Mars and it's moons, Phobos and Deimos

Is your mind set securely in your head right now? Because I’m about to blow it away.

Scientists suspect they have discovered a secret alien space station orbiting Mars. No joke – this is 100% for real, and everything I am going to talk about here is factual as best as I can tell. This is not just some wild speculation dreamt up by crack pseudo-scientists either, this has been widely agreed upon by the smartest people on the planet. This shit is going to seriously blow your mind. Or, alternately, you might get a lesson about not believing everything you hear. Let’s get on with it!

Phobos is a moon orbiting Mars that was discovered by Asaph Hall in 1877 and is one of the oddest celestial bodies ever discovered. It orbits very close to Mars and spins around the entire planet in 7 hours. It is on a decelerating path and will one day break up in the atmosphere of Mars, then turning into a ring around it. The reason this moon is of interest though has nothing to do with it’s eventual demise, but rather with the secrets it might contain.

In 1958, a scientist named Samuilovich Shklovsky surmised that the moon was hollow. Based on his observations, the moon could not possibly rotate around the planet in the way that it does if it weighed what it should. Instead, it had to be hollow, and there is no such thing as a hollow moon. It just isn’t feasible.

Many other scientists around the world corroborated Hall’s findings, including Carl Sagan who helped write a book detailing the findings and what they could possibly mean. If what Shklovsky was saying was true, then there was no denying  Phobos was artificially created. Even a scientific advisor to the White House, Fred Singer, attested to this when he stated:

The Phobos Monolith

“If the satellite is indeed spiraling inward as deduced from astronomical observation, then there is little alternative to the hypothesis that it is hollow and therefore Martian made. The big ‘if’ lies in the astronomical observations; they may well be in error. Since they are based on several independent sets of measurements taken decades apart by different observers with different instruments, systematic errors may have influenced them.”

This is where the theory seems to fall apart slightly, as later calculations seem to contradict what Sagan and Shklovsky had said about the moon, although even these new calculations seem to show that Phobos must be far more porous than would be expected. Some scientists now believe that the moon is actually filled with ice, which could account for it’s odd weight. All that being said, this story isn’t finished getting weird.

This strange moon is one of two orbiting Mars, but it gets far more attention from the world’s space programs than you would expect. Everyone seems desperate to get to Phobos and explore it… for seemingly no good reason.

In July, 1988, the Soviet Union launched two probes meant to explore Phobos. The first was lost on the trip, but the second took several photos of the moon before being mysteriously destroyed, but not before taking one last, bizarre picture of a cigar shaped “thing” sitting nearby in space (make sure to read the PS portion of the article to learn more about this UFO). This is fascinating, but this isn’t the only strange thing about the Phobos 2 probe’s trip. It also took a picture of Phobos that seems to reveal a structure that has been labeled the Phobos Monolith.

[rokbox title=”Phobos Buzz Aldren” thumb=”http://talkingship.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Picture-110.png” size=”854 505″ album=”demo”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDIXvpjnRws[/rokbox]

You might expect the scientific world to laugh at the people that postulated that this was a man made structure, but they didn’t. In fact, Buzz Aldrin himself came out describing this as a major discovery and one that must be explored. And Canada has taken it a step further by launching a probe that is going to land directly beside the monolith so that it can be explored. Russia is also interested in getting back to Phobos and has teamed up with China to launch a new probe on November 8th, 2011. The European Space Agency has declared an interest in Phobos as well and plans on sending a probe to perform tests there for future Mars missions instead of landing on Mars itself. In all, there seems to be an inordinate amount of interest in this odd moon.

The "Cigar" UFO Debunked

The skeptic in me immediately dismisses this as lunacy, but the wild eyed romantic in me wants desperately to believe that this is worth believing. Could it be possible that an ancient civilization constructed a moon-like object to house a portion of their population to avoid a cataclysmic event? It makes a lot more sense than you might be willing to think. Scientists around the world have agreed at the very least that this moon must be explored and it’s secrets need to be revealed.

PS – The cigar shaped structure captured in the final picture taken of Phobos by the Russian probe is, sadly, a deliberate hoax. As happens a whole hell of a lot, an over zealous UFO enthusiast decided to ignore the fact that most of the pictures Phobos 2 took contained a white mark on the lens similar to the one they claimed was a UFO. It’s frustrating to have to weed through data to find the truth, but in this age of internet information it becomes necessary to look around for the truth, even after it seems like you’ve already found it!

It’s a lot of fun to speculate about these types of things, and we should always entertain our imaginations – but it is never okay to willfully ignore evidence that run contrary to your opinions or decided beliefs. When you choose to deliberately ignore facts, like so many people have done in reference to the “Cigar UFO” in the Phobos pictures, you become the reason that no one is willing to believe anything anymore.

Is Phobos an alien space station? It sure is fun to think about it, but let’s wait and see what they find out in the next couple of years. That being said, discovering that this moon is filled with water makes it immediately one of the most unique and fascinating celestial bodies in existence and will likely change the way we look at the Universe anyhow. All that said, it sure is fun to think about an ancient civilization living within this moon!

THAT’S NO MOON! THAT’S A SPACE STATION!!