00,840
Speaker 1: a moon like this, But that was when Phobos was

721
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:04,040
Speaker 1: assumed to be solid all the way through at the

722
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:06,880
Speaker 1: time of this writing, And I wonder how this idea

723
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 1: has matured since then. It's possible that there have been

724
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:12,439
Speaker 1: some arguments against it in the meantime, but at least

725
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:16,320
Speaker 1: at this time. In these findings from from NASA, Goddard

726
00:42:17,160 --> 00:42:20,360
Speaker 1: where that the interior of Phobos is more likely to

727
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:23,520
Speaker 1: be this kind of loose collection of rubble is sometimes

728
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:26,879
Speaker 1: referred to as a rubble pile, and that it's all

729
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:31,359
Speaker 1: just sort of barely stuck together and then quote surrounded

730
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:34,400
Speaker 1: by a layer of powdery regularly about three hundred and

731
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:37,960
Speaker 1: thirty feet or a hundred meters thick I mentioned that earlier, right,

732
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:40,920
Speaker 1: So on this model, you've got this blanket of dusty

733
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:45,520
Speaker 1: powdery regular sort of uh, sort of like acting like

734
00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:49,200
Speaker 1: the bindle sack for a bunch of rocks that are

735
00:42:49,239 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 1: just barely loosely held together by gravity. So if this

736
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: model is correct, then there's actually not all that much

737
00:42:57,600 --> 00:43:00,520
Speaker 1: holding the core of Phobos together. It's just a bunch

738
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 1: of junk kind of loosely stuck together by gravity rather

739
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:08,560
Speaker 1: than a single massive, rocky core, and title forces will

740
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:11,319
Speaker 1: have a much easier time ripping it apart than it

741
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:14,840
Speaker 1: would ripping apart something that was more solid. And again,

742
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:18,399
Speaker 1: mythologically speaking, I think this sounds perfect the idea of

743
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 1: the war god's son being this, this fast and fearful

744
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:26,840
Speaker 1: uh creature on the battlefield, but ultimately he's just this

745
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 1: this wreck, this just partially hollow, falling apart, doomed, you know,

746
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:42,040
Speaker 1: wraith of a warrior. Than now, we've been looking a

747
00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:44,799
Speaker 1: lot at Phobos, and to be fair, I mean I

748
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:46,680
Speaker 1: think there's a reason for that, Like a lot of

749
00:43:46,719 --> 00:43:50,319
Speaker 1: the real interest and research and big questions have been

750
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 1: focused on Phobos, but Demos is interesting too, so maybe

751
00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:57,040
Speaker 1: we should take a quick look at Demos in particular. Yeah,

752
00:43:57,160 --> 00:44:00,120
Speaker 1: Demos is the smaller of the twins. It's not and

753
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:02,920
Speaker 1: by seven by six point eight miles in size or

754
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 1: fifteen by twelve by eleven kilometers. It goes around Mars

755
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:10,640
Speaker 1: every thirty hours. It doesn't have grooves and ridges like Phobos,

756
00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 1: but it has plenty of craters. Uh. And while you

757
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:17,760
Speaker 1: know normal craters on on other uh, you know, bodies

758
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 1: are surrounded by ejective from the impact. You know, the

759
00:44:20,560 --> 00:44:23,920
Speaker 1: stuff that gets launched up when that impact takes place.

760
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:29,120
Speaker 1: Damos is gravity is low enough that impact ejecta achieves

761
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:33,359
Speaker 1: escape velocity. Uh. So it doesn't fall just immediately fall

762
00:44:33,400 --> 00:44:37,400
Speaker 1: back down. Instead, the debris remains in a ring around Damos,

763
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:41,920
Speaker 1: it seems, and then it's slowly redeposited on its surface. Now,

764
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:44,399
Speaker 1: we talked in the last episode about how even though

765
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: Phobos is extremely small for a moon, it's so close

766
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:50,520
Speaker 1: to Mars that when you look at it from the surface,

767
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:53,800
Speaker 1: it looks pretty substantial in size. It's like not quite

768
00:44:53,800 --> 00:44:56,480
Speaker 1: as big as the Moon looks from Earth. But like

769
00:44:56,719 --> 00:44:59,719
Speaker 1: a substantial fraction of it, you can see it as

770
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:02,640
Speaker 1: a disk and not just a dot. The same is

771
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: not true for Demos. Right from the surface of Mars,

772
00:45:05,760 --> 00:45:09,239
Speaker 1: Damos would appear star like in the sky. That's how

773
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:12,960
Speaker 1: small it would be. It would just look like a star. Uh,

774
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: you know, it would you know, they would stand out

775
00:45:14,680 --> 00:45:17,239
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it would essentially just look like

776
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:20,360
Speaker 1: a star. And that's that's interesting because it runs counter

777
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 1: intuitive to what we think of when we think of

778
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:27,239
Speaker 1: a moon. Now, when it comes to named craters on Demos,

779
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:31,280
Speaker 1: there are only two, Swift and Voltaire, chosen for obvious

780
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: reasons because, as we explored in our first episode, the

781
00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:38,400
Speaker 1: works of Swift and Voltaire were early works that alluded

782
00:45:38,480 --> 00:45:42,239
Speaker 1: to Mars having two moons in advance of those two

783
00:45:42,239 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 1: moons actually being discovered. But I was reading in uh

784
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:49,480
Speaker 1: in Broca's Brain, the book by Carl sagan Um. He

785
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:51,319
Speaker 1: has a whole section where he goes into like the

786
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:53,560
Speaker 1: naming of Mars. He lists a bunch of the different

787
00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:56,239
Speaker 1: gods in addition to the gods that we uh that

788
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:59,239
Speaker 1: we discussed, that have been associated in different cultures with

789
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:01,920
Speaker 1: the planet Mars ours Uh and he shares that in

790
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:04,960
Speaker 1: addition to Swift and Voltaire, he wanted to name a

791
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:11,120
Speaker 1: third crater of Demos after Um, after Renee uh Margretti,

792
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:16,759
Speaker 1: a Belgian surrealist whose paintings featured large rocks and suspended

793
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:19,520
Speaker 1: in the sky, or at least two of his paintings

794
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 1: depicted large rocks suspended in the sky, and they reminded

795
00:46:23,600 --> 00:46:27,880
Speaker 1: Sagan of the Martian moons. Quote. The suggestion was, however,

796
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: voted down as frivolous. But if you look up some

797
00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 1: of these of these paintings by the artists, like they

798
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:35,560
Speaker 1: they are really cool, they don't you know, they don't

799
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 1: look exactly like uh Phobos and Demos, but they are

800
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:44,000
Speaker 1: the surrealist images of large rock craggy boulders suspended in

801
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:47,120
Speaker 1: the sky over the ocean or a landscape. In one

802
00:46:47,120 --> 00:46:50,120
Speaker 1: case there's a castle on top of one of these boulders.

803
00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 1: In another case you see uh crescent moon in the

804
00:46:53,560 --> 00:47:01,400
Speaker 1: sky above. It clearly an inspiration for Zardas now Um obviously,

805
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:04,520
Speaker 1: you know, given it's a very small moon Uh, and

806
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 1: it is also further away from Mars than Phobos. And

807
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:10,960
Speaker 1: while Phobos, as we've discussed several times already, is faded

808
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:13,920
Speaker 1: to one day crash into the red planet or break

809
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:18,319
Speaker 1: up against its power. Damos is drifting further away and

810
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:22,440
Speaker 1: will one day escape Mars entirely. Uh though from a

811
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:25,960
Speaker 1: mythological standpoint, this I like. I like this too, because

812
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 1: the this doomed, insane godling who will one day earnest freedom,

813
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 1: he'll one day escape the awful war god uh that

814
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:36,560
Speaker 1: that he has served. But he's just gonna wander out

815
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:39,279
Speaker 1: into the waist of the Solar System, perhaps crash into

816
00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:42,800
Speaker 1: lesser deities or mortals and die by their hands instead,

817
00:47:42,920 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 1: or just wander aimlessly. Uh So that's it's kind of

818
00:47:46,520 --> 00:47:48,840
Speaker 1: perfect in its own way. Now, we've talked about the

819
00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 1: idea of missions to the moons of Mars in order

820
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:54,439
Speaker 1: to study them and perhaps even return a sample from

821
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:57,279
Speaker 1: them that would allow us to better understand where they

822
00:47:57,280 --> 00:47:59,879
Speaker 1: come from and what they are. There's actually another one

823
00:47:59,880 --> 00:48:04,520
Speaker 1: of the scheduled It's Japan's Martian Moons Exploration or the

824
00:48:04,680 --> 00:48:08,920
Speaker 1: MMX mission of Jackson, the Japanese Space Agency, which is

825
00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:14,200
Speaker 1: currently scheduled to launch in and perform an orbital insertion

826
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:18,840
Speaker 1: around Mars in and so it would travel to survey

827
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:21,520
Speaker 1: both of the planet's moons. And then the idea is

828
00:48:21,560 --> 00:48:24,360
Speaker 1: that it will land on Phobos and collect a sample

829
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:27,960
Speaker 1: from Phobos to bring back to Earth for study. And

830
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:32,359
Speaker 1: major scientific objectives of this mission would include determining the

831
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 1: origin of Phobos and Demos, so possibly answering these big

832
00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:40,280
Speaker 1: questions that we've been talking about all this research on today.

833
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 1: So are they actually captured asteroids that just happened to

834
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:46,319
Speaker 1: have these very tidy orbits? Are they the result of

835
00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 1: a giant impact with Mars long ago and so forth?

836
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:52,080
Speaker 1: And uh? And also we should be able to study

837
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:55,800
Speaker 1: the history of Mars itself by looking at these moons.

838
00:48:56,320 --> 00:48:59,440
Speaker 1: But as far as space exploration goes, there's another interesting

839
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:02,399
Speaker 1: thing about the moon Phobos, which is that it has

840
00:49:02,480 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: often been proposed as a potentially useful base of operations

841
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:11,240
Speaker 1: for space missions. Yeah, for the same reason Shilowsky outlined,

842
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:14,160
Speaker 1: it would be advantageous to have a moon like Phobos

843
00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 1: above your Mars. If Phobos did not exist, it would

844
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 1: be necessary to invent it. And since it does exist,

845
00:49:21,520 --> 00:49:24,399
Speaker 1: it would make a handy base. Yeah. And so one

846
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 1: of the things is that it has been proposed as

847
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 1: a remote control base of operations for surface robots on Mars.

848
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: So this would eliminate the problem that when we want

849
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:39,160
Speaker 1: to control rovers and exploration vehicles on the surface of Mars,

850
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 1: there is a large time delay between Earth and Mars

851
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:45,800
Speaker 1: where we have to wait after we transmit a command

852
00:49:45,880 --> 00:49:49,239
Speaker 1: signal for that signal to reach the robot and it

853
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:52,319
Speaker 1: performs the operation, and then we have to wait to

854
00:49:52,360 --> 00:49:54,759
Speaker 1: receive feedback, and this can be a while while you're

855
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:57,360
Speaker 1: just sitting there, you know, waiting for your your signal,

856
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:00,600
Speaker 1: your remote control signal to reach the rover, and so

857
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:03,200
Speaker 1: that this can cause a lot of slow down and

858
00:50:03,239 --> 00:50:05,560
Speaker 1: difficulty in these kind of missions. If you could get

859
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:10,240
Speaker 1: your humans onto the surface of Phobos, they could essentially

860
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:15,120
Speaker 1: control things operating on the surface of Mars remotely in

861
00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:18,399
Speaker 1: real time. And it would be better trying to put

862
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:21,239
Speaker 1: humans on the surface of Phobos than trying to put

863
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:23,719
Speaker 1: them on the surface of Mars itself, because it's a

864
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: lot easier to get back from the surface of Phobos

865
00:50:27,360 --> 00:50:29,600
Speaker 1: than it is to get back from Mars itself. To

866
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:31,400
Speaker 1: get off of the surface of Mars, you need a

867
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:34,360
Speaker 1: powerful rocket to leave the gravity well of the planet.

868
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 1: Getting off of Phobos would be would be a cake

869
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 1: walk in comparison. Now, of course, putting humans or even

870
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 1: just probes on the surface of Phobos would still be

871
00:50:43,040 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: plenty difficult. And I was reading about one possible complication

872
00:50:46,600 --> 00:50:50,400
Speaker 1: that really fascinated me. This was in another NASA press

873
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:53,520
Speaker 1: release that I was looking at from October of seventeen

874
00:50:53,600 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: by Bills Steagerwald and Nancy Jones, and it is about

875
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:03,719
Speaker 1: research suggesting that solar eruptions may have a tendency to

876
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:07,920
Speaker 1: electrically charge up the surface of Phobos two hundreds of

877
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:12,680
Speaker 1: volts quote, presenting a complex electrical environment that could possibly

878
00:51:12,719 --> 00:51:17,920
Speaker 1: affect sensitive electronics carried by future robotic explorers, according to

879
00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: a new NASA study. The study also considered electrical charges

880
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:25,800
Speaker 1: that could develop as astronauts transit the surface on potential

881
00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:31,200
Speaker 1: human missions to Phobos, and they quote a researcher named

882
00:51:31,239 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 1: William Farrell of NASA Goddard who says, we found that

883
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:40,400
Speaker 1: astronauts or rovers could accumulate significant electric charges when traversing

884
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:43,640
Speaker 1: the night side of Phobos, the side facing Mars during

885
00:51:43,680 --> 00:51:47,120
Speaker 1: the Martian Day. So why would this happen? Why would

886
00:51:47,120 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 1: Phobos turn into a giant Ben Franklin Turkey killing jar. Well, fortunately,

887
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:55,359
Speaker 1: the electric charge is not quite that powerful. I think

888
00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:57,719
Speaker 1: it is not at the Turkey killing jar levels. It

889
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:01,480
Speaker 1: seems unlikely that it would be in human injury range

890
00:52:01,560 --> 00:52:04,080
Speaker 1: at least most of the time, but it might be

891
00:52:04,200 --> 00:52:09,000
Speaker 1: enough to screw up sensors and sensitive or delicate electronic equipment.

892
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:12,360
Speaker 1: So what gives what would cause this? Well, Phobos and

893
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:15,840
Speaker 1: Demos both have no atmosphere, and they are exposed to

894
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:19,799
Speaker 1: solar wind, which is a giant stream of charged particles.

895
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:21,799
Speaker 1: You can think of it as a kind of electric

896
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:25,120
Speaker 1: gas that's blowing off of the surface of the Sun

897
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:28,600
Speaker 1: in every direction at a million miles per hour. So

898
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:31,759
Speaker 1: solar wind hits the day side of Phobos, that would

899
00:52:31,760 --> 00:52:34,200
Speaker 1: be the side that's facing the Sun, and some of

900
00:52:34,200 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 1: the plasma gets absorbed on the day side, but then

901
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:42,359
Speaker 1: the rest flows around the rocky mass of Phobos, and

902
00:52:42,440 --> 00:52:45,919
Speaker 1: this creates a void of solar wind on the night

903
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:48,560
Speaker 1: side of Phobos. And the solar wind is made up

904
00:52:48,600 --> 00:52:51,759
Speaker 1: of two major types of charge particles. You've got electrons,

905
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:54,040
Speaker 1: which of course are negative, and then you've got ions

906
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:57,360
Speaker 1: pieces of atoms that can be positively charged. And the

907
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:01,600
Speaker 1: electrons are much lighter than the eons. So the article

908
00:53:01,640 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 1: again quotes William Farrell of NASA Goddard, who says, quote,

909
00:53:05,360 --> 00:53:08,759
Speaker 1: the electrons act like fighter jets. They're able to turn

910
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:11,880
Speaker 1: quickly around an obstacle, and the ions are like big,

911
00:53:11,880 --> 00:53:16,239
Speaker 1: heavy bombers. They change directions slowly. This means that the

912
00:53:16,360 --> 00:53:19,680
Speaker 1: light electrons push in ahead of the heavy ions, and

913
00:53:19,719 --> 00:53:23,280
Speaker 1: the resulting electric field forces the ions into the plasma

914
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:27,279
Speaker 1: void behind Phobos. According to our models, and so the

915
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:30,880
Speaker 1: result is that the night side of Phobos builds up

916
00:53:30,960 --> 00:53:35,640
Speaker 1: significant static electricity. Quote. The study shows that this plasma

917
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 1: void behind Phobos may create a situation where astronauts and

918
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:44,319
Speaker 1: rovers build up significant electric charges. For example, if astronauts

919
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:48,040
Speaker 1: were to walk across the night side surface friction could

920
00:53:48,040 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 1: transfer charge from the dust and rock on the surface

921
00:53:51,239 --> 00:53:54,360
Speaker 1: to their space suits. This dust and rock is a

922
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:57,440
Speaker 1: very poor conductor of electricity, so the charge can't flow

923
00:53:57,480 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: back easily into the surface, and charge starts to build

924
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:03,680
Speaker 1: up on the space suits. On the day side, the

925
00:54:03,719 --> 00:54:07,520
Speaker 1: electrically conducting solar wind and solar ultra violet radiation can

926
00:54:07,560 --> 00:54:10,319
Speaker 1: remove the excess charge on the suit, but on the

927
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:13,840
Speaker 1: night side, the ion and electron densities in the trailing

928
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:18,040
Speaker 1: plasma void are so low they cannot compensate or dissipate

929
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:20,879
Speaker 1: the charge build up. And so the team looked into

930
00:54:20,880 --> 00:54:23,759
Speaker 1: this and they found that the static charge could reach

931
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:27,200
Speaker 1: up to ten thousand volts on some materials that would

932
00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:29,760
Speaker 1: be moving across the surface. And some of those materials

933
00:54:29,800 --> 00:54:33,680
Speaker 1: would include like the teflon suits that that astronauts have

934
00:54:33,840 --> 00:54:36,600
Speaker 1: used in the Apollo lunar missions. And of course this

935
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:39,680
Speaker 1: leads so you build up a gigantic static electric charge

936
00:54:39,719 --> 00:54:42,120
Speaker 1: on your space suit and then you go and touch something.

937
00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:44,520
Speaker 1: It's like you know when when you you shuffle across

938
00:54:44,520 --> 00:54:48,440
Speaker 1: the carpet and then use zap your family members. They

939
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:50,320
Speaker 1: also point out that this is always going to be

940
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:52,799
Speaker 1: the case when solar wind is blowing onto Phobos, but

941
00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:55,800
Speaker 1: it's going to be especially bad during heavy sun weather,

942
00:54:56,239 --> 00:54:58,600
Speaker 1: such as in the wake of a coronal mass ejection.

943
00:54:59,080 --> 00:55:02,160
Speaker 1: So astronaut on the surface of Phobos might need I

944
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:04,640
Speaker 1: don't know that they may need mitigation measures for this,

945
00:55:04,760 --> 00:55:09,719
Speaker 1: somehow to avoid accumulating static electricity in this way. I

946
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:11,520
Speaker 1: was wondering, I was looking it up. Do they make

947
00:55:11,560 --> 00:55:14,360
Speaker 1: those anti static socks I've seen before? I don't know

948
00:55:14,400 --> 00:55:16,399
Speaker 1: if those actually work. Those might be a scam. I've

949
00:55:16,440 --> 00:55:18,480
Speaker 1: never really looked into it. Oh yeah, I mean, I

950
00:55:18,480 --> 00:55:21,000
Speaker 1: guess they'd be useful if you're touching a lot of

951
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:25,479
Speaker 1: electronics and stuff, But if you're just like a kid,

952
00:55:26,239 --> 00:55:28,359
Speaker 1: they seemed like a horrible invention. Why would you take

953
00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:31,239
Speaker 1: this gift of static electricity away from them? Oh? I

954
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:34,520
Speaker 1: know you. You like zapping people, don't you. Um? I

955
00:55:34,560 --> 00:55:39,040
Speaker 1: actually don't za people as much intentionally. But one thing

956
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:41,799
Speaker 1: that my son and I have always enjoyed is if

957
00:55:41,840 --> 00:55:45,840
Speaker 1: the if an atmospheric conditions are right, he can go

958
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:50,480
Speaker 1: down a slide at a playground and he'll build up

959
00:55:50,480 --> 00:55:53,040
Speaker 1: that electric charge on the way down, and then he

960
00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:55,080
Speaker 1: can give me a high five, and when he gets

961
00:55:55,080 --> 00:55:57,160
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the slide, and it will be

962
00:55:57,200 --> 00:55:59,200
Speaker 1: what we call an electric high five because it will

963
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:02,160
Speaker 1: be an actually static shock to it. So I do

964
00:56:02,280 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 1: all if that a lot. Uh, you know, always a

965
00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:08,000
Speaker 1: hit with the kids. That's so beautiful, I'm gonna cry.

966
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:11,000
Speaker 1: But as far as Phobos goes this, this whole scenario

967
00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:12,920
Speaker 1: you just a discussed here, it made me think like

968
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:15,480
Speaker 1: this would be perfect. You have like a Phobos space Western,

969
00:56:15,560 --> 00:56:20,680
Speaker 1: kind of like the Sean Connery movie Outlander. Um, Outland

970
00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:27,120
Speaker 1: not Outlander, Yes, yes, the Killed TV show, uh, which

971
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:29,600
Speaker 1: which is also entertaining. But now this is this is uh,

972
00:56:29,719 --> 00:56:32,719
Speaker 1: this is a space Western scenario where you have your

973
00:56:32,719 --> 00:56:35,520
Speaker 1: astronaut and he's been left for dead, uh, you know,

974
00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:38,280
Speaker 1: on the far side of Phobos. But he's not dead.

975
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:41,440
Speaker 1: So he comes trooping back, walking across the waste land

976
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:45,719
Speaker 1: of Phoebos, just building up static electricity with each vengeful

977
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:48,719
Speaker 1: step until he can get back to the habitat and

978
00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:54,320
Speaker 1: uh and zap his killers or would be killers. Brutal. Yeah.

979
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:56,440
Speaker 1: I don't know if the science completely works, but I

980
00:56:56,480 --> 00:56:58,799
Speaker 1: think there's enough science there that you could make it

981
00:56:58,880 --> 00:57:02,800
Speaker 1: work in in a science fiction property. Well hey, okay,

982
00:57:02,840 --> 00:57:05,520
Speaker 1: so we love the cool idea of the holo Phobos,

983
00:57:05,520 --> 00:57:08,040
Speaker 1: but there's not good evidence that it's actually true. Put

984
00:57:08,040 --> 00:57:11,400
Speaker 1: it in the science fiction movie. Uh, the there is

985
00:57:11,440 --> 00:57:14,320
Speaker 1: actually evidence that you get this electric build up on Phobos.

986
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:17,200
Speaker 1: It's probably not enough to do the like electric weapon

987
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:18,960
Speaker 1: idea you want to do, but they put it in

988
00:57:19,040 --> 00:57:22,240
Speaker 1: the science fiction movie. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you use it

989
00:57:22,280 --> 00:57:25,200
Speaker 1: as a jumping off point to create your your your

990
00:57:25,280 --> 00:57:29,160
Speaker 1: science flavored fantasy. I'm all for that. All right, Well,

991
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:31,520
Speaker 1: there you have it. We're gonna go ahead and close

992
00:57:31,560 --> 00:57:36,960
Speaker 1: out our look at the moons of marsh. We'll hope

993
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:38,920
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this. We enjoyed it, and you know it's

994
00:57:38,920 --> 00:57:44,160
Speaker 1: a great opportunity to to bust out some planetary information,

995
00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:47,560
Speaker 1: to discuss mythology a bit. And uh, I guess the

996
00:57:47,560 --> 00:57:49,680
Speaker 1: big question is would you like us to continue this

997
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:52,560
Speaker 1: journey now that we have started it again? Should we

998
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:56,040
Speaker 1: move on to other moons? Other planets? Uh? You know,

999
00:57:56,080 --> 00:57:58,240
Speaker 1: even even planets that that don't have moons. I don't

1000
00:57:58,240 --> 00:57:59,920
Speaker 1: know if we've I can't remember if we ever ever

1001
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:03,360
Speaker 1: on like a proper look at the planet Mercury. I

1002
00:58:03,400 --> 00:58:06,840
Speaker 1: know we've looked at at Venus a few times, but

1003
00:58:06,920 --> 00:58:08,760
Speaker 1: I don't know that we've really looked at at Mercury.

1004
00:58:08,840 --> 00:58:11,600
Speaker 1: So may you know, maybe that's uh in the cards.

1005
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:14,400
Speaker 1: Let us know. We'd love to hear from you. In

1006
00:58:14,400 --> 00:58:16,240
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes

1007
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:18,680
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind, well you can find

1008
00:58:18,760 --> 00:58:21,080
Speaker 1: us anywhere you get your podcasts. Go to the Stuff

1009
00:58:21,120 --> 00:58:24,080
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind Podcasts feed you'll find core science

1010
00:58:24,320 --> 00:58:26,400
Speaker 1: and culture episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. On

1011
00:58:26,440 --> 00:58:30,520
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, we publish artifacts on Wednesday's listener Mail

1012
00:58:30,560 --> 00:58:34,360
Speaker 1: on Monday's Friday's that's when we bust out Weird how Cinema.

1013
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:36,840
Speaker 1: That's our time to just discuss some weird movies and

1014
00:58:36,880 --> 00:58:39,640
Speaker 1: sometimes there's a little science sprinkled in there. And then

1015
00:58:39,680 --> 00:58:41,560
Speaker 1: on the weekends we do a bit of a rerun.

1016
00:58:42,080 --> 00:58:44,640
Speaker 1: I gotta catch them all huge things. As always to

1017
00:58:44,680 --> 00:58:48,240
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would

1018
00:58:48,280 --> 00:58:50,160
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on

1019
00:58:50,240 --> 00:58:53,160
Speaker 1: this episode or any other to suggest topic for the future,

1020
00:58:53,240 --> 00:58:55,960
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact

1021
00:58:56,000 --> 00:59:06,120
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to

1022
00:59:06,120 --> 00:59:08,680
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For

1023
00:59:08,760 --> 00:59:10,760
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the i

1024
00:59:10,800 --> 00:59:13,640
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to

1025
00:59:13,640 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.