WEBVTT - Phobos and Deimos: The Moons of Mars, Part 2 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:05.240 My Welcome to scoff to Blow Your Mind, the production 0:00:05.240 --> 0:00:14.160 of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:17.280 Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:19.280 Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:23.080 talk about the moons of Mars, Phobos and Demos. Now, 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:25.400 in the last episode, we talked a bit about the 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:29.760 mythology behind the moons of Mars, the companions and sons 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:33.080 of the war god Aries the Roman Mars, the god 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:36.120 of War, and we talked about how the names of 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:38.720 these came to be applied to the moons of Mars, 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.800 these two small objects that were discovered in the late 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:45.880 nineteenth century. We talked about that discovery story. We talked 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:48.960 about some of the basic properties of Phobos and Demos 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:53.080 and why there is some question about what their origin was. 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:55.200 We're going to get into more detail about that today. 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:59.520 And we ended up talking about a bizarre conspiracy theory 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:03.960 about out an interesting surface feature of Phobos that really 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:06.400 had nothing to it, but the surface feature known as 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:10.240 the Phobos monolith, is inherently very interesting. Yeah, and so 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:13.120 in this episode we're gonna we're gonna cover more interesting 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:16.800 stuff about Phobos. And demos uh stuff about the history 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:21.039 of its exploration. We'll get into another idea that conspiracy 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:25.920 theorists seem to really like concerning one of the two moons. 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:29.080 There'll be a dash of mythology here and there, but 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:31.400 it should be a fun ride, now, Robin, the last episode, 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:35.640 we were talking about how close the moon Phobos is 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.279 to Mars. It is the closest moon to its host 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:43.160 planet in the entire Solar System. Uh. It's so close. 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:45.200 I think it's a it's a matter of you know, 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:49.280 just like several thousand kilometers. It's a distance that is 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:53.240 a little bit longer than the driving distance between Miami 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:56.920 and Vancouver, as we talked about the last time. So 0:01:57.440 --> 0:01:59.640 you know, if you if there were a road between them, 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:02.560 you could drive it in two or three days. And 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:06.360 that's incredibly close for a moon to UH to orbit 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:09.120 its host planet. But I found another point of comparison 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:11.280 that we didn't make in the last episode that I 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:16.680 thought was absolutely astounding, and it's that the moon Phobos 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:20.560 orbits so close to the surface of Mars that if 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.760 you are standing near the polar regions of Mars sometimes 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:27.520 you can't see the Moon even when it's on the 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.840 same side of the planet as you because it's blocked 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:34.600 by the horizon. It's orbiting down near the equator and 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:37.840 you can't see it over the curvature of Mars itself. 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.560 That that's unbelievable. Yeah, that is. That is pretty amazing. 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:43.920 And of course, as we discussed, it's getting closer to 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:48.160 Mars and will eventually, uh you know, millions and millions 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:52.120 of years in the future, will actually crash into Mars 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:55.440 or break up in orbit and become a new ring 0:02:55.720 --> 0:03:00.400 around the planet. Yeah, they're gonna tussle. Yeah. But one 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:02.200 of the things we also alluded to in the last 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:04.880 episode is that these two moons, Phobos and Demos, have 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:10.200 extremely weird properties that really raised questions about where they 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:12.320 come from in the first place. And you can ask 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.040 this about moons all throughout the Solar System, like there 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:19.959 is some question about where the moon of Earth came from. 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:22.760 Those there's a there's a pretty strong leading theory that 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:26.679 is the giant impact hypothesis, the idea that early during 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:30.720 the formation of Earth, Earth was hit by a planetestimal 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:34.280 or you know, a Mars sized object roughly, and that 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:38.320 giant impact created a bunch of debris and eventually the 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:41.560 what was left over coalesced into the Earth and then 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.800 the Moon in orbit around the Earth. Indeed, uh, certain 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:48.080 properties of these moons as well discussed here, tend to 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.640 lend themselves more to one interpretation, and other properties if 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:55.800 you focus on those, lend towards another interpretation, which leads 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:58.880 to just a fair amount of you know, continued confusion, 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.240 but also inten fascination. Yeah, there's an article about this 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:04.280 that we were both reading that kind of sums up 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:06.640 some of the debate pretty nicely. It was published in 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.560 The New York Times by Robin George Andrews in July, 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:14.920 called Why the super weird Moons of Mars Fascinate Scientists, 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.680 and it briefly goes over some of the arguments either 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:20.159 way is now um. One of the things that points 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:22.880 out is that if you're just to look at the 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:26.200 what the moons appear to be made of, you know, 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:29.960 they're they're sort of physical characteristics in and of themselves. 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:35.240 They look a lot like captured asteroid's asteroids that at 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.320 some point would have been bumped off course and then 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:41.400 caught in the gravity well of Mars so that they 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:45.960 ended up just orbiting Mars. Permanently. Yeah, the the the 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:49.680 asteroid capture hypothesis, which which which is a popular one, 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:54.480 but it doesn't quite explain everything right now in its favor. 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:56.640 One of the main things that has going for it 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:00.320 is that the material that the Martian moons are made 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:04.400 of looks a lot like asteroid type material. Yeah, so 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:06.960 that they they look like asteroids. They seem to be 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:10.120 composed of the same material as asteroids. And yeah, they 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:12.719 would have just ended up too close to mars gravitational 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:16.680 pull and would have been simply orbitally dominated by the 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:21.000 planet Mars. The god of war says, you too, you 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:24.280 you shattered Rex. You are now my son's come with 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:26.880 me right into battle with me. It's like in the 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:30.000 cop movie when you commandeer the vehicle. You know, I'm 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:33.080 commandeering this vehicle, or James Bond gets into somebody's car 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:35.160 and drives off with it. Or I guess it would 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:37.560 be more like tying a car to you and making 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:39.719 it swing around you. I guess that an analogy isn't 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:41.920 that great, But yeah, it's it's saying you're coming with 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:45.040 me now, right. But the other interesting thing is that 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:47.920 they have that kind of throws this off, is they 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:51.880 have near equatorial orbits, and Is Andrews points out in 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:55.159 this article, this suggests that they coalesced from a disc 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:59.080 of debris that danced around a very young Mars. So 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:02.440 it basically it's just all too neat and tidy surely 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:06.279 to be an asteroid capture. So, in other words, like, okay, 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:08.800 if there, if it's asteroid capture, these are like wildcats. 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.360 But if they're wildcats, why are they behaving like orbital 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:16.760 house cats? So yeah, so that's that's part of the 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:19.599 big confusion here. Yeah, so you've got some creepy space 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:23.560 yukon golds that look like they're made of roughly asteroid stuff. 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:26.640 But the way they orbit Mars, it's a couple of 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:30.120 things actually, that their orbits are near equatorial, meaning that 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:33.680 they orbit basically, you know, not exactly, but pretty close 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:36.800 to around the equator line of Mars, you know, in 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:39.880 between its poles. And then the other part is that 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:44.320 their orbits are nearly perfectly circular. And this is just 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.400 not what you would expect to see with a captured asteroid. 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:51.599 If an asteroid came in that was originally orbiting the 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.680 Sun at a different speed and then it just got 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.520 stuck in the gravity well of Mars. What you would 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:00.760 probably expect to see is that it's orbit would be 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.400 more irregular, some more stretched out, right. You know, that's 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.080 often when something gets captured by an object and it 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:10.120 was originally on its own trajectory, it tends to have 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:12.720 a more stretched out oval type orbit. But then the 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:14.800 other thing is you would expect its orbit to be 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.960 tilted at a steeper angle rather than neatly orbiting pretty 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:22.800 close to its equatorial line. And then there's one more 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.760 factor that I think is worth considering. This is actually 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:28.200 cited in that article in The New York Times by 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:33.520 Robin George Andrews. And Andrews quotes a Japanese scientist named 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:38.680 Tomohiro Usui who points out that also Mars gravity is 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:42.360 pretty weak. I mean, you know, you can capture an asteroid, 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.640 but Tomohiro Sue points out that Mars has like a 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:50.280 tenth of Earth's mass, so it's kind of improbable that 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:53.520 it would be able to capture two asteroids that are 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:56.840 traveling by at orbital speeds, you know, speeds of orbiting 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:00.160 the Sun. So it just seems kind of unlikely as 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:03.240 an origin story for them and their orbits really don't 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:07.400 seem to match what you would expect from from asteroid capture. Now, 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:12.480 there is another hypothesis that would make some sense, which 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:15.960 is that what if the moons of Mars were formed 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:21.440 from a debris disc that was kicked up into orbit 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:25.760 around Mars after a colossal impact. So not exactly the 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:29.120 same as but but similar to one of the leading 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:32.320 ideas about where the Earth's moon comes from. There's a 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:36.079 giant impact on Mars at some point, and that shoots 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:40.479 all this stuff into space around Mars, which gradually coalesces 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:43.920 into a disc that's in orbit around Mars, and then 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:49.080 that disk gravitationally coalesces into solid objects, these two moons. 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.240 Now there's some reasons for doubting that as well. I mean, 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:55.360 one idea offered in this article is that Demos's orbit 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:58.199 is maybe a little too far out to be explained 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:02.120 that way, but that could possibly be overcome. One paper 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:04.960 I was looking at that supports the idea of a 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:07.959 giant impact as the original source of Phobos and Demos 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:14.280 was published in Nature Geoscience by Pascal Rosenblatt at All, 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.480 and it's called accretion of Phobos and Demos in an 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:23.080 extended debris disc stirred by transient moons um and so 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:26.480 that they write in their abstract that quote. Here we 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:30.679 use numerical simulations to suggest that Phobos and Demos accreted 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:34.360 from the outer portion of a debris disc formed after 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:38.720 a giant impact on Mars. In our simulations, larger moons 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.320 form from material in the denser inner disc and migrate 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:46.880 outwards due to gravitational interactions with the disc. The resulting 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:51.360 orbital resonances spread outwards and gathered dispersed outer disc debris, 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:55.800 facilitating accretion into two satellites of sizes similar to Phobos 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:59.440 and Demos. The larger inner moons fall back to Mars 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:02.400 after about five million years due to the title pull 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:06.160 of the planet, after which the two outer satellites evolve 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.959 into Phobos and Demos like orbits. The proposed scenario can 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:14.000 explain why Mars has two small satellites instead of one 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:17.480 large moon. Our model predicts that Phobos and Demos are 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:20.640 composed of a mixture of material from Mars and the 0:10:20.679 --> 0:10:23.760 impact or so Again, this would be kind of similar 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:27.720 to the Earth's moon origin story. There's a giant impact 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:30.720 on Mars long long ago. It spits out all this 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:34.920 debris into orbit around Mars that forms into multiple moons 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:39.959 at different orbital distances, and then interactions between those eventually 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:43.679 cause inner moons to be destroyed spiraling into Mars as 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:47.320 Phobos will one day do, and then uh, and then 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:51.000 these other objects to coalesce into the current orbits that 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:54.280 we see for Phobos and Demos. So that's one plausible 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:57.959 possibility they've put together. Yeah, and this satisfies some of 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:00.760 the mysteries that we discussed earlier. How can it be uh, 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:03.840 have the qualities of an asteroid capture, but also have 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.760 the qualities of of something that formed out of a 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:10.240 desk around Mars. Now we've mentioned that Phobos as its 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:13.560 spirals into Mars will probably break apart. I mean, we 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.000 mentioned a couple options. It could just crash into Mars. 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:19.319 More of the sources that I was reading seemed to 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:21.800 suggest that the more likely option is that as it 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:24.800 spirals into Mars, it will be sort of ripped apart 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.640 by tidal forces and it will break up and become 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:32.840 rings in orbit around Mars. But really interesting question that 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:35.720 I came across in another study in Nature Geoscience, this 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:39.880 one published in This is the question of what if 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:43.360 this future scenario where Phobos breaks up in orbit around 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:47.000 Mars and becomes rings. What if that has already happened. 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:52.040 Very interesting origin hypothesis for for these two moons. So 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:56.360 this is by Andrew J. Hessel Brock and David A. Minton. Again, 0:11:56.440 --> 0:12:00.880 that's nature geoscience in seen called an ongoing satellite ring 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.280 cycle of Mars and the origins of Phobos and Demos. 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:07.839 Now this uh. This explanation has a similar beginning as 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:10.480 the last one, but some of the details are different. 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.880 Again to read from their abstract, the Martian moons Phobos 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:17.440 and Demos may have accreated from a ring of impact debris, 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:20.600 but explaining their origin from a single giant impact has 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:23.960 proven difficult. One clue may lie in the orbit of 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:27.960 Phobos that is slowly decaying as the satellite undergoes tidal 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:32.640 interactions with Mars. In about seventy million years, Phobos is 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:35.880 predicted to reach the location of tidal breakup and break 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.360 apart to form a new ring around the planet. Here 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:42.600 we use numerical simulations to suggest that the resulting ring 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:47.320 will viscously spread to eventually deposit about eight percent of 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.720 debris onto Mars. The remaining twenty of debris will accrete 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:56.560 into a new generation of satellites. Furthermore, we propose that 0:12:56.640 --> 0:13:00.880 this process has occurred repeatedly throughout martian His story. In 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.480 our simulations, beginning with a large satellite formed after giant 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:07.800 impact with early Mars, we find that between three and 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:12.040 seven ring satellite cycles over the past four point three 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:15.760 billion years can explain Phobos and Demos as they are 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:20.079 observed today. Such a scenario implies the deposition of significant 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:24.680 ring material onto Mars during each cycle. We hypothesize that 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.560 some anomalous sedimentary deposits observed on Mars maybe linked to 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:33.280 these periodic episodes of ring deposition. So Phobos or the 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.679 ancestor of Phobos could have been once much larger, maybe 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:40.679 twenty times more massive. But then there's this pattern that 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:44.200 repeats over time, almost like you know, the mythological cycle 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:48.520 of history, where there's orbital decay. It's it's going closer 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:51.960 and closer down into Mars. It shatters from tidal forces, 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:55.200 it's you know, turned, it splits apart into a million pieces, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:58.560 forms a ring around Mars. The pieces of the ring 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:01.520 then coalesce into a move and then repeat with the 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:04.840 Moon getting smaller every cycle. I love this because if 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:06.960 you if you take it and then apply it to 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:11.240 the mythological model that we've been discussing here, you have Mars, 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:14.439 who is you know, actually more the the you know, 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.520 we can would think more of the Greek war god 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:21.120 aries representing the worst of war, just the the bloodshed 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:24.080 and the screams. Just this awful deity, the god of 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:26.000 the screams of the dying. Yeah, yeah, the god of 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:28.080 the screams of the dying. And so it makes sense 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:30.640 that his two loyal sons who are destined to rebel 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:33.520 against him have always rebelled against him. Like there's a 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:38.920 cycle of them rebelling against the Almighty Father here, being destroyed, 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:42.560 breaking up, but then he reforms them. You know, it's 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.440 like they're resurrected to continue to serve them as these 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:48.760 kind of misshapen wraiths. Oh man, yeah, I love that. 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:51.720 Another way to think about it is if you're talking 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:53.560 about a god of war, I mean, this is the 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:57.960 process of attrition, right, slowly wearing down your enemy's forces 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:01.160 over time. Yeah, yeah, they coming back, but each time 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:04.200 weaker and weaker. Now, like many things in space science, 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.920 this is one of these great fascinating open questions that 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:11.200 really could uh, we could really have a better chance 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:13.760 of solving if we were to have more physical data 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:16.240 to work with. And so this is one of the 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:19.520 many reasons that there have been all these proposed missions 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:22.320 to the moons of Mars, and including that, there's a 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:24.560 there's an upcoming mission that we'll talk about in a 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:27.800 bit from the Japanese Space Agency from Jackson that is 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:30.600 planning to go to the moons of Mars in I 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.640 think it's supposed to launch in four and hopefully arrive 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:38.080 in But there we could learn more about the composition 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:40.720 of these moons, which could maybe tell us more about 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:42.840 their history. But to come back to that New York 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:45.560 Times article we were talking about, Uh, there's a part 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.520 of it which says, quote, although made of ancient matter, 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.680 the Phobos we see today may have been assembled just 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.360 two hundred million years ago. If it were confirmed that 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:58.800 Phobos is a haphazardly clumped together mass, it would be 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:02.960 a revelation suggesting planets with rings are the norm for 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.800 our Solar system. And I had to think about that 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:08.040 for a second, and then I realized, like, oh, yeah, okay, 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:10.360 so if it's normal for Mars to have a ring, 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:13.600 and we just happened to be observing it during one 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:17.120 of its you know, interring periods, one of its ringless periods. 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:20.280 That would mean the majority of planets in our Solar 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:23.640 system of rings. Jupiter as rings, Saturn has huge rings, 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.240 uh Uranus has rings. So you'd realize that rings are 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:31.280 the standard and a planet without rings is actually weirder. Yeah, 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.200 I guess it's kind of like thinking about cities, right. UM. 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:38.080 Imagine you know, most cities have some sort of sprawling suburbs, 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:40.400 but maybe you have a city that doesn't really have 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:44.200 suburbs but just has like a a centralized satellite uh 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:48.520 town outside of it, maybe to such satellite towns. Um. 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:49.880 But if that was the main thing you saw, you 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:51.360 might think, oh, this is just how it works, This 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:54.480 is how cities are come together. Though, one thing I 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:56.720 should point out from that article that they quote again 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:00.920 the Japanese researcher tell my hero Sui who uh says 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:03.160 that you know, this that we were just talking about 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:06.280 could possibly be true of Phobos, but at the same time, 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:08.919 not for demos. It's possible that they you know, that 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:11.760 they have these different origins that they're not exactly the 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:16.119 same thing. So Demos could be much older than Phobos. Potentially, 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:18.880 uh Suey says that Demos could be three point five 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:22.359 billion years old, whereas it's it's possible that Phobos is 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:25.560 much much younger, just like two million years old. But 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:28.000 again it's one of those things that it'll be hard 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:30.800 to know for sure until we send something there and 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:40.400 maybe even bring part of it back. Than I'm ready 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:42.080 to get weird. Do you want to talk about some 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:48.679 weird historical hypotheses about Phobos? Yeah, concerning the idea of 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:52.439 a hollow Phobos. Now, one thing I want to stress 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:56.040 here is again we'd love to have physical evidence, physical 0:17:56.080 --> 0:17:59.000 material to look at regarding Phobos and Demos, but we 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:01.399 don't yet. Hopefully in the future, but we don't have 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:04.440 it now. What we have are, in addition to to 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:08.960 various other readings, we have visual images taken via fly 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:12.240 bys and and and Mars missions. But there was a 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:15.760 time where we didn't have those additional um images. So 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:18.720 I want to go back to the late nineteen fifties 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:21.560 and ultimately to the decades preceding that, and the work 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:28.800 of Russian astrophysicist uh Yosef Shaklovsky, who hypothesized that phobos 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.160 might be hollow and even more to the point, might 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:39.199 be an artificial structure. Oh yeah, Now, Yoso Shaklovsky was 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:44.680 born nineteen sixteen died five. He was a Soviet astronomer 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:47.520 and astrophysicist. And we've actually mentioned him on the show 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:51.040 before because he co wrote and he had for the 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:56.120 main credited author on intelligent Life in the Universe with 0:18:56.200 --> 0:19:00.000 Carl Sagan in nineteen sixty six. I believe we discussed 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:04.720 it in our Look at Ancient Astronaut hypothesis, which you know, 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:07.600 the basics of which they went into in this book. 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:10.280 And in a in a way this this book was 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:13.160 was kind of pivotal to the whole Ancient Aliens movement, 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:16.400 even though I have to stress the Chaklovsky and say 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:19.879 Agan they discussed it rather uh, you know, very in 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:24.440 a very grounded nature, very scientifically. Um. And it's other 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:28.200 authors who really have would run wild with it and 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:30.560 um and just you know, go off the speculative deep 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:32.959 end with it. You know, there's something I notice in 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:38.040 the in the responsible science journalism of today that is 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:43.600 a kind of automatic, reactive opposition to the subject of 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:47.200 like aliens or evidence for aliens, and and I get 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.520 it right, because if you're covering space, if you're covering astronomy, 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.280 if you're covering space missions, you know, in anything having 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:55.680 to do with space, one of the things you're going 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.960 to be dealing with most often is people your respond 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:03.520 sibly taking some piece of evidence that in no way 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:08.359 really indicates evidence of alien life and saying it's aliens, 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:10.200 and that they're just going to be doing that over 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:12.680 and over again, and then you just end up having 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:15.520 to spend your career writing article after article of like, no, 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:19.439 this rock on Mars is not an alien. There's no 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:22.080 reason you have to conclude that. You know, natural wind 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:25.480 erosion can cause features that look strange like this, here's how, 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:28.040 And then you can end up explaining interesting things about 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:30.840 natural science about like how wind erosion can cause something 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.000 to look sculpted or designed in a certain way, or 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:36.119 you you know, you end up saying like, no, we 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:38.399 we don't have any reason to conclude yet that the 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:41.760 signal coming from this star, even though it's like repeating, 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.040 is an alien. And then you can explain stuff about 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:46.240 pulsars and how they work and what we know about 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:49.399 them and that's all good stuff. But I think because 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:53.159 there is such a tendency for for hoax hype people 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.320 and for the public generally to get over excited about 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:01.720 something that's mysterious and say, therefore it's aliens, you can 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:05.920 start getting opposed to even playing with the idea of aliens, right. 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:08.760 It starts to become like subject matter that's almost like 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:12.920 inherently revolting to you. Does that make any sense? And 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:15.879 I'm very much like I I very much respect all 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:18.200 the skeptical work, you know, and we do that too, 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:19.919 Like we we end up having to say, like, no, 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:22.639 there's no reason to conclude this is aliens. Nothing we 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:26.159 have ever discovered in space is definitely aliens. There's no 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:29.159 reason to think that there's never even really been a 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:33.199 strong piece of evidence for aliens that we've come across. Uh. 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:35.480 I think that there's no reason at all to go 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:38.800 from there to say, so therefore, like, don't play around 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:41.600 with the idea of aliens, Like what would what would 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:44.040 be evidence if we were defined it? Yeah, I mean 0:21:44.040 --> 0:21:46.560 it's kind of like with the Uamua, you know. I 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:48.520 think there's gonna be There're gonna be people out there 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:50.520 who are just always going to be convinced that was 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:54.360 a spaceship. It wasn't. It was not a spaceship, right, 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:57.359 But you know, certainly the spaceship interpretation is one that 0:21:58.320 --> 0:22:01.560 is you know, way weird, way easier to fathom because 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:05.280 it's so uh, it's so based in science fiction. You know, 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:07.480 you don't need a breakdown a discussion of like why 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:13.080 this thing was ejected from from some distant uh interstellar locale, 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:16.560 you know. Um, And yeah, it's just more exciting. But 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:20.399 to a certain extent, any coverage of Mumu will always 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:24.359 involve having to to really remind everybody that there is 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:26.720 there's there's no strong evidence that it was a spaceship, 0:22:26.760 --> 0:22:29.480 that it was not a spaceship, but let's explore these 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:33.879 these also these other fascinating ideas and hypotheses concerning its 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:36.400 origin and its nature. Sure, so, I mean I feel 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:39.080 very attracted to kind of the the Carl Sagan outlook, 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:42.000 never saying like, oh, yeah, it's aliens when you see 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:45.879 something you don't understand, but also feeling fully free to 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:49.840 speculate about the idea of aliens because it's an interesting subject. 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:52.639 I mean, it's fun to think about and and consider 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:56.480 what the real scientific implications of the existence of aliens 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:58.639 would be even though you're always going to try to 0:22:58.640 --> 0:23:02.399 remain skeptical and grounded and not interpret every new piece 0:23:02.440 --> 0:23:05.800 of information about the universe that you can't currently explain 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:09.679