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Buzz Aldrin & The Phobos Monolith

Bigfoot73

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Buzz Aldrin recently appeared on a channel called C-SPAN extolling the virtues of further space exploration, and one of the objectives he proposed was investigating a monolith on Phobos !!! When the presenter asked him who put it there he replied "the Universe, God"... well he could hardly come out with"aliens", could he?
He's already revealed the story of the green cone-shaped object that followed apollo 11 and other Moon missions, with supporting footage.Now he comes out with a guarded declaration that there is proof of intelligent life elsewhere in the solar system! Is he doing this independently or is this drip-feeding disclosure?
Google will provide remarkable images, YouTube has the TV show.Thoughts anybody?
 
Yea I saw it, here is my attempt at reconstructing what it might look like. Please dont slag my 3d skills, I am a novice lol. That's what it sort of looks like in shape, but I think it is prob. actually a pointy boulder of ordinary proportions, illuminated with a very low angle of light. The interesting thing is not the apparent monolith shape, but the fact that it is very shiny compared with any of the other boulders or craters etc. Based on the original image dimensions it looks like it has a width of about 35m and a height of about 140m, similar to the height of the great pyramid. :shock: Maybe it is a solid lump of nickel-iron?

3769078105_f99a390590.jpg


  • What it looks like
3769957936_c786808fdb.jpg
 
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The problem I have with it is that it looks natural rather than fashioned by hands of an intelligent architect. I see the band of shiny material on the top but that reminds me of a layer of ice or rock as viewed in archeological digs. A strata of ice as it were.

Aldrin probably owes the US Government a favour or two, heck they changed is life for the better. Mayhaps "Buzz" is setting the bar for the need of a large "budget" to go check out the monolith on Phobos.

Wasn't the warning/message from the monolith in 2010 - "All these worlds I give to you except Phobos!"....hang on... it was Europa! NUTZ.

mooks out
 
More here (includes an 'animated' zoom-in to the image)
http://palermoproject.com/Mars_Anomalie ... lies1.html

and includes this link to the Mars Global Surveyor original data:
http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/html/sp2551/sp255103.html

where the relevent portion is
http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/ ... 55103h.jpg

The sun angle is not that low (but note the warning on the first usgs page:
NOTE: THE BROWSE (JPEG) IMAGES RENDERED ON THIS WEB SITE ARE MEANT SOLELY TO FACILITATE THE SELECTION OF RAW MOC IMAGING PRODUCTS FOR DOWNLOAD AND USE BY THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY. THE BROWSE AND JPEG IMAGES ARE NEITHER RADIOMETRICALLY NOR GEOMETRICALLY ACCURATE AND SHOULD NEVER BE USED FOR QUANTITATIVE OR INTERPRETATIVE PURPOSES.).

Modelling by Efrain Palermo:
http://palermoproject.com/Mars_Anomalie ... lies2.html

Yep, I agree with Buzz - this thing is worth a closer look!
 
Azuredoor:- nice graphics! As for it being an ordinary rock, there aren't any ordinary rocks on Phobos - it is just a rock itself, a captured asteroid with no geological processes.
Drumming up support for a budget increase by suggesting investigation of alien structures would be an unlikely course of action for NASA, but a sure-fire winner I would have thought!
the russians have already sent 2 probes to Phobos, both of which allegedly malfunctioned at the last minute. Conspiracists explain this as being a smokescreen i.e. the probes got there OK but their findings are being kept secret.Strange how a 15-mile rock should be considered worth 2 probes and another planned when the Russian space programme rarely ventures outside Earth orbit!
 
There's no need to interpret Aldrin's words as advocating any particular interpretation of the source of the monolith - in fact the "the Universe put it there" line is exactly the sort of thing science geeks (and the footage is definitely of a man geeking out in a big way, more power to him) say when they're excited to try to get across the way the natural world keeps throwing you curves. The big message here is: "We need to find ways to support the space program economically because the solar system is SO FREAKING COOL!"

Which is pretty much his theme. He wants a Mars mission and he's wanted it for years. He's telling people about the monolith because this is the sort of thing that they need to get curious about in order to get behind an effective space exploration - and because he himself is curious about it. Think how agonizing it must be to be him - to have gotten as far as the moon and been forced to STOP. And now he knows even if we implement the Mars mission of his dreams today, he won't get to go there. But he wants it, for humanity, for science, for the sheer Wow of it all.

That's plenty for him to mean without stuffing more complex meanings into him.
 
My view of his meaning is shaped by his pronouncements about the green cone-shaped UFO which followed the Apollo missions. He didn't say anything about it's occupants or origins but he didn't have to, there's only humans and aliens to choose between.
I don't think he thinks the Phobos monolith is an interesting accident of geology, or that the green cone was steered by God or the Universe. He's letting the evidence speak for itself.
 
Bigfoot73 said:
My view of his meaning is shaped by his pronouncements about the green cone-shaped UFO which followed the Apollo missions.,.
Any sources for that? We'd all heard rumours for years, but I hadn't heard Buzz come out and say it.
 
PeniG said:
There's no need to interpret Aldrin's words as advocating any particular interpretation of the source of the monolith - in fact the "the Universe put it there" line is exactly the sort of thing science geeks (and the footage is definitely of a man geeking out in a big way, more power to him) say when they're excited to try to get across the way the natural world keeps throwing you curves. The big message here is: "We need to find ways to support the space program economically because the solar system is SO FREAKING COOL!"

I agree that is what he actually said, and I am absolutely in agreement with him that even if an alien didnt put it there, it's still worth checking out. I think a robotic mission is in the pipeline led by Canadians scientists??

As someone who is always looking for evidence of little grey men, I think setting up a monolith is something they might do. Look at man's first farmers in the Neolithic, they had a penchant for setting up these kind (well mini ones compared with this thing) of huge stones for no apparent reason other than to suggest, we are big, we can set up huge stones as if gravity was no obstacle!

Anyway I think aliens is a fair hook to use in order to get people interested in space exploration, but I dont think going to mars would actually be the best idea. What we need is a moon base that is well established first, then going to mars will be much, much easier. We can also use the moon for all our 'dirty' work. Nuclear stuff, research on infectious diseases, maybe even power generation etc. without worrying about contamination!
 
I thought it was established that it was one of the panels that protected the LEM during launch, following a similar trajectory.

Astrobiology
 
Isn't erecting of stone structures normally associated with mythology and religious beliefs?
For aliens to have put it there then the moon would most likely have some kind of spiritual signifigance for them. Although having said that it could quite easily be a beacon of some kind. I'm sure rock would be just as viable a housing for scientific equipment as anything else, especially if you wanted to camoflage it.

I'll be honest and say that to me it just looks like a bump in the surface, but I can still wonder about other possibilities.
 
it looks to me like a rock which has "slid" across the surface. the shadow being formed across the ditch.
 
Stuneville- I can't remember the name of the documentary, but the green cone extract is on YouTube. The incident was portrayed in a recently screened historical film, during the 40th anniversary.
Timble 2 : I was unaware of this explanation.The Apollo 11 crew thought it might be the last stage of the Saturn to be jettisoned but that was too far away.Other Apollo missions were followed too.
I concede that Buzz may be genuinely open- minded about the source of the cones and the monolith.I doubt that he follows ufology, disclosure rumours or 'exopolitics'.When the Apollo 11 crew got back and told NASA about the cone they were urged to keep quiet for fear of ridicule and it seems reasonable that he should be sensitive about this even now.
 
This looks like nothing more than a large boulder in the ground? Seems like people are inventing geometry to make it fit what they believe or want it to be. Seem to me to be standard boulder rock shape. Large I agree, but the planet seems strun with them.

With the link kindly provided by rynner, you can see that the following images below the main image containing the Monolith, there are man similar shapes casting very similar shadows? especially in the third image down from the monolith pic.

It's just a bolder!

Fantastic Image of Phobos from Wikpedia
 
Waylander28 said:
It's just a bolder!
Bold of you to say so! ;)

But I don't think so. Buzz Aldrin would be very familiar with the techniques of interpreting these kind of images, and if he says it's a monolith then it's a monolith! 8)

(Unless some equivalent authority is prepared to say otherwise.)
 
Rynner's link led to Efrain Palerno's site, which is one of the sites that inspired me to start the thread! Some pics make it look pyramidal, others columnar.I still don't make out any boulders in any of the pics.
This is a very artificial - looking boulder. So think Buzz Aldrin and the Russian space agency.And everyone else
 
Granted, Aldrin has a new book out, and maybe he is just flogging it. But I think that when an extraordinary person makes an extraordinary claim, the claim deserves thorough examination.

So here is what he said on C-Span July 22nd:

"There’s a monolith there – a very unusual structure on this little potato-shaped object that goes around Mars once every seven hours. When people find out they will say, “who put that there? who put that there?” Well, the universe put it there. If you choose, God put it there."

But then on July 26th aboard the USS Hornet, he said this:

"The Hornet, now a hulking museum anchored on Alameda Point, is the carrier that fished the Apollo 11 astronauts from the Pacific after they splashed down on July 23, 1969. For Aldrin, returning to commemorate the 40th anniversary of that historic mission was a time to promote the restoration of American space leadership.

It was also a chance to crack a bunch of jokes.

"I'm gonna reveal a secret to you," he told reporters. "There's a monolith on (Mars' moon) Phobos. It's about 15 meters high. And aliens put it there before they came to Egypt to build the pyramids." Like a good comic, Aldrin, 79, kept a straight face - until they laughed."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 18V6J7.DTL

I don't know what to make of the "pyramids" part. I'd love to see a video of this talk to see if it looked like he was joking. I'd hate to think this great man is showing his age, but everyone does eventually. Maybe it's just that simple.

I wonder if he or other astronauts will be making additional statements? Worth watching for...
 
:) Damnit!!! I gave the wrong link,

Rynners link again! scroll down to the pics, the one showing the monolith is the seventh picture down. click to view a bigger image.

two images down there is another group of objects in the shaded area to the top left of the picture.

Below that picture, at the center top near the crater is another, smaller but casting similar shadow, and bottom left of the picture is another larger almost the same size of the original monolith in qeustion and casting a shadow very long and onto the next image, which happens to contain a great many BOULDER (;)) type bodys.

However from the original site I inadvertainly posted, the artists rendering is what I truly imagine is the closest idea of its true form.
 
Waylander28 said:
Rynners link again![/url] scroll down to the pics, the one showing the monolith is the seventh picture down. click to view a bigger image.

two images down there is another group of objects in the shaded area to the top left of the picture.

Below that picture, at the center top near the crater is another, smaller but casting similar shadow, and bottom left of the picture is another larger almost the same size of the original monolith in qeustion and casting a shadow very long and onto the next image, which happens to contain a great many BOULDER (;)) type bodys.
There is a big difference in sun angle between the position of Aldrin's monolith and the 'others' further down - this is a consequence of the very small size of Phobos. The 'others' may well be boulders with long shadows, but Aldrin's isn't - the sun angle is too high.
 
This is an interesting object, but no astronaut has seen it directly, so there is no reason to take an astronaut's word about it. Aldrin's not an expert in interpreting asteroid photos either. If anything I'd guess Aldrin's trying to stir up interest in a possible mission to Mars with humans on board; he's written about Mars missions before, and seems to be a bit of an enthusiast for the idea.

As for the object, it's probably a boulder, ejected at low velocity from Phobos itself during an earlier impact.

The gravity of Phobos is a fantastically low 0.0086 g, dropping to 0.0019 g at the equator because of rotation effects. In such a gravity field a boulder massing one tonne could weigh less than two kilograms; a boulder ejected at low velocity could wedge itself into the regolith at a strange angle and this tiny gravity would be insufficient to topple it.
 
Bigfoot73 said:
Stuneville- I can't remember the name of the documentary, but the green cone extract is on YouTube.
That utterly shameful interview is on Youtube; you can see that Aldrin is just about to explain that it was infact one of the S IV-B panels (which he has stated many times since) but the host cut to the advertisements. When they came back Aldrin was given no more than about two seconds to explain this sighting.

To recap; Aldrin knows very well that this object was a panel from the Saturn IV-B booster, and has said so on many occasions. But his explanation was edited out deliberately.
 
eburacum said:
This is an interesting object, but no astronaut has seen it directly, so there is no reason to take an astronaut's word about it. Aldrin's not an expert in interpreting asteroid photos either.
The lunar landing sites were chosen on the basis of interpreting detailed photographs of the topography of the moon. The Apollo 11 landing site was supposed to be quite smooth, but for other reasons they found themselves coming down in a crater field - luckily they escaped disaster by the skin of their teeth.

As part of that first crew, you can bet Aldrin knew all about photos of the lunar surface, including sun angle and shadow lengths. After all, he and Armstrong were gambling with their lives, and everything they knew about their mission could prove crucial. Tha Apollo astronauts were 'the right stuff', highly trained and intelligent. And if a man is prepared to put his life on the line, trusting to what he knows, then as far as I'm concerned, that man is an expert!

The only difference between the moon and Phobos is size, and fairly straightforward maths can deduce various dimensions from sun angle and shadow lengths. Apart from the other Apollo astronauts, I can't think of anyone who would have more technical knowledge, backed up by experience and gut feeling, than Aldrin.
 
rynner2 said:
And if a man is prepared to put his life on the line, trusting to what he knows, then as far as I'm concerned, that man is an expert!

Apologies Ryn but I have to disagree with that. Plenty of men have put their lives on the line, knowing what they know and ended up being awarded Darwin Awards.

If you'd allow me to add the words and survived then I'd agree with you.

Aldrin did survive and therefore has great knowledge of the job he does. Landing on the moon but Phobos IMHO (distance, size, the fact we just don't have all the knowledge etc) would be a different job, same work space but a different job.

Meantime I still say the "monolith" is "au naturel" but everyone's broke and they need the dollars. 8)

mooks out
 
davidsankey.com/images/Kecks ... a-1965.jpg
Link is dead, as are the website and domain name. No archived version found to explain the image referenced here in comparison with the Phobos monolith.


3778985874_c5a21c5ea9.jpg


reminds me of this
 
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Moooksta said:
Plenty of men have put their lives on the line, knowing what they know and ended up being awarded Darwin Awards.

If you'd allow me to add the words and survived then I'd agree with you.

Aldrin did survive and therefore has great knowledge of the job he does. Landing on the moon but Phobos IMHO (distance, size, the fact we just don't have all the knowledge etc) would be a different job, same work space but a different job.
At the moment, all we're talking about is interpreting photos, and I say Aldrin has the qualifications for that.

I can reinforce that opinion with my own gut feeling, because, although I'm not an astronaut, I have practised navigation at sea. After years of experience, I can get the information I need from a chart or a pilot book, sometimes just from a quick glance. My experience was built up from classroom knowledge plus practice in a wide variety of situations, so that it it becomes, in effect, instinctive, and it enabled me many times to safely visit places I'd barely heard of before, let alone been to! This internalising of knowledge is very familiar to experts in many other fields. Aldrin is one of a handful of men who walked on another world, in non-Earth gravity, so I'm happy to take what he says seriously. Especially as the object on Phobos does look like a tall monolith to me, and I've been looking at pictures from distant probes for many years now!

(Incidentally, actually landing on Phobos would be safer than landing on the moon because of the low gravity. To revert to my nautical analogy, it just needs the right charts and pilot books - the gravitation zephyrs of Phobos would be child's play compared to the the fresh breeze of the moon, or the gravitation gale we experience on Earth!)
 
Eburacum: I'm not sure the utterly shameful video is the one i saw, which was an extract from a documentary I watched in full when first broadcast. Aldrin tells, with Apollo/Houston dialogue played in support, how they asked Houston where S4 was, only to be told it was thousands of miles away and receding fast . The interview didn't look chopped around and he went on to assert that the thing followed other Apollo missions too.
How could a heat shield glow green and follow a course? Why has no one ever said " that's a heat shield, Buzz is getting old" before? Make of this what you will but it has been suggested that Aldrin was encouraged to recant by the Men In Black and their blood-drinking lizard puppetmasters.
How come he would get so worked up about a heat shield anyway? Wouldn't somebody have corrected him before then? you might have thought someone at NASA would recognise their own kit.
 
As for the boulder issue: if it's a boulder it's the biggest on Phobos by a long way, there aren't any others anywhere near as big. Other objects are far smaller and rounded.The column/pyramid does not fit the geological context. How does a 15 mile-by ten captured asteroid i.e. rock come up with the sort of geological processes that create boulders?
 
While I'm at it has anyone got any oh-so-well-researched wryly sceptical chillingly rational explanations for Iapetus, the Saturn moon that looks built?Put aside any misgivings you may have about Richard Hoagland and let the Cassini images speak for themselves.
This is an entire moon with no recognisable geological history at all. It's hard to find anything natural-looking anywhere on it. It's got an aspherical, faceted, geodesic profile for pity's sake! Hoagland runs the few orthodox geological explanations up the flagpole but they don't convincingly explain anything.
Iapetus will polarize opinion nicely.Gird your loins and check out www.enterprisemission.com or just Google Iapetus.
 
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