Why is Mars' Moon Phobos Hollow? | Hacker News Reader

Why is Mars' Moon Phobos Hollow?

dailygalaxy.com

32 pointstwidlit22 comments

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Or, extraordinary claims require a psychological need to believe. :)

This is always assumed as an axiom. It is also wrong. Claims require sufficient evidence to prove them. Period. Labeling a claim as "extraordinary" does not in any way change the standard of proof for said claim.

So far, no one has put forward anything even remotely approaching sufficient proof that Phobos is artificial.

Couldn't the right-angles detected be crystalline in origin, rather than from Home Depot?

I don't believe that geometric shapes and structures existed before Home Depot but you know how dodgy aliens are always messing with time portals to bring lumber back to the future.

Some natural geometric shapes:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1228844/Th...

http://www.ironammonite.com/2009/12/surviving-cueva-de-los-c...

And of course the hexagon atop Saturn. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/saturn-hexagon/

Have a read of the "source" material:

http://www.enterprisemission.com/Phobos.html

It is even more bizarre than the original article. Of course, by Poe's law, either of these could be subtle parodies. (Although I suspect not).

From the article:

So yes, what you are staring at (probably, in shock at this point ...) is, in fact ... nothing less than what we've been saying all along ... since trying to educate the first Bush Administration on this data, in 1989 (see below):

That Phobos is, in fact--

An "ancient ... ex terrestrial ... very battered ... 15-mile-long"--

Spaceship.

That definitely isn't a scientific article. It sounds more like a conspiracy theory website.

It is. Richard Hoagland believes there is a secret space program interacting with/covering up an alien presence in our solar system. He's on Coast to Coast AM on a regular basis as their special space advisor.

He seems to have some interesting views. From his Wikipedia page:

Hoagland has commented at great length[66][67][68] on the so-called Norway Spiral, an extraordinary display of light seen over much of northern Norway on 9 December 2009, caused by the partial failure of a Russian SLBM test flight. Hoagland draws special attention to the fact that this event occurred close to President Barack Obama's arrival in Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

On 2–3 February 2010, on the Coast to Coast AM radio show,[69] Hoagland announced that the Russian SLBM had in fact been captured by Dark Forces intent on preventing mankind's exploration of outer space. These Dark Forces, he explained, were probably headed by Nazi officers who had escaped into space after World War II. To Hoagland, this was a sufficient explanation of President Obama's desire to cancel Project Constellation, since Obama had clearly accepted that any attempt to return to the Moon would be thwarted by the superior technology of the Nazis in space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Hoagland

The minute I saw this I thought "this is like that Cydonia nonsense from the 90's." And whose name comes up? Richard Hoagland.

I'm sure the people at NASA who see this entry on HN are rolling there eyes as well.

Indeed. Hoagland is a borderline crazy person, quite incapable of critical thinking. But the hollow interior aspect of the story is extremely interesting.

Paper is at Geophysical Research Letters website: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009GL041829.shtml Infuriatingly, it's behind a paywall and the article has not shown up on arxiv or scribd. Mention of acceptance is documented here: http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/7/1085

Note that the GRL paper asserting the existence of 'large voids' is based on analysis of a 2008 flyby. The recent one which took place in March anticipates mapping that interior. The ESA researchers say they'll present more information and pictures of the internal structure at a conference in September. 19 more flybys (including a closer one) are scheduled for august and December 2010; Phobos' orbit coincides with that of the Mars Express about every 5 months.

http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/7/1082 http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/7/1090

No it isn't. There is no reason whatsoever to suppose Phobos isn't a natural phenomenon.

On the Phobos blog, you can find a recent post (http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/7/1085), which says:

  [..] provide meaningful new constraints on the
  corresponding range of the body's porosity (30% ± 5%),
  provide a basis for improved interpretation of the 
  internal structure. We conclude that the interior of 
  Phobos likely contains large voids. When applied to 
  various hypotheses bearing on the origin of Phobos, these 
  results are inconsistent with the proposition that Phobos 
  is a captured asteroid.

In other words, the moon is pretty porous and asteroids aren't, so it isn't a captured asteroid. However, that is only one of three hypotheses. In a previous post (http://webservices.esa.int/blog/post/7/989) they state:

  The origin of Phobos is a mystery, in fact three scenarios
  are considered possible.  The first is that the moon is a 
  captured asteroid; the second is that it formed in-situ as 
  Mars formed below it, and the third is that Phobos formed 
  later than Mars, from debris flung into martian orbit when 
  a large meteorite struck the Red Planet. Among other 
  objectives, the Phobos flybys are designed to provide 
  clues towards answering this question.

So one of the three hypotheses has been ruled out. The other two are still candidates. There is no mention of any internal voids with inexplicably 'geometric' shapes

I have a feeling that most of this article is outright sensationalism. Sadly I don't have a subscription to the scientific site so I can't read the whole paper, but so far I haven't found any other source talking about the "geometric rooms" inside Phobos.

Phobos looks fairly normal on the outside, other than a few strange lines:

http://dad2059.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/phobos-41410.jpg

The article is probably link bait.

Ugh: "provide a basis for improved interpretation of the internal structure"

I wish less people would use them fancy words. What's wrong with simple english?

I was unclear about how they determined that the internal cavities were large. I get the same density if I have a rock with 30% of it's interior carved out by phasers, or if I have volcanic style (porous) rock.

Are their instruments sensitive enough to get a line graph of gravitational attraction as their sensors pass near the moon? If that were the case, you might be able to determine large voids vs porosity, but if they only get a single data point, than you wouldn't be able to.

They are using enterprisemission.com as a source? Seriously? What is Daily Galaxy, the Weekly World News of Astronomy?

For those who don't know, Enterprise Mission is the outlet for all the paranoid schizoid ramblings of Richard C. Hoagland, aka Mr. Face on Mars.

The notion that Phobos might be hollow is not exactly new. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_%28moon%29#.22Hollow_Pho....

Anyone else read "The Monkeys Thought 'Twas All In Fun" by Orson Scott Card?

Someone has been reading "Mostly Harmless" again I think.

...that's no moon

Occam's razor wins again!

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