
Why is Mars' Moon Phobos Hollow? - twidlit
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/05/you-couldnt-make-this-up-european-space-agency-rumors-mars-moon-phobos-is-an-artificial-satellite.html
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sdurkin
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

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

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

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jaybol
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.

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techiferous
Some natural geometric shapes:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1228844/Th...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1228844/These-
stones-really-ARE-rolling-Mystery-Death-Valleys-eerie-moving-rocks.html)

[http://www.ironammonite.com/2009/12/surviving-cueva-de-
los-c...](http://www.ironammonite.com/2009/12/surviving-cueva-de-los-
cristales-giant.html)

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

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arethuza
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).

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NathanKP
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.

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mbenjaminsmith
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.

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mootothemax
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>

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Confusion
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

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NathanKP
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.

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pdx
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.

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teilo
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.

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

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

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

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nlindig
...that's no moon

Occam's razor wins again!

