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Phobos Oddities

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posted on Dec, 30 2005 @ 12:53 AM
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Someone else, I think it was Reckon, posted this link...

The site claims that Phobos moves in a counter direction compared to every other planetary body in the solar system.. it also says that Phobos appears to be hollow.. or was since now apparently it has dissapeared. Then there was something about a Russian probe being destroyed by a beam. I was a little skeptical of all this since this a UFO site, and not a credible astronomy site. So I briefly researched it a little on the net, and I see no mention of the backwards movement, or of a dissapearance, or of Phobos being hollow. So was this stuff made up? Or does anyone here know any more about it?

What I did notice was that on an astronomy site they talk about the confusion as to why Phobos is orbitting Mars at such a low altitude. Apparently it shouldn't be there. I guess this adds to the mystery.

I would appreciate any info.
Thanks

[edit on 30/12/05 by SteveR]



posted on Dec, 30 2005 @ 02:52 AM
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When did Phobos disappear??? I don't see how this is even possible, and I haven't heard of anything unusual happening to it.

I looked on Wikipedia and they have an animation of Phobos and Deimos orbiting Mars. Both are moving counterclockwise.

I'm not sure why there is anything wrong with Phobos orbiting at the altitude it is. Phobos is (slowly!) getting closer to Mars and eventually is going to crash into the surface, so it's hardly a stable orbit, but I don't see any other problem with it. I've heard a theory that both Martian moons are rogue asteroids captured by gravity; not sure if it's true or not, but the moons are the right size and Mars is relatively close to the asteroid belt.

The Wikipedia entry for Phobos here mentions a Russian physicist who hypothesized that Phobos was hollow to fit his secular acceleration calculations, but that others have cast doubt on those calculations.


From Wikipedia - Phobos

"Hollow Phobos" claims
Around 1958, the distinguished Russian astrophysicist Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky, studying the secular acceleration of Phobos' orbital motion, suggested a "thin sheet metal" structure for Phobos, a suggestion which led to speculations on Phobos' artificial origin. Shklovsky based his analysis on estimates of the upper martian atmosphere's density, and deduced that for the weak braking effect to be able to account for the secular acceleration, Phobos had to be very light —one calculation yielded a hollow iron sphere 16 km across but less than 6 cm thick.

Competing explanations were based on the land tides Phobos could raise on Mars. The reality of the secular acceleration itself (corresponding to an altitude loss of about 5×10−12 per revolution, about 5 cm per year) was later subjected to doubt, and the problem vanished on its own by 1969. In a February 1960 letter to the journal Astronautics, however, Siegfried Frederick Singer, then science advisor to President Eisenhower, came out in support of Shklovsky's theory, going as far as stating that "[Phobos'] purpose would probably be to sweep up radiation in Mars' atmosphere, so that Martians could safely operate around their planet". A few years later, in 1963, Raymond H. Wilson Jr., Chief of Applied Mathematics at NASA, allegedly announced to the Institute of Aerospace Sciences that "Phobos might be a colossal base orbiting Mars", and that NASA itself was considering the possibility.

Similar "hollow Moon" claims occurred at around the same time.



posted on Jan, 1 2006 @ 10:34 AM
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As far as i remember Phobos was photographed by the Mars Express in 2004 so i am also baffled at these statements about Phobos disappearing.
Anybody got an idea where that came from ? Also noteworthy was the last known picture taken by the russian probe Phobos II that showed a rather strange pencil like object close by as it approached the moon


[edit on 1-1-2006 by bmdefiant]



posted on Jan, 1 2006 @ 12:32 PM
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Phobos is a interesting Moon. It has a crater larger then what scientist thought any object could have for its size. If it was a solid rock it would have shattered with that large of a impact. If I remember correctly scientist believe its not hollow rather it just not solid if that makes sense. Like it made up of lots of loose particles in a dense cloud rather then a solid piece of rock.



posted on Jan, 1 2006 @ 02:26 PM
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if it wasn't solid, then how would it have a crater?, i mean, if it was a dust ball, then any impact, small or large would poof it like a sandstorm.




 
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