Speaker 1: My Welcome to scoff to Blow Your Mind, the production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our
Speaker 1: talk about the moons of Mars, Phobos and Demos. Now,
Speaker 1: in the last episode, we talked a bit about the
Speaker 1: mythology behind the moons of Mars, the companions and sons
Speaker 1: of the war god Aries the Roman Mars, the god
Speaker 1: of War, and we talked about how the names of
Speaker 1: these came to be applied to the moons of Mars,
Speaker 1: these two small objects that were discovered in the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. We talked about that discovery story. We talked
Speaker 1: about some of the basic properties of Phobos and Demos
Speaker 1: and why there is some question about what their origin was.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into more detail about that today.
Speaker 1: And we ended up talking about a bizarre conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: about out an interesting surface feature of Phobos that really
Speaker 1: had nothing to it, but the surface feature known as
Speaker 1: the Phobos monolith, is inherently very interesting. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: in this episode we're gonna we're gonna cover more interesting
Speaker 1: stuff about Phobos. And demos uh stuff about the history
Speaker 1: of its exploration. We'll get into another idea that conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists seem to really like concerning one of the two moons.
Speaker 1: There'll be a dash of mythology here and there, but
Speaker 1: it should be a fun ride, now, Robin, the last episode,
Speaker 1: we were talking about how close the moon Phobos is
Speaker 1: to Mars. It is the closest moon to its host
Speaker 1: planet in the entire Solar System. Uh. It's so close.
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a matter of you know,
Speaker 1: just like several thousand kilometers. It's a distance that is
Speaker 1: a little bit longer than the driving distance between Miami
Speaker 1: and Vancouver, as we talked about the last time. So
Speaker 1: you know, if you if there were a road between them,
Speaker 1: you could drive it in two or three days. And
Speaker 1: that's incredibly close for a moon to UH to orbit
Speaker 1: its host planet. But I found another point of comparison
Speaker 1: that we didn't make in the last episode that I
Speaker 1: thought was absolutely astounding, and it's that the moon Phobos
Speaker 1: orbits so close to the surface of Mars that if
Speaker 1: you are standing near the polar regions of Mars sometimes
Speaker 1: you can't see the Moon even when it's on the
Speaker 1: same side of the planet as you because it's blocked
Speaker 1: by the horizon. It's orbiting down near the equator and
Speaker 1: you can't see it over the curvature of Mars itself.
Speaker 1: That that's unbelievable. Yeah, that is. That is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: And of course, as we discussed, it's getting closer to
Speaker 1: Mars and will eventually, uh you know, millions and millions
Speaker 1: of years in the future, will actually crash into Mars
Speaker 1: or break up in orbit and become a new ring
Speaker 1: around the planet. Yeah, they're gonna tussle. Yeah. But one
Speaker 1: of the things we also alluded to in the last
Speaker 1: episode is that these two moons, Phobos and Demos, have
Speaker 1: extremely weird properties that really raised questions about where they
Speaker 1: come from in the first place. And you can ask
Speaker 1: this about moons all throughout the Solar System, like there
Speaker 1: is some question about where the moon of Earth came from.
Speaker 1: Those there's a there's a pretty strong leading theory that
Speaker 1: is the giant impact hypothesis, the idea that early during
Speaker 1: the formation of Earth, Earth was hit by a planetestimal
Speaker 1: or you know, a Mars sized object roughly, and that
Speaker 1: giant impact created a bunch of debris and eventually the
Speaker 1: what was left over coalesced into the Earth and then
Speaker 1: the Moon in orbit around the Earth. Indeed, uh, certain
Speaker 1: properties of these moons as well discussed here, tend to
Speaker 1: lend themselves more to one interpretation, and other properties if
Speaker 1: you focus on those, lend towards another interpretation, which leads
Speaker 1: to just a fair amount of you know, continued confusion,
Speaker 1: but also inten fascination. Yeah, there's an article about this
Speaker 1: that we were both reading that kind of sums up
Speaker 1: some of the debate pretty nicely. It was published in
Speaker 1: The New York Times by Robin George Andrews in July,
Speaker 1: called Why the super weird Moons of Mars Fascinate Scientists,
Speaker 1: and it briefly goes over some of the arguments either
Speaker 1: way is now um. One of the things that points
Speaker 1: out is that if you're just to look at the
Speaker 1: what the moons appear to be made of, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're sort of physical characteristics in and of themselves.
Speaker 1: They look a lot like captured asteroid's asteroids that at
Speaker 1: some point would have been bumped off course and then
Speaker 1: caught in the gravity well of Mars so that they
Speaker 1: ended up just orbiting Mars. Permanently. Yeah, the the the
Speaker 1: asteroid capture hypothesis, which which which is a popular one,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't quite explain everything right now in its favor.
Speaker 1: One of the main things that has going for it
Speaker 1: is that the material that the Martian moons are made
Speaker 1: of looks a lot like asteroid type material. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that they they look like asteroids. They seem to be
Speaker 1: composed of the same material as asteroids. And yeah, they
Speaker 1: would have just ended up too close to mars gravitational
Speaker 1: pull and would have been simply orbitally dominated by the
Speaker 1: planet Mars. The god of war says, you too, you
Speaker 1: you shattered Rex. You are now my son's come with
Speaker 1: me right into battle with me. It's like in the
Speaker 1: cop movie when you commandeer the vehicle. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: commandeering this vehicle, or James Bond gets into somebody's car
Speaker 1: and drives off with it. Or I guess it would
Speaker 1: be more like tying a car to you and making
Speaker 1: it swing around you. I guess that an analogy isn't
Speaker 1: that great, But yeah, it's it's saying you're coming with
Speaker 1: me now, right. But the other interesting thing is that
Speaker 1: they have that kind of throws this off, is they
Speaker 1: have near equatorial orbits, and Is Andrews points out in
Speaker 1: this article, this suggests that they coalesced from a disc
Speaker 1: of debris that danced around a very young Mars. So
Speaker 1: it basically it's just all too neat and tidy surely
Speaker 1: to be an asteroid capture. So, in other words, like, okay,
Speaker 1: if there, if it's asteroid capture, these are like wildcats.
Speaker 1: But if they're wildcats, why are they behaving like orbital
Speaker 1: house cats? So yeah, so that's that's part of the
Speaker 1: big confusion here. Yeah, so you've got some creepy space
Speaker 1: yukon golds that look like they're made of roughly asteroid stuff.
Speaker 1: But the way they orbit Mars, it's a couple of
Speaker 1: things actually, that their orbits are near equatorial, meaning that
Speaker 1: they orbit basically, you know, not exactly, but pretty close
Speaker 1: to around the equator line of Mars, you know, in
Speaker 1: between its poles. And then the other part is that
Speaker 1: their orbits are nearly perfectly circular. And this is just
Speaker 1: not what you would expect to see with a captured asteroid.
Speaker 1: If an asteroid came in that was originally orbiting the
Speaker 1: Sun at a different speed and then it just got
Speaker 1: stuck in the gravity well of Mars. What you would
Speaker 1: probably expect to see is that it's orbit would be
Speaker 1: more irregular, some more stretched out, right. You know, that's
Speaker 1: often when something gets captured by an object and it
Speaker 1: was originally on its own trajectory, it tends to have
Speaker 1: a more stretched out oval type orbit. But then the
Speaker 1: other thing is you would expect its orbit to be
Speaker 1: tilted at a steeper angle rather than neatly orbiting pretty
Speaker 1: close to its equatorial line. And then there's one more
Speaker 1: factor that I think is worth considering. This is actually
Speaker 1: cited in that article in The New York Times by
Speaker 1: Robin George Andrews. And Andrews quotes a Japanese scientist named
Speaker 1: Tomohiro Usui who points out that also Mars gravity is
Speaker 1: pretty weak. I mean, you know, you can capture an asteroid,
Speaker 1: but Tomohiro Sue points out that Mars has like a
Speaker 1: tenth of Earth's mass, so it's kind of improbable that
Speaker 1: it would be able to capture two asteroids that are
Speaker 1: traveling by at orbital speeds, you know, speeds of orbiting
Speaker 1: the Sun. So it just seems kind of unlikely as
Speaker 1: an origin story for them and their orbits really don't
Speaker 1: seem to match what you would expect from from asteroid capture. Now,
Speaker 1: there is another hypothesis that would make some sense, which
Speaker 1: is that what if the moons of Mars were formed
Speaker 1: from a debris disc that was kicked up into orbit
Speaker 1: around Mars after a colossal impact. So not exactly the
Speaker 1: same as but but similar to one of the leading
Speaker 1: ideas about where the Earth's moon comes from. There's a
Speaker 1: giant impact on Mars at some point, and that shoots
Speaker 1: all this stuff into space around Mars, which gradually coalesces
Speaker 1: into a disc that's in orbit around Mars, and then
Speaker 1: that disk gravitationally coalesces into solid objects, these two moons.
Speaker 1: Now there's some reasons for doubting that as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: one idea offered in this article is that Demos's orbit
Speaker 1: is maybe a little too far out to be explained
Speaker 1: that way, but that could possibly be overcome. One paper
Speaker 1: I was looking at that supports the idea of a
Speaker 1: giant impact as the original source of Phobos and Demos
Speaker 1: was published in Nature Geoscience by Pascal Rosenblatt at All,
Speaker 1: and it's called accretion of Phobos and Demos in an
Speaker 1: extended debris disc stirred by transient moons um and so
Speaker 1: that they write in their abstract that quote. Here we
Speaker 1: use numerical simulations to suggest that Phobos and Demos accreted
Speaker 1: from the outer portion of a debris disc formed after
Speaker 1: a giant impact on Mars. In our simulations, larger moons
Speaker 1: form from material in the denser inner disc and migrate
Speaker 1: outwards due to gravitational interactions with the disc. The resulting
Speaker 1: orbital resonances spread outwards and gathered dispersed outer disc debris,
Speaker 1: facilitating accretion into two satellites of sizes similar to Phobos
Speaker 1: and Demos. The larger inner moons fall back to Mars
Speaker 1: after about five million years due to the title pull
Speaker 1: of the planet, after which the two outer satellites evolve
Speaker 1: into Phobos and Demos like orbits. The proposed scenario can
Speaker 1: explain why Mars has two small satellites instead of one
Speaker 1: large moon. Our model predicts that Phobos and Demos are
Speaker 1: composed of a mixture of material from Mars and the
Speaker 1: impact or so Again, this would be kind of similar
Speaker 1: to the Earth's moon origin story. There's a giant impact
Speaker 1: on Mars long long ago. It spits out all this
Speaker 1: debris into orbit around Mars that forms into multiple moons
Speaker 1: at different orbital distances, and then interactions between those eventually
Speaker 1: cause inner moons to be destroyed spiraling into Mars as
Speaker 1: Phobos will one day do, and then uh, and then
Speaker 1: these other objects to coalesce into the current orbits that
Speaker 1: we see for Phobos and Demos. So that's one plausible
Speaker 1: possibility they've put together. Yeah, and this satisfies some of
Speaker 1: the mysteries that we discussed earlier. How can it be uh,
Speaker 1: have the qualities of an asteroid capture, but also have
Speaker 1: the qualities of of something that formed out of a
Speaker 1: desk around Mars. Now we've mentioned that Phobos as its
Speaker 1: spirals into Mars will probably break apart. I mean, we
Speaker 1: mentioned a couple options. It could just crash into Mars.
Speaker 1: More of the sources that I was reading seemed to
Speaker 1: suggest that the more likely option is that as it
Speaker 1: spirals into Mars, it will be sort of ripped apart
Speaker 1: by tidal forces and it will break up and become
Speaker 1: rings in orbit around Mars. But really interesting question that
Speaker 1: I came across in another study in Nature Geoscience, this
Speaker 1: one published in This is the question of what if
Speaker 1: this future scenario where Phobos breaks up in orbit around
Speaker 1: Mars and becomes rings. What if that has already happened.
Speaker 1: Very interesting origin hypothesis for for these two moons. So
Speaker 1: this is by Andrew J. Hessel Brock and David A. Minton. Again,
Speaker 1: that's nature geoscience in seen called an ongoing satellite ring
Speaker 1: cycle of Mars and the origins of Phobos and Demos.
Speaker 1: Now this uh. This explanation has a similar beginning as
Speaker 1: the last one, but some of the details are different.
Speaker 1: Again to read from their abstract, the Martian moons Phobos
Speaker 1: and Demos may have accreated from a ring of impact debris,
Speaker 1: but explaining their origin from a single giant impact has
Speaker 1: proven difficult. One clue may lie in the orbit of
Speaker 1: Phobos that is slowly decaying as the satellite undergoes tidal
Speaker 1: interactions with Mars. In about seventy million years, Phobos is
Speaker 1: predicted to reach the location of tidal breakup and break
Speaker 1: apart to form a new ring around the planet. Here
Speaker 1: we use numerical simulations to suggest that the resulting ring
Speaker 1: will viscously spread to eventually deposit about eight percent of
Speaker 1: debris onto Mars. The remaining twenty of debris will accrete
Speaker 1: into a new generation of satellites. Furthermore, we propose that
Speaker 1: this process has occurred repeatedly throughout martian His story. In
Speaker 1: our simulations, beginning with a large satellite formed after giant
Speaker 1: impact with early Mars, we find that between three and
Speaker 1: seven ring satellite cycles over the past four point three
Speaker 1: billion years can explain Phobos and Demos as they are
Speaker 1: observed today. Such a scenario implies the deposition of significant
Speaker 1: ring material onto Mars during each cycle. We hypothesize that
Speaker 1: some anomalous sedimentary deposits observed on Mars maybe linked to
Speaker 1: these periodic episodes of ring deposition. So Phobos or the
Speaker 1: ancestor of Phobos could have been once much larger, maybe
Speaker 1: twenty times more massive. But then there's this pattern that
Speaker 1: repeats over time, almost like you know, the mythological cycle
Speaker 1: of history, where there's orbital decay. It's it's going closer
Speaker 1: and closer down into Mars. It shatters from tidal forces,
Speaker 1: it's you know, turned, it splits apart into a million pieces,
Speaker 1: forms a ring around Mars. The pieces of the ring
Speaker 1: then coalesce into a move and then repeat with the
Speaker 1: Moon getting smaller every cycle. I love this because if
Speaker 1: you if you take it and then apply it to
Speaker 1: the mythological model that we've been discussing here, you have Mars,
Speaker 1: who is you know, actually more the the you know,
Speaker 1: we can would think more of the Greek war god
Speaker 1: aries representing the worst of war, just the the bloodshed
Speaker 1: and the screams. Just this awful deity, the god of
Speaker 1: the screams of the dying. Yeah, yeah, the god of
Speaker 1: the screams of the dying. And so it makes sense
Speaker 1: that his two loyal sons who are destined to rebel
Speaker 1: against him have always rebelled against him. Like there's a
Speaker 1: cycle of them rebelling against the Almighty Father here, being destroyed,
Speaker 1: breaking up, but then he reforms them. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like they're resurrected to continue to serve them as these
Speaker 1: kind of misshapen wraiths. Oh man, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: Another way to think about it is if you're talking
Speaker 1: about a god of war, I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: process of attrition, right, slowly wearing down your enemy's forces
Speaker 1: over time. Yeah, yeah, they coming back, but each time
Speaker 1: weaker and weaker. Now, like many things in space science,
Speaker 1: this is one of these great fascinating open questions that
Speaker 1: really could uh, we could really have a better chance
Speaker 1: of solving if we were to have more physical data
Speaker 1: to work with. And so this is one of the
Speaker 1: many reasons that there have been all these proposed missions
Speaker 1: to the moons of Mars, and including that, there's a
Speaker 1: there's an upcoming mission that we'll talk about in a
Speaker 1: bit from the Japanese Space Agency from Jackson that is
Speaker 1: planning to go to the moons of Mars in I
Speaker 1: think it's supposed to launch in four and hopefully arrive
Speaker 1: in But there we could learn more about the composition
Speaker 1: of these moons, which could maybe tell us more about
Speaker 1: their history. But to come back to that New York
Speaker 1: Times article we were talking about, Uh, there's a part
Speaker 1: of it which says, quote, although made of ancient matter,
Speaker 1: the Phobos we see today may have been assembled just
Speaker 1: two hundred million years ago. If it were confirmed that
Speaker 1: Phobos is a haphazardly clumped together mass, it would be
Speaker 1: a revelation suggesting planets with rings are the norm for
Speaker 1: our Solar system. And I had to think about that
Speaker 1: for a second, and then I realized, like, oh, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so if it's normal for Mars to have a ring,
Speaker 1: and we just happened to be observing it during one
Speaker 1: of its you know, interring periods, one of its ringless periods.
Speaker 1: That would mean the majority of planets in our Solar
Speaker 1: system of rings. Jupiter as rings, Saturn has huge rings,
Speaker 1: uh Uranus has rings. So you'd realize that rings are
Speaker 1: the standard and a planet without rings is actually weirder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it's kind of like thinking about cities, right. UM.
Speaker 1: Imagine you know, most cities have some sort of sprawling suburbs,
Speaker 1: but maybe you have a city that doesn't really have
Speaker 1: suburbs but just has like a a centralized satellite uh
Speaker 1: town outside of it, maybe to such satellite towns. Um.
Speaker 1: But if that was the main thing you saw, you
Speaker 1: might think, oh, this is just how it works, This
Speaker 1: is how cities are come together. Though, one thing I
Speaker 1: should point out from that article that they quote again
Speaker 1: the Japanese researcher tell my hero Sui who uh says
Speaker 1: that you know, this that we were just talking about
Speaker 1: could possibly be true of Phobos, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: not for demos. It's possible that they you know, that
Speaker 1: they have these different origins that they're not exactly the
Speaker 1: same thing. So Demos could be much older than Phobos. Potentially,
Speaker 1: uh Suey says that Demos could be three point five
Speaker 1: billion years old, whereas it's it's possible that Phobos is
Speaker 1: much much younger, just like two million years old. But
Speaker 1: again it's one of those things that it'll be hard
Speaker 1: to know for sure until we send something there and
Speaker 1: maybe even bring part of it back. Than I'm ready
Speaker 1: to get weird. Do you want to talk about some
Speaker 1: weird historical hypotheses about Phobos? Yeah, concerning the idea of
Speaker 1: a hollow Phobos. Now, one thing I want to stress
Speaker 1: here is again we'd love to have physical evidence, physical
Speaker 1: material to look at regarding Phobos and Demos, but we
Speaker 1: don't yet. Hopefully in the future, but we don't have
Speaker 1: it now. What we have are, in addition to to
Speaker 1: various other readings, we have visual images taken via fly
Speaker 1: bys and and and Mars missions. But there was a
Speaker 1: time where we didn't have those additional um images. So
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the late nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and ultimately to the decades preceding that, and the work
Speaker 1: of Russian astrophysicist uh Yosef Shaklovsky, who hypothesized that phobos
Speaker 1: might be hollow and even more to the point, might
Speaker 1: be an artificial structure. Oh yeah, Now, Yoso Shaklovsky was
Speaker 1: born nineteen sixteen died five. He was a Soviet astronomer
Speaker 1: and astrophysicist. And we've actually mentioned him on the show
Speaker 1: before because he co wrote and he had for the
Speaker 1: main credited author on intelligent Life in the Universe with
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan in nineteen sixty six. I believe we discussed
Speaker 1: it in our Look at Ancient Astronaut hypothesis, which you know,
Speaker 1: the basics of which they went into in this book.
Speaker 1: And in a in a way this this book was
Speaker 1: was kind of pivotal to the whole Ancient Aliens movement,
Speaker 1: even though I have to stress the Chaklovsky and say
Speaker 1: Agan they discussed it rather uh, you know, very in
Speaker 1: a very grounded nature, very scientifically. Um. And it's other
Speaker 1: authors who really have would run wild with it and
Speaker 1: um and just you know, go off the speculative deep
Speaker 1: end with it. You know, there's something I notice in
Speaker 1: the in the responsible science journalism of today that is
Speaker 1: a kind of automatic, reactive opposition to the subject of
Speaker 1: like aliens or evidence for aliens, and and I get
Speaker 1: it right, because if you're covering space, if you're covering astronomy,
Speaker 1: if you're covering space missions, you know, in anything having
Speaker 1: to do with space, one of the things you're going
Speaker 1: to be dealing with most often is people your respond
Speaker 1: sibly taking some piece of evidence that in no way
Speaker 1: really indicates evidence of alien life and saying it's aliens,
Speaker 1: and that they're just going to be doing that over
Speaker 1: and over again, and then you just end up having
Speaker 1: to spend your career writing article after article of like, no,
Speaker 1: this rock on Mars is not an alien. There's no
Speaker 1: reason you have to conclude that. You know, natural wind
Speaker 1: erosion can cause features that look strange like this, here's how,
Speaker 1: And then you can end up explaining interesting things about
Speaker 1: natural science about like how wind erosion can cause something
Speaker 1: to look sculpted or designed in a certain way, or
Speaker 1: you you know, you end up saying like, no, we
Speaker 1: we don't have any reason to conclude yet that the
Speaker 1: signal coming from this star, even though it's like repeating,
Speaker 1: is an alien. And then you can explain stuff about
Speaker 1: pulsars and how they work and what we know about
Speaker 1: them and that's all good stuff. But I think because
Speaker 1: there is such a tendency for for hoax hype people
Speaker 1: and for the public generally to get over excited about
Speaker 1: something that's mysterious and say, therefore it's aliens, you can
Speaker 1: start getting opposed to even playing with the idea of aliens, right.
Speaker 1: It starts to become like subject matter that's almost like
Speaker 1: inherently revolting to you. Does that make any sense? And
Speaker 1: I'm very much like I I very much respect all
Speaker 1: the skeptical work, you know, and we do that too,
Speaker 1: Like we we end up having to say, like, no,
Speaker 1: there's no reason to conclude this is aliens. Nothing we
Speaker 1: have ever discovered in space is definitely aliens. There's no
Speaker 1: reason to think that there's never even really been a
Speaker 1: strong piece of evidence for aliens that we've come across. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that there's no reason at all to go
Speaker 1: from there to say, so therefore, like, don't play around
Speaker 1: with the idea of aliens, Like what would what would
Speaker 1: be evidence if we were defined it? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's kind of like with the Uamua, you know. I
Speaker 1: think there's gonna be There're gonna be people out there
Speaker 1: who are just always going to be convinced that was
Speaker 1: a spaceship. It wasn't. It was not a spaceship, right,
Speaker 1: But you know, certainly the spaceship interpretation is one that
Speaker 1: is you know, way weird, way easier to fathom because
Speaker 1: it's so uh, it's so based in science fiction. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't need a breakdown a discussion of like why
Speaker 1: this thing was ejected from from some distant uh interstellar locale,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, And yeah, it's just more exciting. But
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, any coverage of Mumu will always
Speaker 1: involve having to to really remind everybody that there is
Speaker 1: there's there's no strong evidence that it was a spaceship,
Speaker 1: that it was not a spaceship, but let's explore these
Speaker 1: these also these other fascinating ideas and hypotheses concerning its
Speaker 1: origin and its nature. Sure, so, I mean I feel
Speaker 1: very attracted to kind of the the Carl Sagan outlook,
Speaker 1: never saying like, oh, yeah, it's aliens when you see
Speaker 1: something you don't understand, but also feeling fully free to
Speaker 1: speculate about the idea of aliens because it's an interesting subject.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's fun to think about and and consider
Speaker 1: what the real scientific implications of the existence of aliens
Speaker 1: would be even though you're always going to try to
Speaker 1: remain skeptical and grounded and not interpret every new piece
Speaker 1: of information about the universe that you can't currently explain
Speaker 1: as an artifact of an alien civilization, right right. And
Speaker 1: then the second was great with this. You know, he
Speaker 1: was always open to exploring those big questions and those
Speaker 1: those those um, you know, the more radical questions, but
Speaker 1: doing so in a balanced way. We're saying, well, okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about it. Yes, it could you know,
Speaker 1: aliens certainly could exist, They could have visited the Earth.
Speaker 1: There could be evidence of it in the historical record.
Speaker 1: But what would that look like, what specifically would we
Speaker 1: be looking for? Um? But that is a far healthier
Speaker 1: approach in my opinion. Yeah, And for me, I think
Speaker 1: it's just like important to just always emphasize the lines between,
Speaker 1: you know, factual reporting and intellectual play. Yes. Now, interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: in in this book and in question here Sholowsky and
Speaker 1: say again they described phobos and demos as quote, the
Speaker 1: chariot horses of the god of war. Um. And I'm
Speaker 1: I'm unclear on where that comes from exactly than being
Speaker 1: horses as opposed to or in addition to being the
Speaker 1: sons of Arias. But I think it still checks out,
Speaker 1: you know, whether their war horses or or of sons,
Speaker 1: that they're kind of treated like war horses. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean Areas could have had some horse sons that would
Speaker 1: make sense. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Another bit that
Speaker 1: they note in the book, and I do want to
Speaker 1: continue to drive on this is the nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: book um quote. Thus, if we neglect the artificial satellites
Speaker 1: of Earth, Phobos is the only known moon in the
Speaker 1: Solar System with a period of revolution about its planet,
Speaker 1: which is less than the period of rotation of the
Speaker 1: planet itself. Yeah. So it takes Earth's moon roughly a
Speaker 1: month to orbit the Earth, right, Uh, it takes less
Speaker 1: than a day for Phobos. Two less than a Martian
Speaker 1: day for Phobos to orbit Mars. I think it orbits
Speaker 1: like three points something times every Martian day, And by
Speaker 1: very nature, a Martian day is one rotation, so it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's easy to miss that that that point.
Speaker 1: So I like the way that it really drove that
Speaker 1: home here. So if you're you're clocking in at work
Speaker 1: for your your Martian work day. Oh there goes Phobos,
Speaker 1: and then maybe you could look at Phobos again to
Speaker 1: know when it's time to go home. Yeah. Now, if
Speaker 1: it wasn't already obvious from the association with Sagan, I
Speaker 1: want to be clear that Shaklovsky was no quack. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's a crater on Phobos named for him, Shaklovsky Crater.
Speaker 1: But he was. He was understandably intrigued and confused by
Speaker 1: the Martian moons for decades, for the reasons that we've
Speaker 1: already stated. Um. Sagan in nineteen sixty six described Shakowsky's
Speaker 1: ideas concerning uh, the idea of a hollow Phobos as
Speaker 1: quote uh the only serious extant arguments supporting intelligent life
Speaker 1: on Mars now to now. Certainly, additional information eventually discredited
Speaker 1: this notion, um. But it's interesting to look at how
Speaker 1: he got there. And the book was Sagan contains a
Speaker 1: fair amount of of math and technical information. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not, you know, certainly not a technical paper, but
Speaker 1: it's certainly not the wide audience work of science communication
Speaker 1: that we often associate with with Sagan. Solo books and
Speaker 1: articles to come, but they they break down this idea
Speaker 1: in a great deal again based on data from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six and before so Schklovsky's idea of a hollow
Speaker 1: Phobos and then eventually tying that to speculation about alien life.
Speaker 1: This is something that is no longer an option given
Speaker 1: what we know about Phobos today. But we're exploring this
Speaker 1: as a historical curiosity of a hypothesis. Yes, yes, so, Uh,
Speaker 1: here's the here's one of the main points here. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read from from the article and uh, and I
Speaker 1: should mention as well that in these some of these quotes, um,
Speaker 1: they'll be using I, and I think we're very much
Speaker 1: that I is referring to shakovski quote. But how can
Speaker 1: a natural satellite have such a low density. The material
Speaker 1: of which it is made must have a certain amount
Speaker 1: of rigidity, so that cohe if forces will be stronger
Speaker 1: than the gravitational tide forces of Mars, which will tend
Speaker 1: to disrupt the satellite. Such rigidity would ordinarily exclude densities
Speaker 1: below about zero point one Graham's per centimeter to the
Speaker 1: negative third power. Thus, only one possibility remains. Could Phobos
Speaker 1: be indeed rigid on the outside but hollow on the inside.
Speaker 1: A natural satellite cannot be a hollow object. Therefore, we
Speaker 1: are led to the possibility that Phobos and possibly Demos
Speaker 1: as well, maybe artificial satellites of Mars. And if so,
Speaker 1: quote they would be artificial satellites on a scale surpassing
Speaker 1: the fondest dreams of contemporary rocket engineers. Now again, this
Speaker 1: hypothesis is no longer really viable given the evidence that
Speaker 1: we have available to us today. But what what a
Speaker 1: wild and wonderful idea? Yeah and uh and Chicolo assually
Speaker 1: continues to to to back this up and make some
Speaker 1: arguments around it. I'm gonna roll through some of them here.
Speaker 1: First of all, he says, this idea might seem fantastic
Speaker 1: at first glance, but it demands serious consideration because a
Speaker 1: technologically advanced civilization would certainly be capable of manufacturing and
Speaker 1: launching such an advanced satellite. And if Mars did not
Speaker 1: have any natural moons, the establishment of artificial moons would
Speaker 1: be a greatly important endeavor to any native civilization, or presumably,
Speaker 1: and this is just my reading of it, any civilization
Speaker 1: that took a strong interest in the planet. Further More,
Speaker 1: Shaklovsky says it it would be much easier for a
Speaker 1: Martian presence to launch a satellite than for you know,
Speaker 1: earthlings to launch a satellite. Due to the reduced Martian gravity,
Speaker 1: less work is required to get something into orbit. And
Speaker 1: also quote, conceivably, the capture and hollowing of a small
Speaker 1: asteroid might be technically more feasible than the construction in
Speaker 1: orbit of an artificial satellite with material brought from the surface.
Speaker 1: In our future, uh he says, we too might construct
Speaker 1: such artificial satellites, and if we pass on into extinction, well,
Speaker 1: those satellites might remain. And if so quote, we cannot
Speaker 1: reasonably assess these possibilities. But it does seem conceivable that
Speaker 1: the lifetime of our artificial satellites may exceed the lifetime
Speaker 1: of our civilization. These satellites would then remain as unique
Speaker 1: and striking monuments to a vanished species which had once
Speaker 1: flourished on the planet Earth. So hypothetically, if Mars had
Speaker 1: once harbored advanced life forms and they developed an advance
Speaker 1: enough civilization, they might have established such artificial satellites, perhaps
Speaker 1: some hundreds of millions of years ago. So again, to
Speaker 1: be very clear, it is not currently the case that
Speaker 1: there is evidence to the points strongly to an artificial
Speaker 1: origin for these moons, though of course all the interesting
Speaker 1: mysteries about their natural origins remain. But to add to
Speaker 1: the the beauty of this idea, uh, there's another fact
Speaker 1: about Phobos I wanted to add, which is that it
Speaker 1: is thought to have a a very thick layer of
Speaker 1: powdery regulars all around the outside of it, So it has, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's often thought to be very deep. I've read
Speaker 1: estimates that it's like a hundred meters deep, So it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, over three hundred feet deep of this powdery,
Speaker 1: dusty material, this regulars on the outside of it, which
Speaker 1: which gives the possibility that if in this alternate universe
Speaker 1: scenario where these moons were artificial creations of ancient technology,
Speaker 1: you could literally maybe uncover surface features of them indicating
Speaker 1: artificial origin by dusting, by moving the dust away, you know,
Speaker 1: like like the movie scene where you wipe the sand
Speaker 1: off of a sign and see the writing on it,
Speaker 1: dust off of the the artifact and determine what it is,
Speaker 1: except I guess would be a hundred meters of dust,
Speaker 1: So that'd be that's that's mega dust. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking about the difference between you know, comeing
Speaker 1: up with a controversial hypothesis versus just running wild with
Speaker 1: radical ideas. And it seems it seems like Shaklovsky was
Speaker 1: mindful of this as well, because he points out that
Speaker 1: that there are stronger and less favorable versions of this
Speaker 1: kind of line of thinking. He points out that Soviet
Speaker 1: researcher and someone who's who would later come to be
Speaker 1: known as the father of Russian ufo ology, Felix Ziegel,
Speaker 1: had an even more extreme notion. Uh, perhaps phobos and demos.
Speaker 1: Ziegel argued, perhaps they weren't discovered by the astronomer Herschel
Speaker 1: during the favorable Martian opposition. That means, you know, the
Speaker 1: closeness of Mars to Earth and therefore it's increased um
Speaker 1: visibility via telescope. Uh, perhaps Herschel didn't discover these moons
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty two and instead they were discovered by
Speaker 1: this by a smaller telescope in eighteen seventy seven, because
Speaker 1: they were not there in a teen sixty two. Rather,
Speaker 1: they were launched after eighteen sixty two by an existing
Speaker 1: Mars civilization, and therefore, uh, we're there to be discovered
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven seems implausible, yes, And Silklowski dismisses
Speaker 1: this notion for several reasons, in part because the naval
Speaker 1: telescope that was actually used to discover the moons, while smaller,
Speaker 1: was still superior to Herschels. And he contends that if yeah,
Speaker 1: the Shilklaski is very into this idea that the moons
Speaker 1: could be artificial, but he's like, the only way this
Speaker 1: works is if they were also ancient. There's no way
Speaker 1: that these were just launched in the past few years. Uh.
Speaker 1: And part of that also comes down to, you know,
Speaker 1: we've discussed this in terms before, like one of the
Speaker 1: rules of of of observing the cosmos is to realize
Speaker 1: that or to work from the vantage point that we
Speaker 1: have we do not have a privileged place in the universe, uh,
Speaker 1: in space or in time. So the idea that we
Speaker 1: just happened to be looking at Mars one day and
Speaker 1: there were no moons, and then we're looking at it
Speaker 1: years later and there are moons because they were launched
Speaker 1: in the interim, that's just it's just too perfect. It's
Speaker 1: it's just too unlikely. And this is actually one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that Klowski says that that he thinks that,
Speaker 1: you know, another reason that that Phobos could have potentially
Speaker 1: been some sort of artificial creation. He points out that
Speaker 1: it's eventual crash into Mars means that we are in
Speaker 1: the unlikely position of viewing the moon during its final days. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can argue that we're not really talking
Speaker 1: about days, We're talking about millions and millions of years. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's just astronomically speaking, their days. Uh. And he argued
Speaker 1: that it was quote an unlikely but not impossible coincidence. Now,
Speaker 1: all of this being said, Chicosi also insisted that if
Speaker 1: ancient Mars was truly this advanced, advanced enough to create
Speaker 1: huge artificial satellites and either construct them in orbit, make
Speaker 1: them out of asteroids, or launched them into orbit around Mars,
Speaker 1: then we will We're bound to eventually discover evidence of
Speaker 1: this civilization, not only you know, via the satellites of Mars,
Speaker 1: but also Mars itself during the future exploration of the
Speaker 1: red planet and as far as the moons themselves go,
Speaker 1: he said, well, eventually we're going to conduct fly bys
Speaker 1: and the and the images that we gain from these
Speaker 1: this will shed light on them. Will they have special
Speaker 1: shapes for example, And of course the answer would prove
Speaker 1: to be yes, but also sort of no as well,
Speaker 1: because as we've discussed, like, Phobos does have an unusual shape,
Speaker 1: but is it is it a special shape? Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it a shape that that screams um artificial construction? Um?
Speaker 1: I think pretty much everybody would argue no. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to read the articles about how no, actually the
Speaker 1: shape of a Yukon gold potato is the perfect shape
Speaker 1: for for an orbital launch platform or whatever. This thing
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a space elevator, and I think
Speaker 1: that's what some of it's aliens people are saying today, that, uh,
Speaker 1: that that Phobos was an ancient Martian space elevator. Once again,
Speaker 1: there is no strong evidence of this, is I mean,
Speaker 1: it's find a play around, have fun speculating about that.
Speaker 1: But you know, understand the difference between playing with an
Speaker 1: idea and saying like that there's actually strong evidence for it.
Speaker 1: There is not, right, Yeah, because because certainly Sholkovsky ultimately
Speaker 1: contended that while his own hypothesis was scientifically sound at
Speaker 1: the time, though there were some uh, there were some
Speaker 1: arguments and some and certainly some opposition to his ideas
Speaker 1: and people saying, well, I don't think we need to
Speaker 1: go that far and trying to explain Phobos. Um. Sholkovsky
Speaker 1: still acknowledged that future explorations would put his hypothesis to
Speaker 1: the test, and that it very well could prove incorrect.
Speaker 1: And if it proved incorrect, though, then it would have
Speaker 1: still served the purpose of forcing people to think about
Speaker 1: the sorts of advanced work that aliens cultures would have
Speaker 1: constructed or could have constructed, and what would remain of them,
Speaker 1: and therefore what we could potentially look for, uh, in
Speaker 1: terms of of evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence and extraterrestrial life. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course, one of the signs of a good
Speaker 1: hypothesis is that it makes specific predictions that can be
Speaker 1: tested in the future, right and uh, you know, And
Speaker 1: again this means nothing to people who want to run
Speaker 1: wild with the idea that Phobos is hollow and as
Speaker 1: an ancient space elevator. I was looking around briefly and
Speaker 1: I ran across one of these pages and they referred
Speaker 1: to shak Lasky here, but they referred to his quote
Speaker 1: unquote findings, uh as if he had proven uh, you know,
Speaker 1: without any doubt that Phobos was a hollow artificial satellite,
Speaker 1: and that just that is absolutely not the case, exactly right.
Speaker 1: But coming back to the original thing leading people off
Speaker 1: in this direction, while it's not indication of an artificial origin,
Speaker 1: there is something interesting about the composition of these moons.
Speaker 1: I mean, so like, if you look at Phobos, it
Speaker 1: has weird density. It seems very low density for a
Speaker 1: moon or an object of this type. So that leads
Speaker 1: to other questions like what would be the cause of
Speaker 1: this low density in the moon if it's not you know,
Speaker 1: a hollow alien spaceship or something, which again it's not,
Speaker 1: and what would be the implications of that low density?
Speaker 1: And this leads us into our next section because we
Speaker 1: have some current hypotheses that hold that the density problem
Speaker 1: is likely solved by in some cases large spaces within
Speaker 1: Phobos that are not areas that were hollowed out by
Speaker 1: an ancient civilization, but could be due to just the
Speaker 1: the the structural qualities of Phobos itself, the way it
Speaker 1: came together as essentially a big old heap of space junk, right,
Speaker 1: And this ties into something else I was reading actually,
Speaker 1: so I was looking at a NASA feature from by
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Zubritzky called Mars Moon, Phobos is slowly falling up heart. So,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned already, Phobos is doomed to spiral into
Speaker 1: Mars and either crash into it or break up and
Speaker 1: become rings. This will probably not happen for tens of
Speaker 1: millions more years. Actually, the estimates I've seen for this
Speaker 1: or sort of all over the place. Some say this
Speaker 1: will happen in thirty to fifty million years, some say
Speaker 1: fifty million years, some say a hundred million years. Um.
Speaker 1: So I don't think that there's an actual really tight,
Speaker 1: you know limit on that pin down, but it seems somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty to a hundred million years from now
Speaker 1: it is expected to break apart into a ring or
Speaker 1: crash into Mars. Probably more likely break apart into a ring,
Speaker 1: which is still pretty close in astronomical time. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: well again, we're only looking at the end days astronomically.
Speaker 1: From a human standpoint, this is so far in the
Speaker 1: future that it's it's it's hard to imagine that these
Speaker 1: will truly be humans that observe it, if humans are
Speaker 1: around to observe it at all. Right, but you remember
Speaker 1: last time, how we talked about we were looking at
Speaker 1: surface features of Phobos, and one of the things we
Speaker 1: talked about where the cat scratches, you know, these long
Speaker 1: grooves along the surface of the Moon. And so what
Speaker 1: explains those grooves. Well, in this article it quotes a
Speaker 1: researcher named Terry Herford of NASA Goddard who says, we
Speaker 1: think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the
Speaker 1: first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves.
Speaker 1: And so Zubritsky writes that quote, phobos grooves were long
Speaker 1: thought to be fractures caused by the impact that formed
Speaker 1: the Stickney Crater. Remember the Stickney Crater is that huge
Speaker 1: crater on one face side of Phobos that was named
Speaker 1: after Angeline Stickney, who worked on observing Mars during the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies along with her husband ASoft Hall. But coming
Speaker 1: back to this article, so the idea was that you
Speaker 1: had this crater caused by a collision with Phobos long ago.
Speaker 1: Quote that collision was so powerful it came close to
Speaker 1: shatter Phobos. However, scientists eventually determined that the grooves don't
Speaker 1: radiate outward from the crater itself, but from a focal
Speaker 1: point nearby. More recently, researchers have proposed that the grooves
Speaker 1: may instead be produced by many smaller impacts of material
Speaker 1: ejected from Mars, But new modeling by Herford and colleagues
Speaker 1: supports the view that the grooves are more like stretch
Speaker 1: marks that occur when Phobos gets deformed by tidal forces.
Speaker 1: Now these would be tidal forces caused by its close
Speaker 1: orbit around Mars. Now remember, tidal forces occur when there
Speaker 1: is a significant difference in gravitational forces felt by different
Speaker 1: parts of the same object. So when something is orbiting
Speaker 1: close to a huge object, it will often experience tidal forces.
Speaker 1: A very extreme case of tidal forces would be the
Speaker 1: idea of spaghettification, the much celebrated way of dying as
Speaker 1: you go into a black hole. As the if you're
Speaker 1: falling feet first, the the gradient of gravitational uh forces
Speaker 1: that you feel as you fall into the black hole
Speaker 1: are so extreme that the difference between the forces on
Speaker 1: your feet and the forces on your head would sort
Speaker 1: of stretch you out like a noodle. But in more
Speaker 1: mundane scenarios, tidal forces are also responsible for things like
Speaker 1: the actual tides right you know, as as Earth and
Speaker 1: the Moon orbit each other. They exert gravitational influences that
Speaker 1: are not evenly distributed on the entire sphere of the
Speaker 1: other body, but they pull like specifically at the at
Speaker 1: the facing equatorial region of the other body, right, And
Speaker 1: so this results in tides in the water on Earth.
Speaker 1: But also you can see that the spheres of Earth
Speaker 1: and the Moon are also kind of they kind of
Speaker 1: bulge out at the middle around the regions where they're
Speaker 1: they're most pulled on by the other body. Now, in
Speaker 1: the case of Phobos, it was once thought that tidal
Speaker 1: forces should not be strong enough to be stretching apart
Speaker 1: a moon like this, But that was when Phobos was
Speaker 1: assumed to be solid all the way through at the
Speaker 1: time of this writing, And I wonder how this idea
Speaker 1: has matured since then. It's possible that there have been
Speaker 1: some arguments against it in the meantime, but at least
Speaker 1: at this time. In these findings from from NASA, Goddard
Speaker 1: where that the interior of Phobos is more likely to
Speaker 1: be this kind of loose collection of rubble is sometimes
Speaker 1: referred to as a rubble pile, and that it's all
Speaker 1: just sort of barely stuck together and then quote surrounded
Speaker 1: by a layer of powdery regularly about three hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty feet or a hundred meters thick I mentioned that earlier, right,
Speaker 1: So on this model, you've got this blanket of dusty
Speaker 1: powdery regular sort of uh, sort of like acting like
Speaker 1: the bindle sack for a bunch of rocks that are
Speaker 1: just barely loosely held together by gravity. So if this
Speaker 1: model is correct, then there's actually not all that much
Speaker 1: holding the core of Phobos together. It's just a bunch
Speaker 1: of junk kind of loosely stuck together by gravity rather
Speaker 1: than a single massive, rocky core, and title forces will
Speaker 1: have a much easier time ripping it apart than it
Speaker 1: would ripping apart something that was more solid. And again,
Speaker 1: mythologically speaking, I think this sounds perfect the idea of
Speaker 1: the war god's son being this, this fast and fearful
Speaker 1: uh creature on the battlefield, but ultimately he's just this
Speaker 1: this wreck, this just partially hollow, falling apart, doomed, you know,
Speaker 1: wraith of a warrior. Than now, we've been looking a
Speaker 1: lot at Phobos, and to be fair, I mean I
Speaker 1: think there's a reason for that, Like a lot of
Speaker 1: the real interest and research and big questions have been
Speaker 1: focused on Phobos, but Demos is interesting too, so maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a quick look at Demos in particular. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Demos is the smaller of the twins. It's not and
Speaker 1: by seven by six point eight miles in size or
Speaker 1: fifteen by twelve by eleven kilometers. It goes around Mars
Speaker 1: every thirty hours. It doesn't have grooves and ridges like Phobos,
Speaker 1: but it has plenty of craters. Uh. And while you
Speaker 1: know normal craters on on other uh, you know, bodies
Speaker 1: are surrounded by ejective from the impact. You know, the
Speaker 1: stuff that gets launched up when that impact takes place.
Speaker 1: Damos is gravity is low enough that impact ejecta achieves
Speaker 1: escape velocity. Uh. So it doesn't fall just immediately fall
Speaker 1: back down. Instead, the debris remains in a ring around Damos,
Speaker 1: it seems, and then it's slowly redeposited on its surface. Now,
Speaker 1: we talked in the last episode about how even though
Speaker 1: Phobos is extremely small for a moon, it's so close
Speaker 1: to Mars that when you look at it from the surface,
Speaker 1: it looks pretty substantial in size. It's like not quite
Speaker 1: as big as the Moon looks from Earth. But like
Speaker 1: a substantial fraction of it, you can see it as
Speaker 1: a disk and not just a dot. The same is
Speaker 1: not true for Demos. Right from the surface of Mars,
Speaker 1: Damos would appear star like in the sky. That's how
Speaker 1: small it would be. It would just look like a star. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it would you know, they would stand out
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it would essentially just look like
Speaker 1: a star. And that's that's interesting because it runs counter
Speaker 1: intuitive to what we think of when we think of
Speaker 1: a moon. Now, when it comes to named craters on Demos,
Speaker 1: there are only two, Swift and Voltaire, chosen for obvious
Speaker 1: reasons because, as we explored in our first episode, the
Speaker 1: works of Swift and Voltaire were early works that alluded
Speaker 1: to Mars having two moons in advance of those two
Speaker 1: moons actually being discovered. But I was reading in uh
Speaker 1: in Broca's Brain, the book by Carl sagan Um. He
Speaker 1: has a whole section where he goes into like the
Speaker 1: naming of Mars. He lists a bunch of the different
Speaker 1: gods in addition to the gods that we uh that
Speaker 1: we discussed, that have been associated in different cultures with
Speaker 1: the planet Mars ours Uh and he shares that in
Speaker 1: addition to Swift and Voltaire, he wanted to name a
Speaker 1: third crater of Demos after Um, after Renee uh Margretti,
Speaker 1: a Belgian surrealist whose paintings featured large rocks and suspended
Speaker 1: in the sky, or at least two of his paintings
Speaker 1: depicted large rocks suspended in the sky, and they reminded
Speaker 1: Sagan of the Martian moons. Quote. The suggestion was, however,
Speaker 1: voted down as frivolous. But if you look up some
Speaker 1: of these of these paintings by the artists, like they
Speaker 1: they are really cool, they don't you know, they don't
Speaker 1: look exactly like uh Phobos and Demos, but they are
Speaker 1: the surrealist images of large rock craggy boulders suspended in
Speaker 1: the sky over the ocean or a landscape. In one
Speaker 1: case there's a castle on top of one of these boulders.
Speaker 1: In another case you see uh crescent moon in the
Speaker 1: sky above. It clearly an inspiration for Zardas now Um obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, given it's a very small moon Uh, and
Speaker 1: it is also further away from Mars than Phobos. And
Speaker 1: while Phobos, as we've discussed several times already, is faded
Speaker 1: to one day crash into the red planet or break
Speaker 1: up against its power. Damos is drifting further away and
Speaker 1: will one day escape Mars entirely. Uh though from a
Speaker 1: mythological standpoint, this I like. I like this too, because
Speaker 1: the this doomed, insane godling who will one day earnest freedom,
Speaker 1: he'll one day escape the awful war god uh that
Speaker 1: that he has served. But he's just gonna wander out
Speaker 1: into the waist of the Solar System, perhaps crash into
Speaker 1: lesser deities or mortals and die by their hands instead,
Speaker 1: or just wander aimlessly. Uh So that's it's kind of
Speaker 1: perfect in its own way. Now, we've talked about the
Speaker 1: idea of missions to the moons of Mars in order
Speaker 1: to study them and perhaps even return a sample from
Speaker 1: them that would allow us to better understand where they
Speaker 1: come from and what they are. There's actually another one
Speaker 1: of the scheduled It's Japan's Martian Moons Exploration or the
Speaker 1: MMX mission of Jackson, the Japanese Space Agency, which is
Speaker 1: currently scheduled to launch in and perform an orbital insertion
Speaker 1: around Mars in and so it would travel to survey
Speaker 1: both of the planet's moons. And then the idea is
Speaker 1: that it will land on Phobos and collect a sample
Speaker 1: from Phobos to bring back to Earth for study. And
Speaker 1: major scientific objectives of this mission would include determining the
Speaker 1: origin of Phobos and Demos, so possibly answering these big
Speaker 1: questions that we've been talking about all this research on today.
Speaker 1: So are they actually captured asteroids that just happened to
Speaker 1: have these very tidy orbits? Are they the result of
Speaker 1: a giant impact with Mars long ago and so forth?
Speaker 1: And uh? And also we should be able to study
Speaker 1: the history of Mars itself by looking at these moons.
Speaker 1: But as far as space exploration goes, there's another interesting
Speaker 1: thing about the moon Phobos, which is that it has
Speaker 1: often been proposed as a potentially useful base of operations
Speaker 1: for space missions. Yeah, for the same reason Shilowsky outlined,
Speaker 1: it would be advantageous to have a moon like Phobos
Speaker 1: above your Mars. If Phobos did not exist, it would
Speaker 1: be necessary to invent it. And since it does exist,
Speaker 1: it would make a handy base. Yeah. And so one
Speaker 1: of the things is that it has been proposed as
Speaker 1: a remote control base of operations for surface robots on Mars.
Speaker 1: So this would eliminate the problem that when we want
Speaker 1: to control rovers and exploration vehicles on the surface of Mars,
Speaker 1: there is a large time delay between Earth and Mars
Speaker 1: where we have to wait after we transmit a command
Speaker 1: signal for that signal to reach the robot and it
Speaker 1: performs the operation, and then we have to wait to
Speaker 1: receive feedback, and this can be a while while you're
Speaker 1: just sitting there, you know, waiting for your your signal,
Speaker 1: your remote control signal to reach the rover, and so
Speaker 1: that this can cause a lot of slow down and
Speaker 1: difficulty in these kind of missions. If you could get
Speaker 1: your humans onto the surface of Phobos, they could essentially
Speaker 1: control things operating on the surface of Mars remotely in
Speaker 1: real time. And it would be better trying to put
Speaker 1: humans on the surface of Phobos than trying to put
Speaker 1: them on the surface of Mars itself, because it's a
Speaker 1: lot easier to get back from the surface of Phobos
Speaker 1: than it is to get back from Mars itself. To
Speaker 1: get off of the surface of Mars, you need a
Speaker 1: powerful rocket to leave the gravity well of the planet.
Speaker 1: Getting off of Phobos would be would be a cake
Speaker 1: walk in comparison. Now, of course, putting humans or even
Speaker 1: just probes on the surface of Phobos would still be
Speaker 1: plenty difficult. And I was reading about one possible complication
Speaker 1: that really fascinated me. This was in another NASA press
Speaker 1: release that I was looking at from October of seventeen
Speaker 1: by Bills Steagerwald and Nancy Jones, and it is about
Speaker 1: research suggesting that solar eruptions may have a tendency to
Speaker 1: electrically charge up the surface of Phobos two hundreds of
Speaker 1: volts quote, presenting a complex electrical environment that could possibly
Speaker 1: affect sensitive electronics carried by future robotic explorers, according to
Speaker 1: a new NASA study. The study also considered electrical charges
Speaker 1: that could develop as astronauts transit the surface on potential
Speaker 1: human missions to Phobos, and they quote a researcher named
Speaker 1: William Farrell of NASA Goddard who says, we found that
Speaker 1: astronauts or rovers could accumulate significant electric charges when traversing
Speaker 1: the night side of Phobos, the side facing Mars during
Speaker 1: the Martian Day. So why would this happen? Why would
Speaker 1: Phobos turn into a giant Ben Franklin Turkey killing jar. Well, fortunately,
Speaker 1: the electric charge is not quite that powerful. I think
Speaker 1: it is not at the Turkey killing jar levels. It
Speaker 1: seems unlikely that it would be in human injury range
Speaker 1: at least most of the time, but it might be
Speaker 1: enough to screw up sensors and sensitive or delicate electronic equipment.
Speaker 1: So what gives what would cause this? Well, Phobos and
Speaker 1: Demos both have no atmosphere, and they are exposed to
Speaker 1: solar wind, which is a giant stream of charged particles.
Speaker 1: You can think of it as a kind of electric
Speaker 1: gas that's blowing off of the surface of the Sun
Speaker 1: in every direction at a million miles per hour. So
Speaker 1: solar wind hits the day side of Phobos, that would
Speaker 1: be the side that's facing the Sun, and some of
Speaker 1: the plasma gets absorbed on the day side, but then
Speaker 1: the rest flows around the rocky mass of Phobos, and
Speaker 1: this creates a void of solar wind on the night
Speaker 1: side of Phobos. And the solar wind is made up
Speaker 1: of two major types of charge particles. You've got electrons,
Speaker 1: which of course are negative, and then you've got ions
Speaker 1: pieces of atoms that can be positively charged. And the
Speaker 1: electrons are much lighter than the eons. So the article
Speaker 1: again quotes William Farrell of NASA Goddard, who says, quote,
Speaker 1: the electrons act like fighter jets. They're able to turn
Speaker 1: quickly around an obstacle, and the ions are like big,
Speaker 1: heavy bombers. They change directions slowly. This means that the
Speaker 1: light electrons push in ahead of the heavy ions, and
Speaker 1: the resulting electric field forces the ions into the plasma
Speaker 1: void behind Phobos. According to our models, and so the
Speaker 1: result is that the night side of Phobos builds up
Speaker 1: significant static electricity. Quote. The study shows that this plasma
Speaker 1: void behind Phobos may create a situation where astronauts and
Speaker 1: rovers build up significant electric charges. For example, if astronauts
Speaker 1: were to walk across the night side surface friction could
Speaker 1: transfer charge from the dust and rock on the surface
Speaker 1: to their space suits. This dust and rock is a
Speaker 1: very poor conductor of electricity, so the charge can't flow
Speaker 1: back easily into the surface, and charge starts to build
Speaker 1: up on the space suits. On the day side, the
Speaker 1: electrically conducting solar wind and solar ultra violet radiation can
Speaker 1: remove the excess charge on the suit, but on the
Speaker 1: night side, the ion and electron densities in the trailing
Speaker 1: plasma void are so low they cannot compensate or dissipate
Speaker 1: the charge build up. And so the team looked into
Speaker 1: this and they found that the static charge could reach
Speaker 1: up to ten thousand volts on some materials that would
Speaker 1: be moving across the surface. And some of those materials
Speaker 1: would include like the teflon suits that that astronauts have
Speaker 1: used in the Apollo lunar missions. And of course this
Speaker 1: leads so you build up a gigantic static electric charge
Speaker 1: on your space suit and then you go and touch something.
Speaker 1: It's like you know when when you you shuffle across
Speaker 1: the carpet and then use zap your family members. They
Speaker 1: also point out that this is always going to be
Speaker 1: the case when solar wind is blowing onto Phobos, but
Speaker 1: it's going to be especially bad during heavy sun weather,
Speaker 1: such as in the wake of a coronal mass ejection.
Speaker 1: So astronaut on the surface of Phobos might need I
Speaker 1: don't know that they may need mitigation measures for this,
Speaker 1: somehow to avoid accumulating static electricity in this way. I
Speaker 1: was wondering, I was looking it up. Do they make
Speaker 1: those anti static socks I've seen before? I don't know
Speaker 1: if those actually work. Those might be a scam. I've
Speaker 1: never really looked into it. Oh yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess they'd be useful if you're touching a lot of
Speaker 1: electronics and stuff, But if you're just like a kid,
Speaker 1: they seemed like a horrible invention. Why would you take
Speaker 1: this gift of static electricity away from them? Oh? I
Speaker 1: know you. You like zapping people, don't you. Um? I
Speaker 1: actually don't za people as much intentionally. But one thing
Speaker 1: that my son and I have always enjoyed is if
Speaker 1: the if an atmospheric conditions are right, he can go
Speaker 1: down a slide at a playground and he'll build up
Speaker 1: that electric charge on the way down, and then he
Speaker 1: can give me a high five, and when he gets
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the slide, and it will be
Speaker 1: what we call an electric high five because it will
Speaker 1: be an actually static shock to it. So I do
Speaker 1: all if that a lot. Uh, you know, always a
Speaker 1: hit with the kids. That's so beautiful, I'm gonna cry.
Speaker 1: But as far as Phobos goes this, this whole scenario
Speaker 1: you just a discussed here, it made me think like
Speaker 1: this would be perfect. You have like a Phobos space Western,
Speaker 1: kind of like the Sean Connery movie Outlander. Um, Outland
Speaker 1: not Outlander, Yes, yes, the Killed TV show, uh, which
Speaker 1: which is also entertaining. But now this is this is uh,
Speaker 1: this is a space Western scenario where you have your
Speaker 1: astronaut and he's been left for dead, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: on the far side of Phobos. But he's not dead.
Speaker 1: So he comes trooping back, walking across the waste land
Speaker 1: of Phoebos, just building up static electricity with each vengeful
Speaker 1: step until he can get back to the habitat and
Speaker 1: uh and zap his killers or would be killers. Brutal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if the science completely works, but I
Speaker 1: think there's enough science there that you could make it
Speaker 1: work in in a science fiction property. Well hey, okay,
Speaker 1: so we love the cool idea of the holo Phobos,
Speaker 1: but there's not good evidence that it's actually true. Put
Speaker 1: it in the science fiction movie. Uh, the there is
Speaker 1: actually evidence that you get this electric build up on Phobos.
Speaker 1: It's probably not enough to do the like electric weapon
Speaker 1: idea you want to do, but they put it in
Speaker 1: the science fiction movie. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you use it
Speaker 1: as a jumping off point to create your your your
Speaker 1: science flavored fantasy. I'm all for that. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: there you have it. We're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 1: out our look at the moons of marsh. We'll hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this. We enjoyed it, and you know it's
Speaker 1: a great opportunity to to bust out some planetary information,
Speaker 1: to discuss mythology a bit. And uh, I guess the
Speaker 1: big question is would you like us to continue this
Speaker 1: journey now that we have started it again? Should we
Speaker 1: move on to other moons? Other planets? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: even even planets that that don't have moons. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we've I can't remember if we ever ever
Speaker 1: on like a proper look at the planet Mercury. I
Speaker 1: know we've looked at at Venus a few times, but
Speaker 1: I don't know that we've really looked at at Mercury.
Speaker 1: So may you know, maybe that's uh in the cards.
Speaker 1: Let us know. We'd love to hear from you. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind, well you can find
Speaker 1: us anywhere you get your podcasts. Go to the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind Podcasts feed you'll find core science
Speaker 1: and culture episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. On
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, we publish artifacts on Wednesday's listener Mail
Speaker 1: on Monday's Friday's that's when we bust out Weird how Cinema.
Speaker 1: That's our time to just discuss some weird movies and
Speaker 1: sometimes there's a little science sprinkled in there. And then
Speaker 1: on the weekends we do a bit of a rerun.
Speaker 1: I gotta catch them all huge things. As always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other to suggest topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
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