Jonathan Swift and the Martian Moons

by Psychic-Magic contributor Renji

Jonathan Swift is best known as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, wherein Lemuel Gulliver meets many astonishing people and has extraordinary adventures. The story is actually a satire on English/Spanish relations.

What many people fail to note is Swift’s remarkable knowledge of Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars. The truly amazing fact is that Swift’s book was written in 1726 and the Martian moons weren’t discovered until 1877—151 years later. Even more amazing is how accurately Swift described the moons and their orbits. He notes there are “two lesser stars or satellites, which revolve about Mars. The innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of its diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half.” In fact, the actual orbital time of inner moon Phobos is 7 hours and 39 minutes. The orbital time of outer moon Deimos is 30 hours and 14 minutes. Not exactly fitting Swift’s numbers, but very, very close. Ten hours versus 7 hours and 39 minutes; 21.5 hours versus 30 hours 14 minutes.

If Swift never saw the moons, how could he describe them so accurately? One theory is that he did it mathematically. Johannes Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion, which predicted where things might be in space. But Kepler never postulated that Mars had moons, nor what their orbits might be. How astute was Swift in the field of mathematics?

Another anomaly regarding the Martian moons is that the revolution period of Phobos is shorter than the planet it circles. Because of that, if you stood on the Martian surface, Phobos would rise in the west and be visible for around four hours before setting in the east.

The conspiracy theorists at Psychic-Magic love this next bit. Joseph Shklovsky, a Soviet astronomer, studied Mars for years and postulated that Phobos could be a hollow asteroid. How does an asteroid become hollow? It could be a natural phenomenon, of course, but what if it was intentionally hollowed out from the inside? What if it’s a space station? That might explain why, in the early 1990s, the transmitter on the Mars Orbiter inexplicably switched off as it prepared to orbit the planet. Maybe the aliens switched it off to keep from being discovered.

Far fetched? Probably. But consider this. A Japanese astronomer named Miyamoto pointed out that the craters on Phobos look more like “blow holes” than impact craters caused by being pelted by space debris. In other words, like a volcano, molten rock blew out from the moon and cooled on its surface. Or was it, in some manner, blown out intentionally to hollow out the satellite? It makes me wonder what might be inside.