Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Six-seat spacecraft top of Russian space plan





Russia's new plan also states aims to send a robotic probe to Phobos, one of Mars's moons.


Remember the last time they tried that? As it approached, the probe photographed an unknown object and quickly became space-junk.

Click here for more Phobos weirdness courtesy Efrain Palermo.

3 comments:

W.M. Bear said...

I've seen this Phobos anomaly talked about elsewhere (Palermo gives the links). Nobody seems to have come up with a satisfactory "explanation" and my sense is it's pretty much just been "dropped." I'm glad he's revived it.

My own highly inexpert take: If the object casting the shadow were a pyramid or a natural "mound" of some kind, I seriously doubt that the shadow would take the shape of a long rectangle beveled at one end, even if it were being case into a "dip" in the landscape. On this basis alone (plus the fairly high sun angle, meaning that the object is not only narrow but TALL) I would assign an artificiality probability rating of roughly 0.8. Not a "slam dunk" but not a bad bet either. Planetary SETI lives!

Mac said...

WMB--

Have you seen Chris Joseph's shape-from-shading rendering?

Whatever it is appears pyramidal...

W.M. Bear said...

Have you seen Chris Joseph's shape-from-shading rendering?

Yes, I have and I'm still not convinced. It strikes me as one of those "mathematical arguments" that sounds (and looks) good in theory but doesn't quite tally with reality. If you look at an enlarged version of the actual Phobos object plus the shadow, it just doesn't LOOK like a pyramid (to me anyway) -- neither the object itself NOR its shadow. What it looks like (again, to my admittedly inexpert eyes) is something like a pre-9/11 World Trade Center tower. Palermo is a bit more open-minded at this point but seems inclined towards a "monolith" type shape.