Mysterious Mars moon ‘monolith’ worth examining, physicist says
(NewsNation) — The exciting prospect of examining a mysterious monolith on the surface Anthem The Moon Phobos was proposed earlier this century but was never successful; This disappointed theoretical physicist Maaneli “Max” Derakhshani.
The 300-meter anomaly, which provides complete relief around the Moon, has attracted the attention of observers for years. Many people have compared this object to the iconic “monolith” from the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In that 1968 movie, it was a sort of alarm mechanism that warned aliens on Earth’s moon about humanity’s progress.
NASA has classified the Phobos monolith as follows: rock. But Derakhshani notes that the space agency and the SETI Institute, a private organization that searches for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe, supported an effort in the early 2000s to send a robotic lander to the unusual feature of Phobos to retrieve a physical sample for analysis.
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Derakhshani recently told “Reality Check with Ross Coulthart” that supporters at the time tried to downplay the potential mission, saying, “Oh, it’s all a geological exercise.”
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Detail of a monolith-shaped object on Mars’ moon Phobos. (NASA)
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Phobos Phobos is one of the moons of the planet Mars and has a heavily cratered surface. Artist NASA. (Photo: Heritage Space/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
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2001 A Space Odyssey Panoramic shot of astronauts on the lunar surface looking into the hangar containing the monolith, in a scene from the classic Stanley Kubrick 1968 science fiction film. (Photo: Screen Archives/Getty Images)
“But I don’t think SETI would be interested in this, and I don’t think they would have picked this obviously geologically anomalous object on Phobos if there wasn’t a greater interest beyond geology,” he added.
Legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin was also intrigued by the monolith on Phobos and approved the proposal.
“When people found out, they said, ‘Who put that there?'” Aldrin said. “They will say,” he said. C-SPANISH In 2009. “Well, the universe put it there; God put it there, if you will.”
The Phobos mission was not funded.
“This is still just a proposal,” Derakhshani said.
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