Mystery of The Phobos Monolith

The Phobos Monolith appears to be a large boulder on the surface of Mars's moon Phobos, variously described as a bright object near Stickney crater with building-sized or 90m tall. It stands in a desolate, featureless region of Phobos, which probably makes the monolith seem even more impressive. It was discovered by Efrain Palermo, who did extensive surveys of Martian probe imagery, and later confirmed by Lan Fleming, an imaging sub-contractor at NASA Johnson Space Center. It was snapped from 165 miles away using a special high resolution camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Phobos is one of two tiny moons orbiting Mars, the other being Deimos. It is not really clear how the monolith got there.

The original image, taken last July 2009, was published again on August 2009 on the University of Arizona's HiRISE website on the 'spotlight' page which seems to have led to the renewed interest.

'Is it possible that there used to be an ancient civilization on Mars?' former Montreal radio presenter David Tyler asked on his blog.

Three images of the 'monolith' (close, closer, closest) as they appeared on the website Lunar Explorer Italia

After being published on the website Lunar Explorer Italia, it set tongues wagging with space buffs questioning whether there was once life on the Red Planet.

Fuel was added to the flames after Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, alluded to a similar monolith detected on Mars' moon Phobos.

Speaking on a U.S. cable television channel last week he said: 'We should visit the moons of Mars.

'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 about that they are going to say, "Who put that there? Who put that there?" Well the universe put it there, or if you choose God put it there.'

However, the scientific community does not see such monoliths as evidence of advanced alien civilisations. The Martian monolith is almost certainly no more than a roughly straight-edged chunk of rock that tumbled down from a nearby cliff. Yisrael Spinoza, a spokesman for the HiRISE department of the university's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, gave Mail Online the original image so readers can make up their own minds. He said: 'It would be unwise to refer to it as a "monolith" or "structure" because that implies something artificial, like it was put there by someone for example. 'In reality it's more likely that this boulder has been created by breaking away from the bedrock to create a rectangular-shaped feature.'

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1204254/Has-mystery-Mars-Monolith-solved.html

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_monolith

Pic Source:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/08/04/article-1204254-05F2E104000005DC-903_634x264_popup.jpg