This is the Spacefreaks' Blog, so I have to pass on this weird one from Pleiades concerning Martian Moon Phobos. It seems that Dr. S Fred Singer, formerly an advisor in the Eisenhower administration about half a century ago strongly believes that Phobos is hollow and therefore probably an artificial satellite.
"I would be very disappointed if it turns out to be solid," said the White House advisor. If the figures were correct, he stated, then Phobos undoubtedly is a hollow, artificial satellite. If it is, he said, its purpose would probably be to sweep up radiation in the Mars' atmosphere, so that Martians could safely operate around their planet. Dr. Singer also pointed out that Phobos would make an ideal space base, both for Martians and earthlings.
Now that's an odd claim, probably on a par with the Face-on-Mars thing, and I'm more surprised I hadn't heard of this one before.
So naturally I Googled, as one does in such instances and found this list, which contained this page. Detective work's never been more boring. :)
Dr Iosif Shklovsky based his conclusion on calculations that had been done by the U.S. Naval Observatory (rumored in the 1980s to have been the home of the elusive MJ-12 group). Shklovsky stated Phobos was being "slowed by electromagnetic drag and tidal friction more than was possible was an actual solid moon."
Shklovsky is also famous for having written a 1966 book on SETI called Intelligent Life in the Universe. A famous astronomer by the name of Carl Sagan was asked to edit the book. When he had finished adding all his viewpoints the book had doubled in length and he became a co-authored with Shklovsky. Their views on extra terrestrial life still remained at odds. During the Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects - Hearing before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, Sagan was asked by Congressman Roush if Shklovsky shared his views. Sagan replied:
I think he shares my restraint. I think both of us would say we think this is an extremely important subject, that we are on the frontier of being able to find out, but that neither of us knows whether there is or isn't life out there. Let me say if it turns out there isn't life on Mars, that is almost as interesting as if we find there is life on Mars, because then we have to ask, what happened different on Mars than on the Earth, so that life arose here and not there. That will surely give us a very profound entry into the question of follow-up of evolution and the cosmic context.
Enough to make one want to run away from the Woo-woos even more than before. Here's a pretty long entry about the Russian Probes Phobos 1 & 2 that were launched and lost.
Phobos 2 arrived safely at Mars in January 1989 and entered into an orbit around Mars as the first step at its destination towards its ultimate goal: to transfer to an orbit that the would make it fly almost in tandem with the Martian moonlet called Phobos (hence the spacecrafts name) and explore the moonlet with highly sophisticated equipment that included two packages of instruments to be placed on the moonlet's surface.
All went well until Phobos 2 aligned itself with Phobos, the Martian moonlet. Then, on 28th March, the Soviet mission control center acknowledged sudden communication "problems" with the spacecraft; and Tass, the official Soviet news agency, reported that "Phobos 2 had failed to communicate with Earth as scheduled after completing an operation yesterday around the Martian moon Phobos. Scientists at mission control have been unable to establish stable radio contact."
What had caused the Phobos 2 spacecraft to be lost? According to Boris Bolitsky, science correspondent for Radio Moscow, just before radio contact was lost with Phobos 2, several unusual images were radioed back to Earth, described by the Russian as "Quite remarkable features". A report taken from New Scientist of 8 April 1989, described the following: "The features are either on the Martian surface or in the lower atmosphere. The features are between 20 and 25 kilometers wide and do not resemble any known geological formation. They are spindle - shaped and proving to be intriguing and puzzling." An unusual photo of a thin shadow across mars was shown on the Russian television segment. Seen on the surface of Mars was a clearly defined dark shape that could indeed be described, as it was in he initial dispatch from Moscow, as a "thin elipse" (this photo is a still from the Soviet television clip).
It was certainly different from the shadow of Phobos recorded eighteen years earlier by Mariner 9. The latter cast a shadow that was a rounded ellipse and fuzzy at the edges, as would be cast by the uneven surface of the moonlet. The 'anomaly' see in the Phobos 2 transmission was a thin ellipse with very sharp rather than rounded points (the shape is known in the diamond trade as a "marquise") and the edges, rather than being fuzzy, stood out sharply against a kind of halo on the Martian surface. Dr. Becklake described it as "something that is between the spacecraft and Mars, because we can see the Martian surface below it," and stressed that the object was seen by both the optical and the infrared (heat seeking) camera.
You should check out the photo on the page.
Now that's creepy and odd, because I'd never heard of that either; which doesn't say much because well, I wasn't really keeping a close eye on what Russian Probes send back, back then.
Anyway, that's all I've got in wading through all the woo-woo speculations. Phobos might be hollow. I can live with that.
Less Mysteriously, The Yankees Beat Cubs
The Chicago Cubs are visiting Yankees Stadium this week for the first time since the 1938 World Series. They've lost the first rubber to the Yankees, 9-6. It was Hideki Matsui Day as he went 3-for-4 with a homer and 5 RBI, which is excellent for my fanatsy team.
Cheered on by Hall of Famer Ernie Banks and boosted by chants of ``Let's go, Cubbies!'' that echoed in the sellout crowd of 54,773, Chicago overcame an early four-run deficit and took a 6-4 lead in the sixth inning.
After Gary Sheffield's shot into the stands was reversed by umpires and called a foul ball -- correctly -- in the first inning, Matsui put one into the seats that counted and capped a three-run rally in the seventh. Matsui added a two-run double in the eighth. He also had an RBI single.
``Hideki is one of the most impressive players I've ever played with,'' teammate Alex Rodriguez said. ``He's just tenacious and has a knack for the big hit.'
There you go. Finally, the offense is clicking and look what it can do.
- Art Neuro
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