1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:08,500 So my topic this week is less of, well it kind of, it's news I guess, and it's news that we can all use. 2 00:00:08,500 --> 00:00:17,000 So this is a little bit old at this point, it was from December 2nd, 2022, and perhaps you may or may not have heard about it, 3 00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:20,700 but for Journey to the Fringe it's just something we must cover. 4 00:00:20,700 --> 00:00:29,000 Here we go, and I'm not going to read the title of it this time because it's just gonna give it away, and I don't want to give it away too soon. 5 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:31,000 Eventually I will have to, but... 6 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:32,000 Yes. 7 00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:42,500 So Vladimir Putin has injured himself in his home in Moscow, and he fell down five steps, landed on his caustics, is that how you say that? 8 00:00:42,500 --> 00:00:53,000 And rolled onto his side and slid down two more steps, and the sharp impact caused him to involuntarily defecate due to cancer of the gastrointestinal tract. 9 00:00:53,000 --> 00:01:03,000 So apparently three security guards allegedly helped Putin get up, cleaned the poop from his body, and called an in-house doctor to assess the extent of his injuries. 10 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:08,000 He toured a laboratory in Moscow the next day with no signs of bruising or skin marks. 11 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:11,000 Rumours about their Russian leader's health have dodged him for years. 12 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:14,000 I would hope they at least changed his pants. 13 00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:18,000 Maybe they didn't. Or maybe they did. 14 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:21,000 Money's tight in Russia right now, I would understand. 15 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:25,000 The news article didn't specifically say whether or not they did. 16 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:27,000 There are more serious things afoot. 17 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:32,000 Particularly in the form of viral memes about Parkinson's and blood cancer in regards to Putin. 18 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:38,000 In July, after the Kremlin denied any illnesses, William J. Burns, director of the CIA, seemed to confirm that. 19 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:43,000 There are a lot of rumours about President Putin's health, and as far as we can tell, he's entirely too healthy. 20 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:46,000 I mean, he's alive, so yes, too healthy. 21 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:50,000 He is way too healthy for anybody's comfort. 22 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:59,000 So that's a short but sweet one, and I'm going to end it off with the title of the article, which is Vladimir Putin Tis Pants. 23 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:01,000 Not bad. 24 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:05,000 That is the news that we're all here for at Journey to the Fringe. 25 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:11,000 The guy's 70 years old at this point, so yeah, I guess you can't expect perfect health, of course. 26 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:17,000 That somehow, at this point, makes him younger in age than the average world leader, I think. 27 00:02:17,000 --> 00:02:22,000 It's true, and you can expect everyone to always have a perfect 100%... 28 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:24,000 Perfectly clenched sphincter, yes. 29 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:26,000 Yes, exactly. 30 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:29,000 So with that, I think we can now start the episode. 31 00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:30,000 Okay. 32 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:31,000 Now that that's out of the way. 33 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:34,000 Now that we got our sound bites out of the way. 34 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:36,000 Yes. 35 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:44,000 From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a Journey to the Fringe. 36 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:54,000 Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, where you learn all about history's freaks. 37 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:58,000 We are your clearly normal and not freakish podcast hosts, Taylor and Chelsea. 38 00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:02,000 And today, we talk about one of those historical freaks. 39 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:05,000 That's right, Mars' moon Phobos. 40 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:08,000 Now, some of you may be thinking, yeah, what a freak. 41 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:12,000 First and foremost, it is the potato-shaped moon, so it is a freak. 42 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:14,000 Just putting that out there right now. 43 00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:17,000 And some of you may be thinking, wait, Mars moons? 44 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:18,000 Why haven't I heard about this? 45 00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:20,000 Well, that's why we're doing this episode. 46 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:25,000 Does it really have a moon or is it something more sinister? 47 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:28,000 Yeah, that's why we haven't heard of it, because of all the controversy. 48 00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:29,000 Exactly. 49 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:30,000 It's a freak. 50 00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:33,000 It is a potato freak of a moon. 51 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:41,000 Now, how we're going to structure this episode, I'm going to talk about the very solid facts that NASA alleges about Mars and its moons. 52 00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:49,000 And then we're going to talk about some of the history of attempting to explore it and what some people say about those attempts and what it means about Phobos. 53 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:50,000 That's a good setup. 54 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:52,000 And with that, I know completely what to expect. 55 00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:54,000 Let's get talking about this freaky boy. 56 00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:58,000 So you may have never heard about this place before or even what is Phobos. 57 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:00,000 You would know words that are kind of like it. 58 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:03,000 Yeah, a weird way to say it, but I'm going to explain it as we go. 59 00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:06,000 Mars's moons are among the smallest in the solar system. 60 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:09,000 Mars has two moons, Phobos and Demos. 61 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:16,000 Phobos is a bit larger than Demos and orbits roughly 6,000 kilometers above the Martian surface. 62 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:22,000 Now, to put it in context, the Earth's moon orbits 400,000 kilometers away. 63 00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:25,000 This one orbits 6,000 kilometers away from Mars. 64 00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:30,000 So it's roughly 70 times closer than our moon is to Mars. 65 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:33,000 Like, is it as close to Mars as Antarctica is? 66 00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:35,000 No, it's still further. 67 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:39,000 I mean, Antarctica is much further away from Mars than moon Phobos. 68 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:42,000 Yeah, but OK, I should have put that differently. 69 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:45,000 Is Antarctica closer to us? 70 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:47,000 I'm always wondering. 71 00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:49,000 No, Phobos is very far away from us. 72 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:55,000 OK, I mean in relation to Mars. 73 00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:58,000 How far away is it? 74 00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:01,000 This one actually might be close. 75 00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:03,000 6,000 kilometers. 76 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:04,000 Yeah, you know what? 77 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:07,000 We're about 16,000 kilometers away. 78 00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:08,000 From Antarctica? 79 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:09,000 I think that's... 80 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:10,000 Or from Phobos. 81 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:13,000 From the South Pole, which is in Antarctica. 82 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:14,000 OK, so Phobos is still further. 83 00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:16,000 Oh, yes. Phobos is closer. 84 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:21,000 If you were to relate, 6,000 kilometers away from the surface of Mars 85 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:25,000 and 16,000 kilometers away from where we are is Antarctica. 86 00:05:25,000 --> 00:05:26,000 OK. 87 00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:28,000 We're three times further away from Antarctica 88 00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:31,000 than Phobos is close to the surface of Mars. 89 00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:35,000 OK, this is how I need to relate measurements of how far I am from... 90 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:38,000 It's actually a better system than the metric and imperial systems. 91 00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:40,000 It is, it really is. 92 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:45,000 And now I need to get back to my actual script. 93 00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:48,000 And in fact, it is the closest orbiting moon 94 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:50,000 that we've ever found in the solar system. 95 00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:54,000 It orbits Mars three times every day. 96 00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:56,000 So every eight hours, it completes an orbit. 97 00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:01,000 And while the more distant Deimos takes 30 hours for each of its orbits, 98 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:05,000 Phobos is gradually also spiraling in towards Mars, 99 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:09,000 getting roughly one human size closer every hundred years, 100 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:11,000 about six feet closer every hundred years. 101 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:15,000 And within about 50 million years, astronomers predict 102 00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:18,000 that Phobos is going to crash into Mars, 103 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:20,000 or within 30 to 50 million years, 104 00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:22,000 it's going to be broken up by the gravitational pull 105 00:06:22,000 --> 00:06:24,000 that it's going to experience once that close. 106 00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:26,000 And it will actually turn into Mars's ring. 107 00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:29,000 So Mars is going to have a ring in about 30 to 50 million years. 108 00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:33,000 To someone standing on the Mars-facing side of Phobos, 109 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:36,000 Mars would take up a large part of the sky, 110 00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:38,000 and people may one day do just that. 111 00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:40,000 Scientists have discussed the possibility of using one of the Martian moons 112 00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:43,000 as a base from which astronauts could observe the red planet 113 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:45,000 and launch robots to its surface. 114 00:06:45,000 --> 00:06:48,000 While it's shielded by miles of rock from cosmic rays 115 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:51,000 and solar radiation for nearly two-thirds of every orbit. 116 00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:56,000 Like Earth's moon, Phobos and Deimos always present the same face to their planet. 117 00:06:56,000 --> 00:07:00,000 They're tidally locked, and both are lumpy, heavily cratered, 118 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:02,000 and covered in dust and loose rock. 119 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:04,000 They are among the darker objects in the solar system, 120 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:07,000 and the moons appear to be made of carbon-rich rock 121 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:10,000 mixed with ice and maybe captured asteroids. 122 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:13,000 There's actually some contention about what they actually are. 123 00:07:13,000 --> 00:07:16,000 Some people believe that they are captured asteroids from the asteroid belt, 124 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:18,000 which would explain why they have such weird orbits, 125 00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:20,000 and they're absolutely tiny comparatively. 126 00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:23,000 Just to give you an idea, like how big is Phobos? 127 00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:28,000 It is 27 kilometers by 22 kilometers by 18 kilometers. 128 00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:29,000 Like that's just the entire... 129 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:30,000 That's not too big, yeah. 130 00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:33,000 No, like you could walk around it in a day. 131 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:38,000 And on the south pole, I believe, there's a nine kilometer wide crater that's just massive. 132 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:42,000 Astronomers believe that it's caused by an asteroid hit, 133 00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:46,000 which would actually be quite common because of how close the asteroid belt is to Mars. 134 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:48,000 Phobos also has like no gravity. 135 00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:51,000 It has 1 one-thousandth the gravity of Earth. 136 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:57,000 So a 150-pound person would weigh two ounces on Phobos. 137 00:07:57,000 --> 00:07:58,000 Good for them. 138 00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:01,000 Good for them. If you want to lose weight, great way to do it. 139 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:04,000 Also, makes it really hard to land any objects on it, 140 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:09,000 because basically they're so light with the gravity, they're going to bounce like nothing. 141 00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:13,000 But is the gravity compared to that of the moon, like... 142 00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:15,000 I believe the moon is one-ninth. 143 00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:16,000 What would the difference be? 144 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:18,000 So you can't land things on it because of that. 145 00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:20,000 Well, you can, it's just a lot harder. 146 00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:23,000 Okay. It doesn't really impact my life, 147 00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:27,000 so I never thought about how much gravity I'd need in certain places. 148 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:29,000 It's about one-sixth that of Earth on our moon. 149 00:08:29,000 --> 00:08:34,000 I wonder what a comfortable gravity would be for me that's not this one. 150 00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:36,000 Probably one that's incredibly similar to this one. 151 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:37,000 Probably. 152 00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:40,000 Because that's all I've ever known. 153 00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:44,000 Yes, and our bodies have adapted in this evolving through this gravity. 154 00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:48,000 Okay. Yes, that makes sense now that I've said it out loud. 155 00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:51,000 But I had to say it out loud to get there. 156 00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:56,000 It also has like huge swings in temperatures. 157 00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:00,000 When it is on the sun-facing side, Phobos can reach an average temperature 158 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:02,000 of about minus four degrees Celsius. 159 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:04,000 So like not that cold at all. 160 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:09,000 However, when it's on the cold side, it will reach minus 112 degrees Celsius 161 00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:11,000 or minus 170s Fahrenheit. 162 00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:13,000 So it's pretty different. 163 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:15,000 And that's because it has no atmosphere. 164 00:09:15,000 --> 00:09:17,000 Phobos and Deimos, they picked these names. 165 00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:19,000 It was found in 1877. 166 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:21,000 They're tiny, so it took a long time to find them. 167 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:23,000 They picked them because in Greek mythology, 168 00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:27,000 Phobos and Deimos are Ares, Mars' children, the god of war. 169 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:31,000 And Phobos is the god of fear and panic. 170 00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:35,000 And his twin brother is Deimos, the god of pain, I believe. 171 00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:37,000 Wow, those kids suck. 172 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:39,000 Yeah, no, those kids have really shitty lives. 173 00:09:39,000 --> 00:09:40,000 They really suck. 174 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:42,000 But I like how they name them. 175 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:46,000 Yeah, and that actually kind of went a bit against what I know about them, 176 00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:50,000 mostly because I know them from the Disney cartoon Hercules 177 00:09:50,000 --> 00:09:52,000 as Hades sidekicks, pain and panic. 178 00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:54,000 Ah, I did. 179 00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:55,000 Wow. 180 00:09:55,000 --> 00:09:58,000 But they're actually, they're the god of war's twin sons. 181 00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:01,000 Ah, that just unlocked something for me. 182 00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:03,000 I didn't even realize. 183 00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:05,000 Wow, that makes a lot of sense. 184 00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:07,000 I think we all just learned something there. 185 00:10:07,000 --> 00:10:09,000 Yeah, if you take nothing else from this episode, 186 00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:11,000 know that Disney's full of shit. 187 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:12,000 Also, there is way more to them. 188 00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:14,000 Oh, I'm taking a lot already. 189 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:18,000 Okay. And this is probably, if you've heard about Phobos before 190 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:21,000 and you're not an astronomer, this is probably what you know it for. 191 00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:26,000 It's for the monolith on Phobos that Chelsea, I'm sure you've heard of before 192 00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:28,000 because people like to talk about the monolith on Phobos. 193 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:33,000 In the early 2000s, I believe, is either the late 1990s or early 2000s, 194 00:10:33,000 --> 00:10:37,000 they discovered a monolith, which is basically monolith means mono one. 195 00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:39,000 And then the lith is short for boulder. 196 00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:41,000 So it's one large rock. 197 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:46,000 And this rock they found is 85 meters across and 90 meters tall. 198 00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:49,000 And it gave a very rectangular shadow off. 199 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:53,000 A monolith is a geological feature consisting of a single massive piece of rock. 200 00:10:53,000 --> 00:10:55,000 Monoliths do occur naturally on Earth, 201 00:10:55,000 --> 00:11:00,000 but it has been suggested that the Phobos monolith may be a piece of impact ejecta. 202 00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:03,000 The monolith is a bright object near the Stickney crater, 203 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:07,000 which is the nine kilometer wide crater on the South Pole. 204 00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:12,000 It has been described as building size and it casts a prominent shadow. 205 00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:15,000 It was discovered first by Efrain Palermo, 206 00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:18,000 who did extensive surveys of the Martian probe imagery, 207 00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:21,000 which was put up there by NASA and later confirmed by Len Fleming, 208 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:24,000 an imaging subcontractor at NASA's Johnson Space Center. 209 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:26,000 It's actually really hard to find a photo of it. 210 00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:29,000 You're mostly just going to see the shadow it puts off. 211 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:31,000 But as soon as you hear the word monolith, 212 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:34,000 conspiracy theorists everywhere get up in arms 213 00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:37,000 and especially 2001, a space Odyssey triggers people. 214 00:11:37,000 --> 00:11:39,000 They love monoliths. Yeah, exactly. 215 00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:44,000 And you can find videos of many famous people or not famous people, 216 00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:46,000 of many conspiracy theorists talking about the monolith 217 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:50,000 and even crazy old Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon, likes to bring it up. 218 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:54,000 I'm going to insert right here a C-Span video of him talking about it. 219 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:58,000 And I sure think we should identify what it is for America 220 00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:03,000 to make such gross expenditures again for human habitation on the moon. 221 00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:06,000 We can help. We can join with together. 222 00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:10,000 We can explore the moon and develop the moon. 223 00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:15,000 We should go boldly where man has not gone before. 224 00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:20,000 Fly by the comets, visit asteroids, visit the moon of Mars. 225 00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:22,000 There's a monolith. 226 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:27,000 They're a very unusual structure on this little potato shaped object 227 00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:31,000 that goes around Mars once in seven hours. 228 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:34,000 When people find out about that, they're going to say, who put that there? 229 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:36,000 Who put that there? 230 00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:39,000 Well, the universe put it there. 231 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:41,000 If you choose, God put it there. 232 00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:43,000 Loves to talk about it all the time, though. 233 00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:48,000 So that's just kind of an idea of Phobos, what it is, the oddities of it. 234 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:51,000 Now, there have been many attempts to send probes there, 235 00:12:51,000 --> 00:12:55,000 pretty much all of them exclusively from the USSR or Russia. 236 00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,000 And we're going to just kind of go through some of these attempts 237 00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:00,000 and kind of how it gets its mythos about it. 238 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:05,000 In 1988, the USSR kind of takes two attempts to send probes there. 239 00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:07,000 It's Phobos 1 and Phobos 2 are the name of the trips. 240 00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:09,000 Makes it nice and easy to talk about. 241 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:11,000 I was just going to say, so creative. 242 00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:15,000 So they're going to Phobos, Phobos 1's the first one, Phobos 2 is the second one. 243 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:18,000 It's easy when you don't speak English, just to name things simply. 244 00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:24,000 Phobos 1 leaves on July 7th, 1988, and Phobos 2 leaves on July 12th. 245 00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:27,000 The first one, Phobos 1, gets launched off, 246 00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:32,000 intended to be a mission to explore Mars and moon Phobos and Deimos. 247 00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:38,000 However, the mission ends on September 2nd of 1988 in failure as it loses power suddenly. 248 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:41,000 This one is the less contentious of the two. 249 00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:43,000 Basically, there was a coding error. 250 00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:46,000 They used solar panels to power it, but the solar panels had an error 251 00:13:46,000 --> 00:13:50,000 where they would not line up with the sun, so they wouldn't collect power. 252 00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:51,000 So it just died. 253 00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:52,000 So that one happened. 254 00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:54,000 I like the story behind that. 255 00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:57,000 It was before you coding was like accepted by the space program. 256 00:13:57,000 --> 00:14:01,000 You had to put it through a computer, but the computer was broken that day. 257 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:03,000 So the guy who was coding is like, fuck it. 258 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:06,000 I'm not waiting another day. It's good enough. 259 00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:08,000 And it was like one dash mark was out of place. 260 00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:11,000 And therefore the solar arrays wouldn't go into place. 261 00:14:11,000 --> 00:14:13,000 Oh, that's hilarious. I love that. 262 00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:17,000 Now Phobos 2 is where the real stories come out of. 263 00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:22,000 So Phobos 2 was the second of the two missions launched again on July 12th, 1988. 264 00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:27,000 And it actually got to Mars and it entered orbit on January 29th, 1989. 265 00:14:27,000 --> 00:14:31,000 It operated nominally throughout its course and Mars orbital insertion, 266 00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:36,000 gathering data on the sun, interplanetary medium, Mars and Phobos. 267 00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:39,000 Phobos 2 investigated Mars' surface and atmosphere 268 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:45,000 and returned 37 images from its time up there with a resolution of up to 40 meters, which was huge. 269 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:51,000 Shortly before its final phase, during which the spacecraft was to approach within 50 meters of Phobos 270 00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:55,000 and release two landers, which were going to get data back from Phobos. 271 00:14:55,000 --> 00:14:59,000 But at this time, when it was getting close, they lose contact with it. 272 00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:06,000 The mission ends when the spacecraft signal failed to be successfully reacquired on March 27th, 1989. 273 00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:11,000 A few days before that, it sends back all the photos and they just lose contact with it before it can do its final big thing. 274 00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:16,000 With the photos that come back, rumors start to kind of come out about what happened to Phobos 2. 275 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:23,000 And the rumors are that it was attacked by a UFO as it got close to Phobos. 276 00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:31,000 And evidence of it is that the last photo that was received from Phobos has a white cylindrical object in it 277 00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:36,000 that people believe looks a lot similar to a Tic-Tac UFO that we see all the time on Earth. 278 00:15:36,000 --> 00:15:37,000 Oh, there it is. 279 00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:39,000 Yeah. And then there's also a photo. 280 00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:43,000 One of the last photos it took or so is said is of the Mars surface. 281 00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:46,000 And there's a shadow being cast down there as well. 282 00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:52,000 The shadow is cylindrical in shape and elongated, and therefore it is said to be a UFO's shadow. 283 00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:54,000 There it is as well. Quite easy to find. 284 00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:56,000 Yes, they're actually very common photos. 285 00:15:56,000 --> 00:16:00,000 Actually harder to find are the 35 other photos that it sent back. 286 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:04,000 I don't want to see those anyway. 287 00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:10,000 Yeah, fair enough. And that's, I think, what most people say in the UFO community. 288 00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:17,000 So this rumor starts to go around and it's uncontested for well over a decade as it was behind the Iron Curtain. 289 00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:23,000 And then once it kind of fell apart, this was kind of left in the wayside to everything else going on in Russia. 290 00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:28,000 Well over a decade after this happened, Phobos 2's information was released to the public. 291 00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:33,000 And it turns out it's much more mundane than a UFO took out this probe. 292 00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:37,000 There were way more photos. Like I said, there's 34 that nobody talks about. 293 00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:42,000 And the one that purports to show a UFO in it, Chelsea, the one with the cylindrical white Tic-Tac one, 294 00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:48,000 pretty much all of the photos suffer from a bit of an overexposure and have a white line streak through them. 295 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:49,000 Oh, all of them do? 296 00:16:49,000 --> 00:16:53,000 And just basically, yes, but they basically go through the whole photo. 297 00:16:53,000 --> 00:17:01,000 So if you're looking at them all together, it's more likely than not that it's the exact same residue from overexposure that that one suffers from. 298 00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:10,000 And basically, if you blind up the photos, that white streak that is in all the photos for overexposure is in the exact spot that that cylindrical UFO is in. 299 00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:12,000 I don't like that. 300 00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:13,000 Yeah. 301 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:15,000 But I can accept it, I guess. 302 00:17:15,000 --> 00:17:20,000 Yeah. And then the shadow cast by the UFO was likely just an elongated exposure. 303 00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:24,000 And it's the shadow of Phobos on the planet Mars. 304 00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:29,000 It's just, you know, it didn't take a short photo, so it kind of elongated the shadow. 305 00:17:29,000 --> 00:17:31,000 So those are the explanations for those two photos. 306 00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:33,000 Okay. Do we accept them? 307 00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:34,000 I accept those answers. 308 00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:40,000 There's obviously people out there who do not, and we're going to talk about that in a bit about what's actually going on up there. 309 00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:44,000 And finally, it turns out that there was an onboard computer malfunction. 310 00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:53,000 Basically, whenever the probe would go onto a dark side of the planet or the moon, it would shut itself down and then have to restart itself because it needs to conserve power. 311 00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:54,000 It's solar powered. 312 00:17:54,000 --> 00:17:57,000 So when it goes into the dark part, it would shut itself down. 313 00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:00,000 Once it got onto the light side, it would turn itself back on. 314 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:10,000 They did a software update, and basically what happened at the software update is when it turned itself off, there was a glitch in the software that stopped it from turning itself back on. 315 00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:12,000 And that's how they lost connection with the probe. 316 00:18:12,000 --> 00:18:18,000 Simple enough, especially, you know, I'm not great with technology when it's in front of me, let alone several million miles away. 317 00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:20,000 Sure. That would be really bad. 318 00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:21,000 That would be really hard. 319 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:22,000 Yeah. 320 00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:25,000 But that's not the only time that Russia's attempted to go to Phobos. 321 00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:27,000 In fact, they tried much more recently. 322 00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:30,000 In fact, in November of 2011, they launched another probe. 323 00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:35,000 It was going to orbit Earth to get a gravitational slingshot to take itself to Mars. 324 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:41,000 However, it lasted two months and then plummeted back into Earth's atmosphere on January 15th of 2012. 325 00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:43,000 Basically, they screwed up their calculations. 326 00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:44,000 Sounds like it. 327 00:18:44,000 --> 00:18:49,000 Basically, every time somebody tries to go to Phobos, apparently things go wrong. 328 00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:54,000 However, it appears that basically only Russia's ever tried to send things to Phobos from at least everything I looked into. 329 00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:57,000 I wonder why they chose Phobos of all places. 330 00:18:57,000 --> 00:18:58,000 That's a good question. 331 00:18:58,000 --> 00:19:01,000 I do think there are some mysteries about it. 332 00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:07,000 And particularly with how close it is to Mars, it seems like it's more worthwhile to just go to Mars. 333 00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:09,000 Yeah. And they've made three attempts. 334 00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:12,000 They made three attempts and they've all failed miserably. 335 00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:15,000 Well, somewhat miserably in one attempt. 336 00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:23,000 The probe that was sent in 2011 cost $165 million and it broke apart over the Pacific Ocean, allegedly. 337 00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:25,000 Mostly because Russia wouldn't share the data. 338 00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:32,000 So everybody had to assume what happened with it because you have to be able to find it and know where it is to kind of calculate everything that happens. 339 00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:33,000 Yeah. 340 00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:37,000 And then also Russia keeps harping on it's not their fault. 341 00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:44,000 It's actually the US or it was shot down by a UFO in space is also a very common answer as to what Russia is using. 342 00:19:44,000 --> 00:19:46,000 No, I've heard it from conspiracists. 343 00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:54,000 However, Russia has said that it was interference from the harp solar array that actually destroyed it. 344 00:19:54,000 --> 00:19:55,000 That's hilarious. 345 00:19:55,000 --> 00:19:57,000 I would also love if they said it was UFOs. 346 00:19:57,000 --> 00:19:58,000 I don't know. 347 00:19:58,000 --> 00:19:59,000 UFOs. 348 00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:04,000 I mean, if something did take it down, technically it would be unidentified and at least floating. 349 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:06,000 True. 350 00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:13,000 And it was designed to go to Mars and the moon Phobos and collect soil samples and return to Earth in 2014, which never happened. 351 00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:16,000 So we're all for three right now on visiting Phobos. 352 00:20:16,000 --> 00:20:20,000 Well, Russia is Russia is but as a planet, we're all for three. 353 00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:21,000 Okay. 354 00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:22,000 I accept that too. 355 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:28,000 Russia and the planet, which so far it doesn't outside of that monolith, which I guess is kind of weird. 356 00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:31,000 It is a fairly big rock that NASA fully admits is there. 357 00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:33,000 They are the ones that found it. 358 00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:34,000 There's a weird rock. 359 00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:35,000 There's a weird rock on it. 360 00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:37,000 That's basically the controversy. 361 00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:41,000 But let's look at one David Wilcox writing on the subject. 362 00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:43,000 Oh, good. 363 00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:44,000 And don't worry. 364 00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:50,000 He is not the only character that you guys have grown to known through our episodes that will come up in just these next few paragraphs. 365 00:20:50,000 --> 00:20:53,000 And right off the bat, we start with a huge flex. 366 00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:56,000 This comes right from his blog, Divine Cosmos. 367 00:20:56,000 --> 00:20:57,000 Oh, God. 368 00:20:57,000 --> 00:20:59,000 And it's about Mars and Phobos. 369 00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:01,000 I took his halfway through a blog article. 370 00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:09,000 The entire article is entitled, Is ESA planning to announce Phobos is an ET base by David Wilcox, April 17th, 2010. 371 00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:12,000 And spoiler alert, they did. 372 00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:13,000 Yes. 373 00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:15,000 Does everyone remember when that happened? 374 00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:19,000 Because everybody remembers the last 13 years at some point where they announced it. 375 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:21,000 Okay, let's hear it. 376 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:26,000 Okay, let's Chelsea, find some way to hold your eyes from rolling too far back in your head. 377 00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:28,000 Because this is how this starts. 378 00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:30,000 I'll have to touch them, though. 379 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:36,000 I have the benefit of Hoagland's home telephone number and a rapport where we can talk whenever I can spare the time for it. 380 00:21:36,000 --> 00:21:43,000 After email started pouring in about this most recent news, I dropped everything on the book for three hours and spoke to him directly. 381 00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:48,000 This information is so ridiculously time sensitive that I have yanked myself away from my urgent deadline. 382 00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:51,000 Keep you in the loop about what is now happening in real time. 383 00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:56,000 And I skipped because I like it way more as this is how we get to the point. 384 00:21:56,000 --> 00:22:02,000 Rather than quoting from part one and part two of the updates on Richard's site, there's hyperlinks there for part one and part two. 385 00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:03,000 I've got news for you. 386 00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:05,000 They don't exist anymore. 387 00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:09,000 Because Richard Hoagland knows to take down when he's wrong. 388 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:19,000 Where he goes to great lengths to establish a scientific criteria for what he was told and presents evidence that it has been leaking in subtler forms for some time now. 389 00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:21,000 I'll share with you what he told me in his own words. 390 00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:26,000 Over 100 different European space agency scientists are working on the Phobos puzzle. 391 00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:35,000 One of their space probes zipped around it and bombarded it with high intensity energy fields, which took snapshots of the moon down to a millisecond of accuracy. 392 00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:38,000 This was done in three dimensional pattern around the entire moon. 393 00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:41,000 The effect is akin to ground penetrating radar. 394 00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:46,000 And the more snapshots you take, the more you can filter out the noise and see what the inside actually looks like. 395 00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:52,000 The scientists who spoke with Hoagland have already seen the complete three dimensional reconstruction of the interior Phobos. 396 00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:54,000 And this leads great into your episode, Chelsea. 397 00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:56,000 Guess what? It's hollow. 398 00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:57,000 Yes. 399 00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:07,000 And it absolutely, unquestionably, 100 and Godzilla percent artificial inside. 400 00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:10,000 Cubical rooms up to half a mile in diameter. 401 00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:17,000 Bulkheads, structures, habitable spaces, right angle geometry, and apparently even signs of an atmosphere. 402 00:23:17,000 --> 00:23:20,000 Though we are not clear as to how they know that. 403 00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:24,000 And then this is just a quote. I don't know what he's quoting, but he's quoting it. 404 00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:36,000 In describing the internal geometric structure on this moon, as revealed by Marsis, our European ESA contact repeatedly emphasized that several of these interior Phobos compartments also appear to still be holding some kind of atmosphere. 405 00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:44,000 Our source repeated this several times, raising all kinds of fascinating questions regarding how the radar could, in fact, determine this. 406 00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:51,000 That some of the vast rooms inside Phobos, remember from a quarter to a half mile in diameter, were still maintaining an internal pressure. 407 00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:57,000 So that's the big news. He had to take a break, call Richard Hoagland, because, of course, David Wilcox, the busy one, who can't take time out of his day. 408 00:23:57,000 --> 00:23:58,000 Yeah. 409 00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:03,000 When Richard's just like, hey, you know, I'm just a lonely guy. Like, just call me whatever. I'm here to chat. 410 00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:07,000 I love that both of them made an appearance on this episode. 411 00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:11,000 So what do we do with it? And this is still this is still part of his blog post. 412 00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:17,000 According to scientists who spoke with Hoagland, it has already been decided that this is going to be announced to the public. 413 00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:24,000 For obvious reasons, he was not told when this would happen, but it seemed very clear that it was intended to be some time this year. 414 00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:29,000 It may also have been planned to arrive significantly sooner rather than later. 415 00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:36,000 Again, the minute you make a prediction or try to make these plans actually happen, you've changed the future for very tangible reasons. 416 00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,000 The wrong people find out about it. 417 00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:45,000 It is also not clear whether the folks behind the ESA hope that we will help pave the way for their announcement by talking about it first. 418 00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:55,000 The contact made with Hoagland seemed to be intentional, and by extension, they knew it would percolate to many others, including myself, as one of his chief associates. 419 00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:02,000 And now we have Buzz Aldrin setting the stage for such an announcement. 420 00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:11,000 In his C-SPAN announcement, as well as on Dancing with the Stars, John Glenn's announcement on Frazier seemed to be the results of an initiative that was aborted at the time. 421 00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:16,000 But this is not over. What's the connection between ESA and Obama? It's simpler than you think. 422 00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:24,000 NASA's still under control of the Rockefeller faction, which fear to be opposing this every step of the way with deadly force. ESA, however, is not. 423 00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:29,000 And that's where I and their blog post was like eight times larger than that. I had to keep it brief. 424 00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:37,000 But you guys all remember when it was leaked to us through Frazier that it turns out there's a secret space program out of the Phobos moon, right? 425 00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:39,000 Yeah, that's where I know it from. 426 00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:46,000 I actually know the episode he's talking about and it's a joke that there's an astronaut that goes on the show and they end up not airing it. 427 00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:50,000 But he like discloses that he found aliens on the moon. Like it's a joke. 428 00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:52,000 Yeah, of course. 429 00:25:52,000 --> 00:26:03,000 Hoagland, although it wasn't in an article, I listened to him talking about this. He believes that that last attempt by Russia to send a probe to Phobos wasn't actually destroyed. 430 00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:08,000 They just said it was destroyed because they wanted to secretly look at the Phobos. 431 00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:15,000 So they lied about a UFO taking it out so that they could monitor what was going on at the spaceship that is Phobos. 432 00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:22,000 I mean, I'm not an expert on these kind of things, but I feel like lying about a UFO taking it out would be the worst. 433 00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:25,000 Yeah, the way he described it, it was hilarious. 434 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:29,000 Like, no, that's the easier way of explaining it. Like that's simple. 435 00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:31,000 Yeah, like duh. 436 00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:38,000 And I think we can safely say that we kind of are experts on this field. 437 00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:40,000 Well, amateur experts. So. 438 00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:42,000 Yeah, I would agree with that. 439 00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:49,000 Okay, that's that whole thing. We just had to include that there because we have to put our clout in there and the people that we chase clout from. 440 00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:53,000 Because, you know, at the end of the day, we just like to put names down there because we're important people. 441 00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:57,000 But it is kind of weird that there's only really been the three attempts to go there. 442 00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:02,000 There's plenty of probes that go to Mars, but nobody really goes to Phobos. So what's up with that? 443 00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:03,000 Yeah. 444 00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:08,000 Well, people have at least proposed going to Phobos in the past or are planning to go there in the near future. 445 00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:16,000 So one that actually really surprised me was the Canadian Space Agency, the CSA, actually intended to send a probe to Phobos. 446 00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:22,000 It was called the Prime Science Team. I'm going to read this in present and then I'm going to talk about it after that. 447 00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:31,000 The Prime Science Team has tentatively selected a specific and compelling feature on the surface of Phobos as the targeted landing site, popularly known as the Phobos Monolith. 448 00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:38,000 It is a building size object that appears to be a boulder exposed relatively recently in an otherwise desolate area of the asteroid like Moon. 449 00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:47,000 Scientists on the Prime Team are interested in such boulders as they might present unique opportunities to examine actual samples of Phobos bedrock up close. 450 00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:55,000 Prime Deputy Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Hildebrand believes that the Phobos Monolith could hold the answers to the Moon's composition in history. 451 00:27:55,000 --> 00:28:01,000 Quote, if we can get to that object, we likely don't need to go anywhere else, he advised the Science Team. 452 00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:09,000 So Canada did have a plan to send a probe there and actually visit the Monolith because it would be an open invitation to look at the under surface. 453 00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:19,000 That paragraphs from 2007 and I don't know if you've heard anything about the CSA, Chelsea, but I have not heard anything about this planned trip to Phobos or what it found. 454 00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:27,000 And I was looking really hard. I could find nothing on the CSA's web page about Phobos and really Google searches weren't doing anything for me. 455 00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:35,000 But I did find generally I hate this subreddit. The conspiracy subreddit is absolute garbage, absolute garbage. 456 00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:40,000 It is just 90 percent anti-vax and Trump supporters at this point. 457 00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:48,000 But in that one percent, I did find a posting from a Reddit user by the name of Roundeye007 made a post on our conspiracy. 458 00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:52,000 The Canadian Space Agency cancels and deletes all info about their mission to the Phobos Monolith. 459 00:28:52,000 --> 00:29:02,000 The Canadian Space Agency mysteriously canceled their planned mission to land a rover on Mars, Moon Phobos to examine the strange Monolith there and remove all traces of its existence. 460 00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:05,000 The Canadian Space Agency is very careful about how it spends its funding. 461 00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:10,000 In 2007, out of the 12 proposed missions, the team decided to land a rover on Phobos. 462 00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:12,000 The landing spot was to be the Monolith. 463 00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:18,000 This was the direction they would take the entire space agency over the next 20 years or so, starting with the feasibility study. 464 00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:28,000 Recently, the CSA wiped their entire database website and access to public material about the mission called the Phobos Reconnaissance and International Mars Exploration Mission Prime. 465 00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:31,000 Their initial analysis of Phobos was very interesting. 466 00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:35,000 The Monolith was the exact spot they would land and explore with their rover. 467 00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:39,000 It was featured on their published material as the centerpiece of their study. 468 00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:43,000 It was estimated by the agency to be in the shape of a triangular tower. 469 00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:46,000 The width of the structure is 90 meters, nearly 300 feet wide. 470 00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:47,000 That varies depending on who you talk to. 471 00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:51,000 The height was unknown, but roughly several hundred to several thousand feet tall. 472 00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:53,000 That's speculation in the conspiracy community. 473 00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:56,000 NASA has this official statement as to how big it is. 474 00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:57,000 We talked about it earlier. 475 00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:02,000 The surrounding area and the rest of the surface of Phobos does not have this characteristic type of formation. 476 00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:06,000 It's why this landing spot was deemed to be of great interest, like we said earlier. 477 00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:14,000 For reference, the largest block of stone ever quarried by humans on Earth is Balbac in Lebanon, and it is only 16 meters wide and 64 feet long. 478 00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:18,000 SETI was a partner in the project as well, a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. 479 00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,000 I couldn't confirm that, but that's what he says. 480 00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:23,000 And it must mean the CSA thought this would be relevant. 481 00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:28,000 I have reached out to numerous members of the disbanded project team to understand the reason this was canceled 482 00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:32,000 and about all the information removed from the CSA government of Canada website. 483 00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:35,000 Japan, China and Russia have an interest in Phobos as well. 484 00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:37,000 That was literally the only thing I could find about this project. 485 00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:38,000 That's super weird. 486 00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:40,000 It appears to have been scrapped. 487 00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:41,000 It is weird. 488 00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:42,000 Like... 489 00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:46,000 Like, to scrap it, you say like, look, we're not doing this anymore. 490 00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:49,000 Yeah, you don't pull everything from it like Richard Hoagland. 491 00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:53,000 I mean, David Wilcock even leaves his stuff on there. 492 00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:57,000 Out of everything, I actually found that the oddest thing I actually ended up looking at. 493 00:30:57,000 --> 00:30:59,000 Yeah, that's so true. 494 00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:03,000 But that's not the only proposed attempt to go to Phobos in the last little while. 495 00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:08,000 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, plans a Phobos sample return mission. 496 00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:13,000 So the spacecraft is scheduled to be launched in 2024, orbit both Phobos and Deimos, 497 00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:19,000 and retrieve about 10 grams of Phobos regolith back to Earth in 2029. 498 00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:24,000 The Phobos regolith represents a mixture of endogenous Phobos building blocks and exogenous materials 499 00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:28,000 that contain solar system projectiles and ejecta from Mars and Deimos. 500 00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:34,000 Under the conditions that the representatives of the sampling site is guaranteed by remote sensing observation 501 00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:39,000 in the geologic context of Phobos laboratory analysis, mineralogy, bulk composition, 502 00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:46,000 O-CRE-T-I-P, oxygen, chromium, titanium isotopic systematics, and radiometric dating. 503 00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:50,000 I'm probably going to edit that out because I don't know what that means, and I'm probably saying it wrong. 504 00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:54,000 Other return samples will provide crucial information about the moon's origins, 505 00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:58,000 capture of an asteroid, or in situ formation by a giant impact. 506 00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:05,000 So that one, at least in theory, is going to be going forward and we'll actually be bringing some of Phobos back. 507 00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:08,000 I feel like it won't. 508 00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:13,000 Based on everything that you've seen, yeah, it kind of feels like that's just kind of the way it goes. 509 00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:19,000 But Japan actually has a good track record of going places, grabbing material and coming back. 510 00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:25,000 They landed a probe on a comet several years ago now and actually took some of the comet and brought it back. 511 00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:30,000 I remember that. If anybody's going to be able to do this, I feel like Japan actually has the technology for it, 512 00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:33,000 as they've successfully done something similar in the past. 513 00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:36,000 We'll keep our eyes on that. Yeah, so let's keep our eyes on that. 514 00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:42,000 Phobos is very interesting, if nothing else, because it's the lovable potato that floats just above Mars. 515 00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:45,000 And that's where this episode leaves off. 516 00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:50,000 Maybe it is a hollow spacecraft that we were informed about in 2010. Who knows? 517 00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:56,000 I sure don't remember that. Remind me if I am correct or incorrect on this. 518 00:32:56,000 --> 00:33:01,000 Buzz Aldrin has gone publicly and said that it is a spacecraft, right? 519 00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:08,000 No, he has gone public saying that the monolith is super weird and is left there by the universe or God. 520 00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,000 And he's kind of alluded to it being an alien structure. 521 00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:16,000 Who is it that has said that it's an alien spacecraft? Someone famous? 522 00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:20,000 Richard Hoagland has said it. I don't know if you consider him famous, but Richard Hoagland has. 523 00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:23,000 Maybe I'm getting it, the two mixed up. 524 00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:27,000 Also, I think we do have to congratulate Buzz Aldrin on his new marriage. 525 00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:32,000 The 93-year-old Buzz Aldrin got married to a 63-year-old, 526 00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:40,000 which 30 years may seem like a big difference between two people, especially when I think she's a Russian asset, just like jokingly. 527 00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:45,000 But she meets the rule of half your age plus seven. So he's well within his range. 528 00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:49,000 When you're 93, you get quite the room. Yeah, you're right. 529 00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:52,000 I'm not that I doubted you, but you're right. It wasn't. 530 00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:54,000 That's just math. And we're doing math all the time. 531 00:33:54,000 --> 00:34:00,000 Of course we are. And Buzz Aldrin also didn't say that it was an alien spacecraft. So forget I said anything. 532 00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:07,000 He has kind of alluded to it. Yeah, but he said some crazy things. We need to do an episode on Buzz Aldrin. 533 00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:12,000 Yeah, we do. Chelsea, anything you want to add? I think that was all I needed to add at this point. 534 00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:20,000 But yeah, it's more mysterious than I thought it was. And why so many people are trying to go to Phobos is weird, I think, in my opinion. 535 00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:24,000 That's just me measuring everything on how far we are from Antarctica. 536 00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:32,000 Yeah, like the odd thing about it is that things just like we can't seem to actually get there, no matter where in the project it ends up. 537 00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:35,000 At some point, it just seems that, yeah, we can't get to Phobos. 538 00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:40,000 Yes, which will add to people, especially with conspiracy theories and David Wilcock. 539 00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:45,000 Yeah, and with David Wilcock, we need to get the hell out of here. I have been Taylor here with Chelsea. 540 00:34:45,000 --> 00:35:09,000 We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening and we will see you next week. Bye. 541 00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:27,000 And if you really want to communicate with us and give us ideas for new episodes or tell us that we're wrong and terrible, either way, please send us an email at journeytothefringe.gmail.com. 542 00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:46,000 For now, I'll see you in the next episode.