There is a huge 'monolith' on Phobos, one of Mars's moons

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160923-there-is-a-huge-monolith-on-phobos-one-of-marss-moons

by curtis • 9 years ago

76 23 9 years ago

kovrik• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_(Space_Odyssey)

tpeo• 9 years ago

This is a huge wake-up call for everyone here on Earth: if you still haven't either watched Kubrick's Odyssey or read the books, you're missing out.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 9 years ago

You can save a lot of time and get all the important bits of the story by watching this Lego adaptation https://youtu.be/Sz4aQ2YbN-E

LeoPanthera• 9 years ago

My recommended order is, watch the movie, read the book, then watch the movie again.

paulddraper• 9 years ago

According to the author's forward, the Apollo astronauts (yes, the book + movie are THAT old) considered reporting a large black monolith on the Moon.

"Sadly, greater wisdom prevailed" :P

icanhackit4• 9 years ago

tldr; With enough rocks thrown around, you'll get a few that look crafted.

mjevans• 9 years ago

This might be true, however it's probably still worth at least trying to get some (unmanned) telemetry to better measure the location so that we can evaluate hypothesis or determine if additional study is warranted.

icanhackit4• 9 years ago

it's probably still worth at least trying to get some (unmanned) telemetry

Of course. What I implied was that it wasn't worth losing sleep over, as these types of formations often do e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(region_of_Mars)

rflrob• 9 years ago

Not just thrown around though—you can get crafted looking things through natural geothermal processes (which probably are no longer happening on Phobos); columnar basalt is one of my favorite examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt#Columnar_basalt (If you live in California, Devils Postpile is worth a side trip from Yosemite).

johansch2• 9 years ago

tldr; with enough random keystrokes you'll get something resembling "tldr; With enough rocks thrown around, you'll get a few that look crafted."

icanhackit4• 9 years ago

The comment was to save anyone speculating, based on the title, that it might be a mysterious discovery. It's not - it's a remnant of billions of years of collisions and geological activity.

13of40• 9 years ago

Just look at all the places named "Castle Rock"...

gene-h• 9 years ago

And if it wasn't for some bad code and quality control, we could have a much better idea of what the monolith is[0]. Heck if the Fobos-Grunt mission was successful we could have up to 200 grams of phobos dirt back on Earth right now. This is such a large sample size, that demonstration of these techniques would arguably be an advance for asteroid mining.

But alas, space exploration is hard, so we can only hope that the Fobos-Grunt 2 mission happens.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobos-Grunt

marak830• 9 years ago

Thank you for that link, I hadn't read up about that before.

It's a shame how science never gets funded properly. Yet we have money for weapons. Sigh

andrewstuart• 9 years ago

Tardis? Coke vending machine?

Having had a closer look at the image, it looks like a ...... tall rock.

bitwize• 9 years ago

The Phobos Anomaly? We should keep a close eye on that thing, look out for cacodemon activity...

aquilax• 9 years ago

Who will be first to break it into microservices

ASalazarMX• 9 years ago

But only if we break it with the savage might of atomic power!

agumonkey• 9 years ago

Who else checked the date ?

There is a huge 'monolith' on Phobos, one of Mars's moons

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