1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:03,200
Speaker 1: Okay, what if everything you thought you knew about our

2
00:00:03,240 --> 00:00:06,599
solar system, you know, how planets formed, why they orbit

3
00:00:06,639 --> 00:00:10,240
where they do, even something like Mars. What if it

4
00:00:10,320 --> 00:00:16,120
was fundamentally incomplete. What if our seemingly calm, predictable cosmic

5
00:00:16,120 --> 00:00:21,879
neighborhood actually hides this history of well on unimaginable violence,

6
00:00:22,399 --> 00:00:25,600
scars literally etched into space for us to see if

7
00:00:26,719 --> 00:00:28,280
if only we dared to truly.

8
00:00:27,960 --> 00:00:29,800
Speaker 2: Look, that's a powerful way to put it.

9
00:00:30,519 --> 00:00:33,560
Speaker 1: Welcome deep divers. Today, we're taking a journey through some

10
00:00:33,719 --> 00:00:37,439
really fascinating and, let's be honest, pretty controversial theories that

11
00:00:37,560 --> 00:00:38,960
challenge mainstream astronomy.

12
00:00:39,039 --> 00:00:40,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, these ideas definitely push the boundaries.

13
00:00:40,920 --> 00:00:43,840
Speaker 1: We're going to untack some intriguing observations, look at some

14
00:00:43,960 --> 00:00:47,240
radical ideas from various sources, explore surprising facts, and maybe

15
00:00:47,280 --> 00:00:49,240
connect some dots you haven't seen put together before.

16
00:00:49,359 --> 00:00:51,759
Speaker 2: Our mission today is really to understand what these experts

17
00:00:51,799 --> 00:00:54,679
are proposing, why they think it matters, and what it

18
00:00:54,679 --> 00:00:58,359
could possibly mean for well, our place in the universe exactly.

19
00:00:58,359 --> 00:01:00,759
Speaker 1: So get ready, because we're diving deep into the anomalies.

20
00:01:01,119 --> 00:01:06,599
Planets spinning backwards, worlds tilted completely on their sides, mysterious asteroid.

21
00:01:06,200 --> 00:01:11,760
Speaker 2: Belts, and even some chilling evidence potentially of ancient cataclysmic

22
00:01:11,799 --> 00:01:14,319
events right next door on our closest neighbors.

23
00:01:14,640 --> 00:01:18,640
Speaker 1: It's going to be a thrilling, definitely thought provoking exploration

24
00:01:18,879 --> 00:01:21,519
of what some people might even call a broken solar system.

25
00:01:22,159 --> 00:01:23,920
So let's get started.

26
00:01:24,120 --> 00:01:24,599
Speaker 2: Let's do it.

27
00:01:24,879 --> 00:01:26,599
Speaker 1: You know, when you look up at the night sky,

28
00:01:26,760 --> 00:01:30,599
everything seems so orderly, doesn't it, Like at this cosmic ballet,

29
00:01:30,840 --> 00:01:33,640
all predictable orbits and steady rotations.

30
00:01:33,719 --> 00:01:36,040
Speaker 2: It has that appearance, certainly calm and measured.

31
00:01:36,239 --> 00:01:39,079
Speaker 1: But beneath that calm surface, our solar system is just

32
00:01:39,200 --> 00:01:42,599
full of these profound quirks, these oddities that seem to

33
00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:47,040
defy easy explanation. It's kind of like admiring a meticulously

34
00:01:47,120 --> 00:01:50,680
organized bookshelf only to realize half the books are upside

35
00:01:50,680 --> 00:01:52,799
down and maybe some shelves are completely missing.

36
00:01:53,159 --> 00:01:55,640
Speaker 2: That's a great analogy. It's a compelling observation, isn't it.

37
00:01:55,760 --> 00:01:59,280
While mainstream science often has sort of individual explanations for

38
00:01:59,359 --> 00:02:00,760
each peculiar.

39
00:02:00,519 --> 00:02:03,000
Speaker 1: Right, like this happened because of X, that happened because

40
00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:04,400
of why exactly.

41
00:02:04,560 --> 00:02:06,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, but when you start to connect them, they feel

42
00:02:06,959 --> 00:02:10,840
less like isolated anomalies and maybe more like consistent patterns,

43
00:02:11,240 --> 00:02:14,120
patterns that hint at something much large or something disruptive

44
00:02:14,319 --> 00:02:14,879
in our past.

45
00:02:14,960 --> 00:02:18,039
Speaker 1: Okay, let's take Venus, our so called sister planet, nearly

46
00:02:18,080 --> 00:02:21,280
identical to Earth and size. But the truly strange thing

47
00:02:21,319 --> 00:02:24,759
about Venus, something most people probably don't realize, is that

48
00:02:24,800 --> 00:02:26,439
it spins in the opposite.

49
00:02:25,960 --> 00:02:27,520
Speaker 2: Direction, completely backwards.

50
00:02:27,599 --> 00:02:31,199
Speaker 1: Yeah. While Earth and basically every other major planet in

51
00:02:31,240 --> 00:02:36,479
our system rotates counterclockwise on its axis, Venus spins clockwise.

52
00:02:37,680 --> 00:02:40,759
How does a planet that supposedly formed alongside its siblings

53
00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:44,759
end up rotating entirely backwards. It's not just a minor thing.

54
00:02:44,800 --> 00:02:46,520
It's a fundamental inversion.

55
00:02:46,159 --> 00:02:48,479
Speaker 2: It really is. And then you've got Urinus. Instead of

56
00:02:48,479 --> 00:02:50,319
spinning upright like a top, which is what we see

57
00:02:50,400 --> 00:02:50,919
with most.

58
00:02:50,759 --> 00:02:53,560
Speaker 1: Planets like Earth, Mars, Jupiter, right.

59
00:02:53,800 --> 00:02:56,719
Speaker 2: Urinus essentially rolls around the Sun like a ball. Its

60
00:02:56,759 --> 00:03:00,360
axial tilt is nearly ninety eight degrees. It's basically lying

61
00:03:00,400 --> 00:03:02,000
on its side, so its poles.

62
00:03:01,719 --> 00:03:03,080
Speaker 1: Are where the equator should be.

63
00:03:03,159 --> 00:03:07,919
Speaker 2: Almost pretty much, and consequently, its moons orbit vertically up

64
00:03:07,919 --> 00:03:10,159
and down relative to the plane of the Solar System.

65
00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:14,840
Following its bizarre rotation. This extreme tilt looks so unnatural,

66
00:03:15,240 --> 00:03:20,000
as if some incredibly powerful force literally knocked it completely over.

67
00:03:20,120 --> 00:03:25,599
Speaker 1: And farther out Neptune's orbit. It's unusually elliptical, right, much

68
00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:28,039
less circular than you'd expect from a world that formed

69
00:03:28,159 --> 00:03:29,039
nice and peacefully.

70
00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:31,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's also a position farther from the Sun

71
00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:34,599
than conventional models predict. It almost looks as if well,

72
00:03:34,680 --> 00:03:38,080
something shoved it out there into that wider, less stable path,

73
00:03:38,360 --> 00:03:41,080
maybe due to some huge gravitational disturbance.

74
00:03:41,280 --> 00:03:44,280
Speaker 1: Okay, and Pluto, I know, not a major planet anymore,

75
00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:45,680
but still part of the picture.

76
00:03:45,479 --> 00:03:47,039
Speaker 2: An important piece of the puzzle, definitely.

77
00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:51,080
Speaker 1: Its orbit is exceptionally weird now, highly tilted compared to

78
00:03:51,120 --> 00:03:54,120
the main plane, erratic, doesn't really fit comfortably with the

79
00:03:54,159 --> 00:03:56,879
other dwarf planets out in the Kuiper Belt. It behaves

80
00:03:56,919 --> 00:04:00,319
more like a like a cosmic refugee, maybe like a.

81
00:04:00,319 --> 00:04:03,400
Speaker 2: Moon that lost its original parent body perhaps and was

82
00:04:03,479 --> 00:04:08,560
left to wander into its current peculiar trajectory. That's one interpretation, certainly.

83
00:04:08,360 --> 00:04:12,080
Speaker 1: But maybe the most striking enigma of all is Mars.

84
00:04:12,680 --> 00:04:15,800
When you see images of it, it genuinely looks like

85
00:04:15,840 --> 00:04:18,600
two entirely different worlds, somehow stitched together.

86
00:04:18,720 --> 00:04:19,680
Speaker 2: The Martian dichotomy.

87
00:04:19,759 --> 00:04:24,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's stark. It's northern hemisphere is remarkably smooth, vast

88
00:04:24,240 --> 00:04:28,160
plains that really look like ancient, dried up ocean beds,

89
00:04:28,519 --> 00:04:29,759
almost peaceful looking.

90
00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:34,480
Speaker 2: But then the Southern hemisphere is just a stark contrast.

91
00:04:34,879 --> 00:04:40,680
It's a chaotic, heavily cratered, rugged mess. Mountains, canyons, just

92
00:04:41,079 --> 00:04:42,279
rough terrain everywhere.

93
00:04:42,360 --> 00:04:44,800
Speaker 1: It's like a split personality and a planet, a planet

94
00:04:44,800 --> 00:04:48,160
that seems to bear these indelible marks of something truly catastrophic.

95
00:04:49,519 --> 00:04:52,360
Speaker 2: So these are just isolated quirks? Are they? These big differences?

96
00:04:52,399 --> 00:04:55,879
Taken together? They suggest some kind of shared history of cataclysm? Right?

97
00:04:56,120 --> 00:04:58,560
Speaker 1: They absolutely seem too. These aren't just random oddities. I

98
00:04:58,560 --> 00:05:01,120
don't think. They feel like consistent scars that hint at

99
00:05:01,120 --> 00:05:03,639
a much more violent past for our Solar System than

100
00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:05,720
the standard textbooks generally describe.

101
00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:08,839
Speaker 2: And this naturally leads us to question the very foundation

102
00:05:08,959 --> 00:05:10,920
of how we believe our Solar system formed in the

103
00:05:10,959 --> 00:05:14,839
first place. The conventional wisdom, what most of us learned

104
00:05:14,839 --> 00:05:19,600
in school, is NASA's standard narrative, the accretion model.

105
00:05:19,680 --> 00:05:20,160
Speaker 3: Ah.

106
00:05:20,240 --> 00:05:22,959
Speaker 1: Yes, the idea where everything just sort of slowly clumps

107
00:05:22,959 --> 00:05:24,560
together over millions of years.

108
00:05:24,839 --> 00:05:28,680
Speaker 2: Precisely, the theory suggests that after a star forms, the

109
00:05:28,759 --> 00:05:32,279
leftover dust and gas and the surrounding nebula gradually begin

110
00:05:32,360 --> 00:05:36,160
to clump together. They form what are called planetesimals, those

111
00:05:36,279 --> 00:05:38,240
early small building blocks of.

112
00:05:38,199 --> 00:05:40,519
Speaker 1: Planets, like cosmic dust bunnies getting bigger.

113
00:05:40,879 --> 00:05:44,560
Speaker 2: Kind of yeah. These planetesimals then act like snowballs rolling

114
00:05:44,560 --> 00:05:47,360
down a hill, slowly gathering more and more material through

115
00:05:47,399 --> 00:05:50,560
gravitational attraction until they grow into the massive planets we

116
00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:55,000
see today. It's a neat, orderly, and seemingly reasonable process

117
00:05:55,040 --> 00:05:56,079
of cosmic construction.

118
00:05:56,199 --> 00:05:57,680
Speaker 1: Okay, this seems plausible on the.

119
00:05:57,639 --> 00:06:00,439
Speaker 2: Surface, but there are some significant challenges that have been merged,

120
00:06:00,600 --> 00:06:03,160
problems that have led a growing number of respected scientists

121
00:06:03,240 --> 00:06:05,480
to question if it's the whole story.

122
00:06:05,279 --> 00:06:07,199
Speaker 1: Like, what what are the cracks in that model?

123
00:06:07,399 --> 00:06:10,079
Speaker 2: Well, one of the biggest problems, and it's pretty fundamental,

124
00:06:10,279 --> 00:06:13,399
is the speed. The speed at which objects would have

125
00:06:13,399 --> 00:06:15,759
been moving in the early Solar system. We're talking around

126
00:06:15,959 --> 00:06:20,000
twenty kilometers per second. That's nearly forty five thousand miles

127
00:06:20,040 --> 00:06:20,399
per hour.

128
00:06:20,639 --> 00:06:22,079
Speaker 1: Wow, that's incredibly fast.

129
00:06:22,240 --> 00:06:26,240
Speaker 2: It is and at those incredible speeds. If two objects collide,

130
00:06:26,279 --> 00:06:28,920
they don't just gently stick together and create bigger rocks.

131
00:06:29,240 --> 00:06:32,839
They smash each other into dust. They basically vaporize on impact.

132
00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:35,079
Speaker 1: Right, It's not like building with legos, It's more like

133
00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:36,800
crashing cars exactly.

134
00:06:36,959 --> 00:06:41,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yet the accretion model fundamentally requires these particles to

135
00:06:41,680 --> 00:06:46,360
somehow keep sticking together despite these incredibly destructive velocities. It

136
00:06:46,399 --> 00:06:50,040
feels like a theoretical leap that's well difficult to reconcile

137
00:06:50,040 --> 00:06:51,879
with the actual physics of high speed impacts.

138
00:06:51,920 --> 00:06:52,959
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that's a big one.

139
00:06:53,040 --> 00:06:56,120
Speaker 2: What else? Another challenge is the remarkably flat plane of

140
00:06:56,160 --> 00:07:01,000
the ecliptic. Think about it. The Sun's gravity pretty much

141
00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:04,000
equally in all directions. Right, So if plants formed from

142
00:07:04,040 --> 00:07:07,680
just random debris gradually clumping together, why do all the

143
00:07:07,720 --> 00:07:11,319
major planets orbit in an almost perfectly flat disc like

144
00:07:11,360 --> 00:07:15,160
they were marbles rolling around on a particulously crafted flat

145
00:07:15,160 --> 00:07:19,160
dinner plate. For all that random cosmic material to naturally

146
00:07:19,160 --> 00:07:24,199
coalesce into such a precise two dimensional arrangement seems well,

147
00:07:24,319 --> 00:07:27,839
incredibly improbable, almost too perfect to be purely random.

148
00:07:28,120 --> 00:07:30,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, that does seem suspiciously.

149
00:07:29,759 --> 00:07:31,720
Speaker 2: Neat and then there's the frost line concept. This is

150
00:07:31,759 --> 00:07:34,879
supposed to explain where different types of planets form based

151
00:07:34,920 --> 00:07:35,560
on temperature.

152
00:07:35,759 --> 00:07:37,680
Speaker 1: Right the idea that close to the Sun, it's too

153
00:07:37,759 --> 00:07:40,399
hot for gas, so you get rocky planets, and further

154
00:07:40,439 --> 00:07:42,120
out it's cold enough for gas and ice, so you

155
00:07:42,160 --> 00:07:43,000
get gas giants.

156
00:07:43,199 --> 00:07:46,560
Speaker 2: Exactly. The accretion model uses this to explain why gas

157
00:07:46,560 --> 00:07:49,480
giants like Jupiter and Saturn form be on this line

158
00:07:49,639 --> 00:07:52,439
where ice and gas were plentiful, while rocky planets like

159
00:07:52,519 --> 00:07:55,399
Earth and Mars formed inside it closer to the star.

160
00:07:55,759 --> 00:07:57,079
It's a very tidy.

161
00:07:56,759 --> 00:07:59,120
Speaker 1: Explanation, okay, but I sense a butt coming.

162
00:07:59,480 --> 00:08:03,600
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, the butt came when astronomers started discovering hot

163
00:08:03,720 --> 00:08:08,519
jupiters around other stars. These are massive gas giants hundreds

164
00:08:08,519 --> 00:08:11,959
of times the massive Earth, orbiting incredibly close to their stars,

165
00:08:12,240 --> 00:08:14,439
often closer than mercury orbits our Sun.

166
00:08:14,680 --> 00:08:17,920
Speaker 1: Whoa, So gas giants right up next to their star.

167
00:08:18,040 --> 00:08:20,680
Speaker 2: Right where according to the standard accretion model and the

168
00:08:20,680 --> 00:08:24,279
frost line concept, they simply shouldn't exist. They shouldn't have

169
00:08:24,279 --> 00:08:26,800
been able to form there. Yet We've documented over four

170
00:08:26,879 --> 00:08:30,439
hundred of them in other star systems. This directly contradicts

171
00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:33,960
a core tenet of the prevailing model. It creates a

172
00:08:33,960 --> 00:08:37,600
really significant problem for the whole snowball theories universality.

173
00:08:38,120 --> 00:08:41,320
Speaker 1: Okay, so if the traditional model has these pretty glaring issues,

174
00:08:41,840 --> 00:08:45,360
are there credible alternative theories starting to gain some traction?

175
00:08:45,679 --> 00:08:47,799
Because this is where doctor Tom van Flandering comes into

176
00:08:47,799 --> 00:08:50,320
the picture right exactly. And he's not who you might

177
00:08:50,360 --> 00:08:53,799
immediately picture when you think of radical astronomical theories. This

178
00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:56,480
guy had serious credentials, absolutely.

179
00:08:56,600 --> 00:09:00,120
Speaker 2: Doctor van Flanders earned his PhD from Yale, spent two

180
00:09:00,120 --> 00:09:03,799
decades at the US Naval Observatory. His job wasn't just

181
00:09:03,879 --> 00:09:08,240
theoretical stuff. He was tasked with calculating planetary orbits with

182
00:09:08,360 --> 00:09:13,320
extreme precision for what like navigation, Yeah, for critical applications

183
00:09:13,360 --> 00:09:18,080
like military navigation, classified satellite operations. He was, to put

184
00:09:18,120 --> 00:09:22,360
it simply, a genuine expert on celestial mechanics. His job

185
00:09:22,480 --> 00:09:25,879
was literally calculating exactly where planets would be at any

186
00:09:25,919 --> 00:09:27,639
given moment, down to fractions of.

187
00:09:27,639 --> 00:09:30,120
Speaker 1: A second, so he knew the math inside and out.

188
00:09:30,440 --> 00:09:33,919
Speaker 2: It was this precise, deep understanding of celestial mechanics that

189
00:09:34,039 --> 00:09:37,480
actually compelled him to question the official story. He saw

190
00:09:37,519 --> 00:09:41,240
the inconsistencies in the data firsthand, the standard decretion model

191
00:09:41,279 --> 00:09:43,360
just couldn't fully account for what he was observing day

192
00:09:43,399 --> 00:09:43,919
and day out.

193
00:09:44,120 --> 00:09:45,559
Speaker 1: So what did he propose instead?

194
00:09:45,879 --> 00:09:48,720
Speaker 2: So Van Flanner proposed something truly radical. It was actually

195
00:09:48,759 --> 00:09:52,679
a revival of an older, largely abandoned idea solar fission

196
00:09:52,759 --> 00:09:53,360
solar fishing.

197
00:09:53,399 --> 00:09:55,399
Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for us. What does that theory

198
00:09:55,440 --> 00:09:58,559
suggest about our son's early life? Was it different back then?

199
00:09:58,720 --> 00:10:03,440
Speaker 2: The hypothesis goes something like this, Roughly four point five

200
00:10:03,519 --> 00:10:07,639
billion years ago, our sun wasn't the calm, stable star

201
00:10:07,799 --> 00:10:11,919
we see today. It was spinning incredibly fast, too fast.

202
00:10:11,639 --> 00:10:14,360
Speaker 1: Actually, like a spinning top about to wobble out of.

203
00:10:14,320 --> 00:10:15,440
Speaker 2: Control kind of.

204
00:10:15,679 --> 00:10:15,960
Speaker 1: Yeah.

205
00:10:15,960 --> 00:10:17,960
Speaker 2: When a star spins that quickly, it builds up an

206
00:10:17,960 --> 00:10:21,200
excessive amount of angular momentum. You can think of that

207
00:10:21,240 --> 00:10:25,759
as its rotational energy combined with its mass. To maintain stability,

208
00:10:26,080 --> 00:10:29,000
the Sun had to shed this excess energy, and not

209
00:10:29,120 --> 00:10:33,759
gradually but violently. Wow, it shed superheated plasma into space.

210
00:10:34,600 --> 00:10:37,759
Imagine these enormous gloves of plasma, millions of miles wide,

211
00:10:37,960 --> 00:10:40,919
literally skinning away from their parent star, almost like yeah,

212
00:10:40,960 --> 00:10:43,919
like cosmic cotton candy separating from a machine that's going

213
00:10:43,960 --> 00:10:44,399
to fast.

214
00:10:44,600 --> 00:10:47,960
Speaker 1: Wow. So instead of planets slowly building up from dust,

215
00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:50,919
they were born in this violent stellar expulsion, like the

216
00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:51,919
Sun threw them off.

217
00:10:51,960 --> 00:10:54,879
Speaker 2: That's the core idea. As these immense plasma balls spun

218
00:10:54,919 --> 00:10:56,799
away from the Sun and started to cool, over millions

219
00:10:56,840 --> 00:11:00,279
of years, they condensed, eventually forming the planets. Okay and

220
00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:03,679
Van Flanner argued that this single idea elegantly explains many

221
00:11:03,679 --> 00:11:06,000
of the problems the accretion model struggled with, like the

222
00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:09,879
flat plane exactly, it explains why planets orbit in a

223
00:11:09,919 --> 00:11:13,840
relatively flat plane. They all originated from the Sun's equator,

224
00:11:14,240 --> 00:11:17,639
the region where material would naturally be flung off a

225
00:11:17,840 --> 00:11:19,159
rapidly spinning star.

226
00:11:19,120 --> 00:11:21,159
Speaker 1: And the spin the angular momentum.

227
00:11:21,240 --> 00:11:21,399
Speaker 3: Right.

228
00:11:21,759 --> 00:11:24,759
Speaker 2: It clarifies why the planets possess most of the Solar

229
00:11:24,759 --> 00:11:27,919
System's angular momentum while the Sun retains most of the mass.

230
00:11:28,399 --> 00:11:31,360
They simply took that rotational energy with them when they

231
00:11:31,360 --> 00:11:33,879
were spun out of the star and the hot jupiters.

232
00:11:34,080 --> 00:11:36,960
It provides a natural explanation for them too. Some of

233
00:11:36,960 --> 00:11:39,919
these plasma borne planets simply didn't travel as far from

234
00:11:39,919 --> 00:11:43,159
their stellar parent. They ended up in much closer orbits.

235
00:11:43,679 --> 00:11:45,600
It wasn't about where they formed, but how far they

236
00:11:45,600 --> 00:11:46,120
were thrown.

237
00:11:46,240 --> 00:11:49,639
Speaker 1: That is remarkably comprehensive for a lot of these Solar

238
00:11:49,639 --> 00:11:52,240
System oddities. But did he see other patterns?

239
00:11:52,360 --> 00:11:55,600
Speaker 2: He did? Van Planner noticed another fascinating pattern in this

240
00:11:55,679 --> 00:11:59,120
proposed violent birth process. He observed that planets seemed to

241
00:11:59,200 --> 00:11:59,840
have been born.

242
00:11:59,720 --> 00:12:01,919
Speaker 1: In pairs like what.

243
00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:05,519
Speaker 2: Like Earth and Venus, they're nearly identical in size. Jupiter

244
00:12:05,559 --> 00:12:09,240
and Saturn are both massive gas giants, ye their positions

245
00:12:09,279 --> 00:12:12,480
often follow specific orbital ratios, almost as if they were

246
00:12:12,480 --> 00:12:15,639
rejected in sync to at a time. He found that

247
00:12:15,679 --> 00:12:18,960
the math consistently supported these pairings across the Solar System.

248
00:12:19,200 --> 00:12:20,919
Speaker 1: Interesting, but did everything fit?

249
00:12:21,600 --> 00:12:25,759
Speaker 2: Not quite. Not all planets fit this neat paired pattern perfectly.

250
00:12:26,159 --> 00:12:30,440
Mercury's orbit seemed too eccentric, a bit too chaotic. Puto,

251
00:12:30,519 --> 00:12:32,879
as we discussed, behaves more like a captured moon or

252
00:12:32,879 --> 00:12:36,279
a cosmic wanderer than a typical planet or even a

253
00:12:36,360 --> 00:12:38,759
dwarf planet formed in this way. Okay, But the most

254
00:12:38,799 --> 00:12:41,639
significant outlier, the one that truly puzzled him and didn't

255
00:12:41,639 --> 00:12:45,320
seem to fit any pattern, was Mars Mars. Again, yeah,

256
00:12:45,399 --> 00:12:47,639
he was too small for his orbital position. Its path

257
00:12:47,759 --> 00:12:50,399
was peculiar, its density didn't align with any of the

258
00:12:50,440 --> 00:12:54,399
formation patterns Van Flanner and could discern Mars just it

259
00:12:54,399 --> 00:12:56,360
didn't fit the family portrait, so to speak.

260
00:12:56,399 --> 00:12:58,240
Speaker 1: So what did he conclude about Mars? This is where

261
00:12:58,240 --> 00:12:59,519
it gets really wild.

262
00:12:59,279 --> 00:13:02,639
Speaker 2: Right, This is where he arrived at a truly bold conclusion,

263
00:13:02,919 --> 00:13:07,080
one that completely turned conventional astronomy on its head. He

264
00:13:07,159 --> 00:13:09,600
proposed that Mars wasn't a planet that simply failed to

265
00:13:09,639 --> 00:13:13,320
follow the rules of formation. Instead, he theorized it was

266
00:13:13,320 --> 00:13:16,480
once a moon, a noon of what a moon orbitting

267
00:13:16,519 --> 00:13:20,039
a much larger planet, A planet that was utterly destroyed millions,

268
00:13:20,080 --> 00:13:23,840
maybe billions of years ago, a planet he dubbed Maldeck.

269
00:13:23,519 --> 00:13:25,679
Speaker 1: Maldek Okay, and the asteroid belt.

270
00:13:25,799 --> 00:13:28,559
Speaker 2: He believed that while most of Maldek was likely vaporized

271
00:13:28,639 --> 00:13:31,159
or flung out of the Solar System in this cataclysm,

272
00:13:31,399 --> 00:13:34,480
the fragments that remained in orbit around that location formed

273
00:13:34,480 --> 00:13:38,200
the familiar asteroid belt we observe today right between Mars

274
00:13:38,200 --> 00:13:38,759
and Jupiter.

275
00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:42,039
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, a destroyed planet forming the asteroid belt. That

276
00:13:42,080 --> 00:13:44,559
sounds like science fiction, but is there any historical basis

277
00:13:44,559 --> 00:13:46,360
for thinking a planet might be missing there.

278
00:13:46,840 --> 00:13:50,360
Speaker 2: Actually, yes, this idea, though it sounds radical now, isn't

279
00:13:50,519 --> 00:13:53,200
entirely new. The notion of a missing planet in that

280
00:13:53,279 --> 00:13:57,840
specific region has roots going back centuries long before Van Flander.

281
00:13:58,120 --> 00:14:00,879
Speaker 1: Really how far back.

282
00:14:00,080 --> 00:14:03,960
Speaker 2: To the seventeen sixties and seventeen seventies. In seventeen sixty six,

283
00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:07,720
a German mathematician named Johann Titius, and later in seventeen

284
00:14:07,759 --> 00:14:12,240
seventy two, the astronomer Johann Bode noticed something remarkable. The

285
00:14:12,279 --> 00:14:15,320
planets in our Solar System weren't just scattered randomly. They

286
00:14:15,320 --> 00:14:19,679
seemed to follow this peculiar, almost mystical, mathematical pattern governing

287
00:14:19,720 --> 00:14:22,000
their distances from the Sun. It came to be known

288
00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:25,000
as Bode's law, or sometimes the Titius Bode law.

289
00:14:25,279 --> 00:14:28,039
Speaker 1: Bode's law. I've heard of that. It's a surprisingly simple formula,

290
00:14:28,039 --> 00:14:31,159
isn't it something about starting with a number and doubling it.

291
00:14:31,159 --> 00:14:34,519
Speaker 2: It is surprisingly simple. You start at point four astronomical

292
00:14:34,639 --> 00:14:37,279
units from the Sun and AU being the average Earth

293
00:14:37,320 --> 00:14:39,960
Sun distance. Then you roughly double the interval for each

294
00:14:39,960 --> 00:14:43,639
subsequent planet Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, then a gap than

295
00:14:43,720 --> 00:14:46,960
Jupiter and Saturn, and it predicted their orbits with really

296
00:14:47,039 --> 00:14:48,840
uncanny accuracy for at the time, and.

297
00:14:48,799 --> 00:14:50,720
Speaker 1: Didn't it predict a planet before it was found.

298
00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:54,159
Speaker 2: Its predictive power was quite compelling. Yes, In seventeen eighty one,

299
00:14:54,279 --> 00:14:56,679
Uranus was discovered by William Herschel, and it was found

300
00:14:56,720 --> 00:14:59,320
almost exactly where BOE's law set a planet should be,

301
00:14:59,559 --> 00:15:02,720
even though the formula predated its discovery by nearly a decade.

302
00:15:02,919 --> 00:15:05,799
That's when the astronomical community really started paying attention.

303
00:15:06,159 --> 00:15:09,919
Speaker 1: So the obvious question then became, what about that gap

304
00:15:10,320 --> 00:15:11,440
between Mars and Jupiter?

305
00:15:11,639 --> 00:15:16,000
Speaker 2: Exactly the formula confidently predicted another large planet right there

306
00:15:16,200 --> 00:15:19,320
between Mars and Jupiter, at a distance of precisely two

307
00:15:19,399 --> 00:15:21,600
point eight astronomical units from the Sun.

308
00:15:21,879 --> 00:15:25,600
Speaker 1: So astronomers started looking for this missing planet, planet X

309
00:15:25,679 --> 00:15:26,519
or whatever they called it.

310
00:15:26,559 --> 00:15:30,360
Speaker 2: They did. A group calling themselves the Celestial Police even

311
00:15:30,440 --> 00:15:33,320
formed to systematically hunt for it, and on New Year's

312
00:15:33,399 --> 00:15:36,519
Day eighteen oh one, an Italian astronomer named Joseppe Piazzi,

313
00:15:36,799 --> 00:15:40,919
working independently in Sicily, found something, a small object orbiting

314
00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:44,279
at two point seven to seven astronomical units, almost exactly

315
00:15:44,279 --> 00:15:46,600
where Bode's law predicted the missing planet should be.

316
00:15:47,000 --> 00:15:48,720
Speaker 1: And that was it problem solved.

317
00:15:48,360 --> 00:15:51,320
Speaker 2: Well, not quite. He named it Series. But Series was tiny,

318
00:15:51,440 --> 00:15:54,480
less than six hundred miles across, far smaller than anyone

319
00:15:54,519 --> 00:15:57,240
expected a major planet to be. And soon after more

320
00:15:57,279 --> 00:16:01,799
small objects were discovered in roughly the same orbit Vesta Juno, so.

321
00:16:01,720 --> 00:16:03,320
Speaker 1: Not one planet, but lots of little ones.

322
00:16:03,360 --> 00:16:06,080
Speaker 2: By eighteen fifty they knew of thirteen such objects in

323
00:16:06,120 --> 00:16:08,720
the same region. Today, of course, we know there are

324
00:16:08,759 --> 00:16:11,360
millions of rocks orbiting in that zone, which we now

325
00:16:11,399 --> 00:16:12,759
call the asteroid.

326
00:16:12,320 --> 00:16:15,200
Speaker 1: Build So what did they make of that? Were these

327
00:16:15,279 --> 00:16:18,639
just leftover building materials that never formed a planet?

328
00:16:18,799 --> 00:16:22,759
Speaker 2: That was one interpretation. Yeah, some scientists argued these were

329
00:16:22,799 --> 00:16:27,360
simply leftover planetesimals, debris that never quite managed to coalesce

330
00:16:27,399 --> 00:16:31,159
into a full fledged planet due to Jupiter's gravitational interference. Perhaps,

331
00:16:31,799 --> 00:16:35,559
But a German astronomer named Wilhelm Olbers, who actually discovered

332
00:16:35,600 --> 00:16:40,240
Pallas and Vesta himself, proposed a different, far more radical

333
00:16:40,279 --> 00:16:41,039
idea back then.

334
00:16:41,120 --> 00:16:42,600
Speaker 1: Okay, what was Olber's idea?

335
00:16:42,720 --> 00:16:47,000
Speaker 2: Olbers suggested, what if a planet did form, there fully formed,

336
00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:50,000
and what is something then utterly destroyed it. He even

337
00:16:50,080 --> 00:16:53,279
named this hypothetical planet Phaeton after the Greek.

338
00:16:53,120 --> 00:16:56,200
Speaker 1: Myth Phaeton, after the guy who crashed the sun chariot.

339
00:16:56,399 --> 00:16:59,799
Speaker 2: Dramatic, very but critics immediately jumped on that. They pointed

340
00:16:59,840 --> 00:17:02,759
out that the entire asteroid belt combined has less mass

341
00:17:02,840 --> 00:17:05,480
than our own moon. How could that possibly be the

342
00:17:05,480 --> 00:17:07,599
remains of a whole planet. It just didn't seem like

343
00:17:07,680 --> 00:17:08,319
enough stuff.

344
00:17:08,480 --> 00:17:09,440
Speaker 1: Seems like a fair point.

345
00:17:09,559 --> 00:17:12,599
Speaker 2: But Olber's had this ingenious answer. He argued that if

346
00:17:12,599 --> 00:17:15,599
a planet were to explode violently in the vacuum of space,

347
00:17:15,960 --> 00:17:18,119
most of its mass wouldn't just hang around neatly in

348
00:17:18,160 --> 00:17:18,519
a belt.

349
00:17:18,720 --> 00:17:19,400
Speaker 1: Where would it go.

350
00:17:19,640 --> 00:17:22,680
Speaker 2: Much of the debris would reach escape velocity, some would

351
00:17:22,720 --> 00:17:24,759
fall into the Sun, some would be flung out into

352
00:17:24,799 --> 00:17:28,480
deep space, and a significant portion would simply vaporize in

353
00:17:28,519 --> 00:17:33,079
the explosion itself. Maybe five percent of the original mass

354
00:17:33,079 --> 00:17:35,440
that we observed today in the asteroid belt, he argued,

355
00:17:36,039 --> 00:17:39,000
is exactly what you'd expect to find leftover from a

356
00:17:39,039 --> 00:17:41,200
massive planet that was violently chattered.

357
00:17:41,440 --> 00:17:44,279
Speaker 1: Huh. That's actually a really clever way to turn that

358
00:17:44,319 --> 00:17:47,200
criticism around, using the lack of mass as evidence for

359
00:17:47,240 --> 00:17:47,880
the explosion.

360
00:17:47,960 --> 00:17:51,279
Speaker 2: It was quite insightful. Yeah, But then another curveball came

361
00:17:51,319 --> 00:17:54,640
for Bode's law. In eighteen thirty six, Neptune.

362
00:17:54,240 --> 00:17:55,680
Speaker 1: Was discovered and did it fit the pattern.

363
00:17:55,839 --> 00:17:58,440
Speaker 2: Nope. It's orbit didn't fit Bode's law at all. It

364
00:17:58,480 --> 00:18:01,839
was way off, and any critics seized on this, dismissing

365
00:18:01,880 --> 00:18:05,240
the entire law as just a coincidence, a statistical fluke

366
00:18:05,319 --> 00:18:07,480
that worked for a while but ultimately meant nothing.

367
00:18:07,759 --> 00:18:09,960
Speaker 1: So that killed the idea of a missing.

368
00:18:09,640 --> 00:18:13,920
Speaker 2: Planet for many. It did seem to undermine Bode's law significantly,

369
00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:17,160
but Tom van Flander, looking at this much later with

370
00:18:17,240 --> 00:18:20,480
his fission theory in mind, saw it differently. How So,

371
00:18:20,960 --> 00:18:24,720
he didn't believe Neptune's orbit was inherently wrong according to

372
00:18:24,759 --> 00:18:28,000
the original pattern. He believed it had been altered. He

373
00:18:28,039 --> 00:18:30,960
looked at Uranus spinning on its side, Pluto's tilted and

374
00:18:31,079 --> 00:18:35,160
erratic orbit, Neptune's weird position, and the asteroid belt itself

375
00:18:35,680 --> 00:18:38,640
and saw them not as random anomalies or sailures of

376
00:18:38,680 --> 00:18:42,319
a simple law. He saw them as interconnected scars scarce

377
00:18:42,319 --> 00:18:45,960
from what remnants of an ancient, incredibly violent catastrophe in

378
00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:48,920
our solar system. He believed there was only one event

379
00:18:49,039 --> 00:18:54,039
powerful enough to cause such widespread disruption across multiple planets,

380
00:18:54,599 --> 00:18:58,359
the violent instantaneous destruction of an entire planet. For Van Flander,

381
00:18:58,440 --> 00:19:01,559
the mathematical patterns of BOE's life law, the debris fields,

382
00:19:01,599 --> 00:19:04,839
the peculiar orbits. It all came together. It explained everything

383
00:19:05,160 --> 00:19:08,240
Bode's law he believed wasn't wrong. A massive planet was

384
00:19:08,279 --> 00:19:11,240
there and now it's gone. And he thought he could

385
00:19:11,240 --> 00:19:12,359
find even more direct proof.

386
00:19:12,480 --> 00:19:15,039
Speaker 1: Okay, so if a planet exploded, what kind of proof

387
00:19:15,079 --> 00:19:17,279
would you look for besides the asteroid build itself.

388
00:19:17,480 --> 00:19:20,039
Speaker 2: Well, this is where Van Flanner's theory gets really intriguing

389
00:19:20,319 --> 00:19:24,480
and where he made some very specific, testable predictions. He

390
00:19:24,599 --> 00:19:28,680
needed evidence that planets had actually exploded, and he found

391
00:19:28,680 --> 00:19:33,880
a startling clue in a really unexpected place. Soviet military tests.

392
00:19:33,920 --> 00:19:35,000
Back in the nineteen eighties.

393
00:19:35,200 --> 00:19:37,480
Speaker 1: Soviet military tests. How does that relate?

394
00:19:37,559 --> 00:19:42,160
Speaker 2: American observers were monitoring Soviet anti satellite weapons tests basically

395
00:19:42,200 --> 00:19:46,079
blowing up satellites in Earth orbit, and they noticed something peculiar.

396
00:19:46,799 --> 00:19:50,759
When a satellite exploded, the debris didn't just scatter randomly outwards.

397
00:19:50,960 --> 00:19:51,519
Speaker 1: What did it do?

398
00:19:51,799 --> 00:19:54,559
Speaker 2: Smaller pieces of the debris actually began to orbit the

399
00:19:54,640 --> 00:19:58,799
bigger pieces, almost like tiny moons forming around miniature planets

400
00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:00,359
right there in the debris cloud.

401
00:20:00,440 --> 00:20:01,920
Speaker 1: Huh, never heard that before.

402
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:05,000
Speaker 2: It was a documented observation, and that observation sparked a

403
00:20:05,039 --> 00:20:08,240
kind of Eureka moment for Van Flander. He thought, Okay,

404
00:20:08,519 --> 00:20:11,599
if that happens when a relatively small satellite explodes, what

405
00:20:11,680 --> 00:20:13,440
happens when an entire planet explodes?

406
00:20:13,519 --> 00:20:15,119
Speaker 1: The same thing, just bigger.

407
00:20:14,960 --> 00:20:19,680
Speaker 2: Exactly the same physical principles, just on an astronomically larger scale.

408
00:20:19,720 --> 00:20:22,680
He reasoned that mountain sized chunks of the destroyed planet

409
00:20:22,759 --> 00:20:26,039
would fly off, but each would be accompanied by clouds

410
00:20:26,039 --> 00:20:28,200
of smaller debris orbiting around them, like.

411
00:20:28,200 --> 00:20:30,920
Speaker 1: A big rock with its own little swarm of smaller

412
00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:31,799
rocks following it.

413
00:20:32,079 --> 00:20:36,200
Speaker 2: Precisely and from Earth, he realized these conglomerates would look

414
00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:40,000
exactly like comets. The main large chunk would be the

415
00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:43,720
comets nucleus, and the orbiting cloud of smaller debris would

416
00:20:43,720 --> 00:20:46,160
create the characteristic fuzzy appearance entail.

417
00:20:46,319 --> 00:20:48,640
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a different take on comets. So did this

418
00:20:48,759 --> 00:20:49,599
lead to a prediction?

419
00:20:49,799 --> 00:20:53,640
Speaker 2: It led him to a groundbreaking, very specific prediction. If

420
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:58,200
comets truly originated from an exploded planet or planets, then

421
00:20:58,200 --> 00:21:00,920
some of them shouldn't just be dirty snowball some of

422
00:21:00,920 --> 00:21:05,160
them should possess actual moons, little solid rocks orbiting the

423
00:21:05,200 --> 00:21:08,359
main comet nucleus, not just a diffuse dust and gas cloud.

424
00:21:08,559 --> 00:21:11,640
Speaker 1: Wow, predicting moons around comets. How was that received?

425
00:21:11,839 --> 00:21:15,359
Speaker 2: As you might imagine, the scientific establishment was highly skeptical,

426
00:21:15,480 --> 00:21:19,799
if not openly derisive. The prevailing belief was firmly that

427
00:21:19,920 --> 00:21:24,519
comets were nothing more than primordial, dirty snowballs left over

428
00:21:24,559 --> 00:21:27,400
from the formation of the Solar System, originating way out

429
00:21:27,440 --> 00:21:28,279
in the Oort cloud.

430
00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:30,160
Speaker 1: So they laughed at them pretty much.

431
00:21:30,440 --> 00:21:34,359
Speaker 2: Some scientists even made public bets, very confidently declaring no

432
00:21:34,519 --> 00:21:36,880
comma would ever be found with a companion. Not Ever,

433
00:21:37,480 --> 00:21:40,720
the idea of comets as planetary fragments was just too

434
00:21:40,799 --> 00:21:41,880
far out there for most.

435
00:21:42,039 --> 00:21:44,359
Speaker 1: Okay, so did anything happen to challenge that.

436
00:21:44,680 --> 00:21:48,839
Speaker 2: Then in nineteen ninety five, comet hailbop arrived and it

437
00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:51,400
was spectacular. It became one of the brightest objects in

438
00:21:51,400 --> 00:21:54,440
the night sky, visible even during daylight hours. At its peak,

439
00:21:55,119 --> 00:21:58,680
everyone was watching astronomers and the public alike absolutely captivated.

440
00:21:58,759 --> 00:22:02,880
Speaker 3: I remember Hailbophue it was, and in November nineteen ninety six,

441
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:06,519
an amateur astronomer named Chuck Schremick captured a photograph of

442
00:22:06,559 --> 00:22:10,720
Hailwop and observed something unexpected, unexpected that is to pretty

443
00:22:10,759 --> 00:22:11,640
much everyone except.

444
00:22:11,440 --> 00:22:12,119
Speaker 2: Tom ben Flander.

445
00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:12,880
Speaker 1: What did he see?

446
00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:17,039
Speaker 2: There was a distinct bright object positioned near the comet's nucleus,

447
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:20,319
looking very much as though Hailbop had a companion, a

448
00:22:20,359 --> 00:22:21,599
secondary object.

449
00:22:21,240 --> 00:22:24,640
Speaker 1: Traveling with it the moon, like van Flander and predicted it.

450
00:22:24,640 --> 00:22:28,440
Speaker 2: Certainly looked like it. Unfortunately, Shrammick rather sensationally claimed it

451
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:31,720
was a saturn like UFO, which immediately led to a

452
00:22:31,759 --> 00:22:35,559
flory of dismissals and ridicule from professional astronomers, and the

453
00:22:35,559 --> 00:22:37,559
whole thing got tangled up in ufology.

454
00:22:37,680 --> 00:22:40,680
Speaker 1: Ah, so the potential scientific discovery got buried.

455
00:22:40,839 --> 00:22:44,240
Speaker 2: It largely did. What got overshadowed in that media frenzy

456
00:22:44,359 --> 00:22:47,839
was just how truly weird comet Hailbop itself was, even

457
00:22:47,880 --> 00:22:52,039
putting aside the potential companion object weirdhow well for starters,

458
00:22:52,079 --> 00:22:55,680
it seemed to have not just one, but multiple distinct nuclei,

459
00:22:56,039 --> 00:22:59,960
multiple bright points within the coma, and it possessed two distincts,

460
00:23:00,559 --> 00:23:02,720
which isn't unheard of, but one of them was made

461
00:23:02,759 --> 00:23:04,720
primarily of sodium sodium?

462
00:23:04,759 --> 00:23:05,960
Speaker 1: Why is that significant?

463
00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:09,279
Speaker 2: If Hailbop were indeed a fragment of a water ridge

464
00:23:09,319 --> 00:23:12,759
planet that exploded, a planet that maybe had oceans, the

465
00:23:12,799 --> 00:23:16,039
presence of sodium would make perfect sense. It would likely

466
00:23:16,039 --> 00:23:18,920
have been left behind in salt deposits from those ancient

467
00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:22,920
oceans on the original celestial body. A dirty snowball from

468
00:23:22,960 --> 00:23:26,440
the Oort cloud wouldn't necessarily have concentrated sodium like that.

469
00:23:26,519 --> 00:23:31,319
Speaker 1: Okay? Interesting? Was there other evidence supporting Van Flandrin's comet idea?

470
00:23:31,839 --> 00:23:35,559
Speaker 2: Yes, other pieces started to fall into place. The Galileo spacecraft,

471
00:23:35,559 --> 00:23:38,200
on its way to Jupiter flew by the asteroid Ida

472
00:23:38,519 --> 00:23:41,920
and discovered it had its own tiny moon, dactyl an

473
00:23:41,960 --> 00:23:42,640
asteroid with a.

474
00:23:42,599 --> 00:23:44,319
Speaker 1: Moon right e'd a dactyl i. Remember that.

475
00:23:44,599 --> 00:23:48,119
Speaker 2: Then the near Shoemaker mission, which orbited the asteroid Arrows

476
00:23:48,359 --> 00:23:52,640
detected unusual gravitational forces, suggesting that maybe something more massive

477
00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:55,559
or complex was hidden inside, not just a uniform rock. And,

478
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:59,160
perhaps most famously, when comet Shoemaker Levy nine was heading

479
00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:02,200
towards its spectacleicular impact of Jupiter in nineteen ninety four,

480
00:24:02,799 --> 00:24:06,720
astronomers realized it wasn't a single object at all. Jupiter's

481
00:24:06,759 --> 00:24:09,599
gravity had torn it apart earlier, revealing it was actually

482
00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:13,319
twenty one distinct pieces traveling together in formation, like a

483
00:24:13,359 --> 00:24:15,680
broken necklace of cosmic shrapnel.

484
00:24:15,279 --> 00:24:16,079
Speaker 1: String of pearls.

485
00:24:16,079 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 2: They called it exactly. All of this, taken together, strongly

486
00:24:20,519 --> 00:24:24,400
suggested that Van Flandern was onto something profound. These weren't

487
00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:27,680
just random space rocks or simple dirty snowballs. They looked

488
00:24:27,759 --> 00:24:31,480
much more like tangible evidence of something bigger, compelling proof

489
00:24:31,519 --> 00:24:34,799
pointing to objects scarred by a shattered solar system. And

490
00:24:34,880 --> 00:24:38,640
increasingly the focus of this shattered system narrative kept coming

491
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:40,480
back to one place, Mars.

492
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:43,160
Speaker 1: So while Van Flannen was developing this theory about an

493
00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:46,240
exploded planet mal deck and seeing commets and asteroids as

494
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:49,160
a resulting shrapnel, there was this other researcher, Richard Hoagland,

495
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,960
who was independently exploring theories about well a dead civilization

496
00:24:53,079 --> 00:24:53,559
on Mars.

497
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:56,440
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. Hoagland was focused on anomalies on the

498
00:24:56,440 --> 00:25:00,400
margin's surface, particularly in the Sidonia region, the famous on

499
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:03,799
Mars and other structures that he interpreted as artificial.

500
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:07,000
Speaker 1: And somehow their paths cross. These two very different lines

501
00:25:07,039 --> 00:25:08,599
of research they did, and.

502
00:25:08,559 --> 00:25:10,680
Speaker 2: When they started talking, they began to see how their

503
00:25:10,839 --> 00:25:15,759
seemingly disparate theories might actually support each other. Van Flanderan's

504
00:25:15,799 --> 00:25:20,200
exploded planet could provide the why for Mars devastation, and

505
00:25:20,319 --> 00:25:23,359
Hogland's surface anomalies could be the what that was destroyed.

506
00:25:24,039 --> 00:25:26,680
It started to create a much more complete and frankly

507
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:31,400
astounding picture of our Solar system's potentially violent past. Both

508
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:34,559
men had looked at Mars and recognized something profoundly odd

509
00:25:34,599 --> 00:25:38,119
about it. It simply didn't behave like a typical planet.

510
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:39,960
Speaker 1: We keep coming back to Mars being weird.

511
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:42,680
Speaker 2: It really is. Its orbit, as we said, is notably

512
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:46,759
more oval, more eccentric than circular. Its mass is surprisingly

513
00:25:46,839 --> 00:25:49,759
small for its distance from the Sun, only about eleven

514
00:25:49,799 --> 00:25:52,680
percent of Earth's mass. It's just a planet that presents

515
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:54,680
far more questions than easy answers.

516
00:25:54,759 --> 00:25:57,920
Speaker 1: And the most striking visual clue is that split personality thing,

517
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:00,119
the Martian dichotomy exactly.

518
00:26:00,519 --> 00:26:04,039
Speaker 2: It truly looks like two completely different worlds got smashed together.

519
00:26:04,519 --> 00:26:10,319
The northern hemisphere remarkably smooth, vast flat plains covered in

520
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:14,079
what looked like ancient dried up ocean beds, almost serene

521
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:18,119
on the south, a total disaster zone, chaotic, heavily cratered,

522
00:26:18,559 --> 00:26:22,000
rugged mountains, rough terrain everywhere it looks like it's been

523
00:26:22,039 --> 00:26:22,519
through Hell.

524
00:26:22,839 --> 00:26:24,279
Speaker 1: Is a difference just on the surface.

525
00:26:24,519 --> 00:26:27,799
Speaker 2: No, and this is crucial geologically. The southern crust of

526
00:26:27,839 --> 00:26:32,960
Mars is an astonishing twenty miles thicker on average than

527
00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:33,799
the northern.

528
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: Crest twenty miles thicker. How does that happen naturally, that's

529
00:26:37,039 --> 00:26:37,559
the question.

530
00:26:38,039 --> 00:26:42,599
Speaker 2: It's not consistent with normal erosion or typical geological processes

531
00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:45,200
like plate tectonics, which Mars doesn't seem to have had

532
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:47,599
in the same way as Earth. It's almost as if

533
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:50,880
an entire layer of debris, maybe from an external source,

534
00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:54,000
was somehow pasted onto just one half of the planet.

535
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:56,160
Speaker 1: Like it got hit by something massive, mostly on one side.

536
00:26:56,279 --> 00:26:58,400
Speaker 2: That's one way to think about it, and to deepen

537
00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:01,559
the mystery. The southern hemisphere isn't just thicker, it's far

538
00:27:01,759 --> 00:27:05,200
far older. Geologically speaking. The southern highlands appear to be

539
00:27:05,519 --> 00:27:08,480
maybe two billion years older than the northern lowlands.

540
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:12,519
Speaker 1: Two billion years difference on the same planet. That's bizarre.

541
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:15,079
Speaker 2: It is profoundly strange. And then you have the volcanoes,

542
00:27:15,519 --> 00:27:19,200
these colossal shield volcanoes like Olympus Monds, the largest volcano

543
00:27:19,240 --> 00:27:22,400
in the entire Solar System, three times taller than Mount Everest.

544
00:27:23,279 --> 00:27:26,039
It sits on this massive uplift in the Martian crust

545
00:27:26,319 --> 00:27:29,960
called the Tharsis Bulge. Okay, but here's the really interesting part.

546
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:33,440
Directly opposite Olympus Mons and the Tharsis Bulge, on the

547
00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:35,960
exact other side of Mars, one hundred and eighty degrees away,

548
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:40,079
there's another prominent rise, another bulge called the Arabia to row.

549
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:43,400
Speaker 1: Two bulges exactly opposite each other. That doesn't seem random.

550
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 2: It's anything all random. This is precisely what happens when

551
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:49,599
a moon is tidly locked to its parent planet. The

552
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:52,759
immense gravitational pull of the larger body creates permanent rock

553
00:27:52,799 --> 00:27:55,680
bulges on its tidally locked moon, one facing the planet

554
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:57,160
and one facing directly.

555
00:27:56,799 --> 00:27:59,880
Speaker 1: Away, like our moon has bulges.

556
00:27:59,559 --> 00:28:03,599
Speaker 2: Yes, although less pronounced in rock. We see this phenomenon

557
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:07,119
very clearly on many moons in our Solar system, Jupiter's

558
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:11,519
moons Europa and Io, Saturn's Moon's Titan and Enceladus, Neptune's

559
00:28:11,519 --> 00:28:15,880
moon Triton, even Uranus's moon Miranda shows signs. So if

560
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,359
Mars was indeed Maldek's moon, as Van Flanden proposed.

561
00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 1: It would have been tidally locked, always showing the same face.

562
00:28:21,759 --> 00:28:24,279
Speaker 2: To Maldeck, exactly just like our moon always shows the

563
00:28:24,279 --> 00:28:27,640
same face to Earth. Maldeck's immense gravity would have locked

564
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:28,799
Mars into that orientation.

565
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:32,039
Speaker 1: Okay, So if Mars was tidally locked and had oceans,

566
00:28:32,039 --> 00:28:35,000
which we now know it did, Hogland theorized what else

567
00:28:35,039 --> 00:28:36,359
Maldeck's gravity would have done?

568
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:41,039
Speaker 2: Right? Right? For potentially millions of years, that constant, immense

569
00:28:41,079 --> 00:28:45,079
gravitational pull from Maldeck would have drawn Mars's ancient oceans

570
00:28:45,079 --> 00:28:48,440
into a specific pattern. Hogland suggested it would create two

571
00:28:48,519 --> 00:28:52,799
massive ocean systems, perhaps flowing in a clockwise pattern, constrained

572
00:28:52,799 --> 00:28:54,440
by those tidal bulges.

573
00:28:54,039 --> 00:28:56,200
Speaker 1: Two oceans held in place by gravity.

574
00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:58,799
Speaker 2: And these two massive ocean systems, according to the theory,

575
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:01,359
would have met and ground against each other right near

576
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:04,680
the Martian equator, constantly churning and eroding the surface between.

577
00:29:04,519 --> 00:29:08,000
Speaker 1: Them, grinding away for millions of years. What would that create?

578
00:29:08,359 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 2: It would gradually carve deeper and deeper into the Martian surface,

579
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:15,799
creating an enormous scar, and today we call that scar.

580
00:29:16,279 --> 00:29:18,839
Speaker 1: Valley's marineris the giant canyon system on.

581
00:29:18,799 --> 00:29:21,839
Speaker 2: Mars, the giant canyon system. It's an astounding twenty five

582
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:25,039
hundred miles long and up to four miles deep. It

583
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:28,759
absolutely dwarfs Earth's Grand Canyon, makes it look like a mere.

584
00:29:28,599 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 1: Scratch, and NASA struggles to explain how Valley's marineras formed conventionally.

585
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:37,799
Speaker 2: Yes, explanations involving water erosion or tectonic rifting don't fully

586
00:29:37,839 --> 00:29:41,039
account for its immense scale and peculiar features. But if

587
00:29:41,079 --> 00:29:44,000
Mars truly had these twin oceans held in place and

588
00:29:44,079 --> 00:29:47,519
scoured by Malde's immense gravity, meeting and grinding at that

589
00:29:47,599 --> 00:29:50,480
exact spot for millions upon millions of years, suddenly the

590
00:29:50,519 --> 00:29:53,160
canyon's mind boggling scales starts to make a kind of

591
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:54,039
horrifying sense.

592
00:29:54,079 --> 00:29:55,799
Speaker 1: And the fact that we now know Mars did have

593
00:29:55,920 --> 00:29:57,160
vast oceans.

594
00:29:57,079 --> 00:29:59,640
Speaker 2: It lends significant support to that part of the picture. Yes,

595
00:30:00,359 --> 00:30:04,079
while mainstream science initially dismissed the idea of significant ancient

596
00:30:04,119 --> 00:30:08,039
water on Mars, it is now abundantly confirmed Mars was

597
00:30:08,039 --> 00:30:11,519
once a blue planet. This adds weight to theories involving

598
00:30:11,519 --> 00:30:17,039
a more dynamic, potentially catastrophic past driven by external gravitational forces.

599
00:30:17,079 --> 00:30:20,119
Speaker 1: Okay, this is painting a pretty wild picture and exploded

600
00:30:20,119 --> 00:30:24,680
planet Maldeck Mars as its former moon, scarred by tidal forces.

601
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:27,680
But this brings us to maybe the most controversial and

602
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:31,319
honestly the most thrilling aspect of this whole deep dive.

603
00:30:31,279 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 2: The question of what happened on Mars exactly.

604
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:36,519
Speaker 1: If Van Flandern had the exploded planet and Hoglan had

605
00:30:36,519 --> 00:30:40,759
potential signs of an ancient Martian civilization, then another individual,

606
00:30:41,079 --> 00:30:45,079
doctor John Brandenburg, a plasma physicist who actually specialized in

607
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:48,559
nuclear weapons effects, found something in the NASA data that

608
00:30:48,599 --> 00:30:50,680
suggested what might have happened to that civilization.

609
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:54,119
Speaker 2: He believes those Martians, if they existed, were victims of

610
00:30:54,119 --> 00:30:55,039
a nuclear war.

611
00:30:55,039 --> 00:30:57,559
Speaker 1: A nuclear war on Mars. How did he even come

612
00:30:57,559 --> 00:30:58,359
to that conclusion.

613
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:01,519
Speaker 2: It's important to note Ueberg was an initially looking for

614
00:31:01,599 --> 00:31:04,640
evidence of nuclear war on Mars. He apparently found the

615
00:31:04,720 --> 00:31:08,559
idea quite outlandish himself at first. However, in the course

616
00:31:08,559 --> 00:31:12,359
of his professional work studying nuclear weapons and their fallout patterns,

617
00:31:12,559 --> 00:31:16,759
he meticulously examined a publicly available Mars data from various

618
00:31:16,839 --> 00:31:21,000
NASA missions gamma ray spectrometry data specifically, and what did

619
00:31:21,039 --> 00:31:24,680
you find? What he discovered was profoundly disturbing, at least

620
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:28,200
to him. The Martian surface, particularly in certain regions, had

621
00:31:28,319 --> 00:31:32,880
unusual concentrations of a specific isotope called xenon one twenty.

622
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 1: Nine zene on one twenty nine. Okay, why is that

623
00:31:34,759 --> 00:31:35,799
isotope important?

624
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:39,319
Speaker 2: Because here on Earth, significant concentrations of xenon one twenty

625
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:42,680
nine primarily come from exactly one source, nuclear fission. It's

626
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:46,039
a known by product of nuclear reactor operation and more significantly,

627
00:31:46,119 --> 00:31:49,599
nuclear explosions. It's not something produced in large amounts by say,

628
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:53,359
volcanic activity or typical cosmic radiation processes.

629
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:54,559
Speaker 1: So a nuclear fingerprint essentially.

630
00:31:54,799 --> 00:31:58,240
Speaker 2: That's how Brandenburg interpreted it. And the concentrations on Mars

631
00:31:58,440 --> 00:32:02,440
were highest and two very specifically locations Sidonia famously home

632
00:32:02,519 --> 00:32:05,920
to the Face on Mars and other alleged anomalist structures,

633
00:32:06,279 --> 00:32:08,400
and in another region called Galaxi's Chaos.

634
00:32:09,039 --> 00:32:10,079
Speaker 1: How high were the levels?

635
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 2: According to his analysis, the xenon levels in these hotspots

636
00:32:13,359 --> 00:32:15,440
were two and a half times higher than anywhere else

637
00:32:15,519 --> 00:32:19,279
in the Solar System, including Earth's natural background. Levels to

638
00:32:19,319 --> 00:32:23,119
produce that specific isotopic signature, and that much of it.

639
00:32:23,359 --> 00:32:27,839
Brandenburg concluded it would require massive nuclear detonations. We're talking

640
00:32:27,880 --> 00:32:31,640
weapons measured not in kilotons like the Hiroshima bomb, but

641
00:32:31,759 --> 00:32:33,839
in megatons, huge air bursts.

642
00:32:33,839 --> 00:32:35,839
Speaker 1: He suggested, Wow, and he published this.

643
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 2: What was the reaction He published his findings around twenty

644
00:32:38,279 --> 00:32:41,440
fourteen twenty fifteen. As you can probably imagine, the mainstream

645
00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:45,920
scientific community's response was largely dismissive. Many called him misguided,

646
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:49,400
suggested he was misinterpreting the data or simply seeing patterns

647
00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:52,240
where unexisted. The idea was just too extraordinary for most

648
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:54,160
scientists to entertain seriously.

649
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:56,759
Speaker 1: I can imagine. But here's where it gets even weirder. Right,

650
00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:00,000
Brandenburg wasn't actually the first person to theorize that Mars

651
00:33:00,079 --> 00:33:02,799
died in a nuclear war involving an exploded planet.

652
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:07,240
Speaker 2: No, Astonishingly, he wasn't years earlier. The core elements of

653
00:33:07,279 --> 00:33:11,599
that theory appeared in the most unlikely of places, a comic.

654
00:33:11,319 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 1: Book now comic book seriously.

655
00:33:13,079 --> 00:33:16,599
Speaker 2: Seriously, in nineteen fifty eight. That's a full eighteen years

656
00:33:16,839 --> 00:33:20,119
before NASA's Viking Ie probe, ever, took the first photos

657
00:33:20,119 --> 00:33:23,440
of the Sidonia region and The Face on Mars. The

658
00:33:23,519 --> 00:33:26,799
legendary comic book artist and writer Jack Kirby created a

659
00:33:26,839 --> 00:33:29,119
story for Harvey Comics called The Face on Mars.

660
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 1: Jack Kirby, the guy who co created Captain America, Fantastic

661
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:33,480
four or Hulk.

662
00:33:33,799 --> 00:33:36,319
Speaker 2: That Jack Kirby, That Jack Kirby, and the plot of

663
00:33:36,319 --> 00:33:38,960
his nineteen fifty eight story is just uncanny.

664
00:33:39,039 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me what happens. In Kirby's story.

665
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:44,079
Speaker 2: Astronauts land on Mars and discovered this gigantic stone face

666
00:33:44,119 --> 00:33:46,720
sticking out of the sand. One of them climbs into it,

667
00:33:46,759 --> 00:33:49,559
falls through an eye socket, and experiences this vivid vision

668
00:33:49,599 --> 00:33:51,839
like a psychic imprint, left behind, a vision of what

669
00:33:52,119 --> 00:33:55,759
he sees Mars as it once was, a vibrant, living

670
00:33:55,799 --> 00:33:59,160
world inhabited by a race of peaceful giants who built

671
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:03,359
great cities. These giants created intelligent machines to serve them,

672
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:07,799
but the machines evolve true artificial intelligence, became self aware

673
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:09,039
and demanded equality.

674
00:34:09,159 --> 00:34:11,440
Speaker 1: Huh oh, classic sci fi trope, right.

675
00:34:11,639 --> 00:34:14,920
Speaker 2: The giants refused, and a devastating war erupted between the

676
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:18,960
giants and their machines, lasting for generations. Finally, the giants

677
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:22,519
constructed a doomsday weapon and aimed it not at Mars

678
00:34:22,559 --> 00:34:25,800
but at the machine's primary home world, which Kirby depicted

679
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:27,880
as a planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.

680
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 1: Between Mars and Jupiter where the asteroid.

681
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:33,079
Speaker 2: Belt is exactly in Kirby's story. The weapon works, the

682
00:34:33,119 --> 00:34:36,599
planet explodes, but the catastrophic blasts wave from the exploding

683
00:34:36,599 --> 00:34:40,280
planet also strips away Mars's atmosphere and kills almost everyone

684
00:34:40,360 --> 00:34:43,920
on Mars, giants and machines alike. The few surviving giants

685
00:34:44,079 --> 00:34:46,599
in Kirby's narrative carved. The giant faces a warning to

686
00:34:46,639 --> 00:34:49,960
the Cosmos and then retreat underground to face their ultimate extinction.

687
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:54,639
Speaker 1: That that is disturbingly close to the brendenburg Land Flander

688
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:59,480
Hogeland synthesis nuclear war, an exploded planet between Mars and

689
00:34:59,559 --> 00:35:04,119
Jupiter forming an asteroid belt, survivors leaving monuments in nineteen

690
00:35:04,159 --> 00:35:04,559
fifty eight.

691
00:35:04,679 --> 00:35:08,199
Speaker 2: It's incredibly specific, isn't it. Now Here's a fascinating detail

692
00:35:08,199 --> 00:35:11,239
that adds another layer. Jack Kirby was known to be

693
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:14,719
friends with prominent rocket scientists in the late fifties. People

694
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:18,960
associated with Werner von Braun's team, scientists like Willie lay

695
00:35:19,119 --> 00:35:21,400
who had worked on the German V two rocket program.

696
00:35:21,519 --> 00:35:24,079
Speaker 1: So people with high level access, people involved in the

697
00:35:24,119 --> 00:35:25,719
early space program exactly.

698
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:29,719
Speaker 2: These weren't just casual acquaintances. These were individuals with security clearances,

699
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:33,679
likely having conversations and accessing information that we the public

700
00:35:33,679 --> 00:35:36,519
can only speculate about. Did Kirby or hear something? Did

701
00:35:36,519 --> 00:35:38,679
someone tell them a story off the record? We don't know.

702
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:41,119
Speaker 1: Okay, that's one strange connection. Is there more?

703
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:45,599
Speaker 2: And then there's another layer of just weirdness? Project Stargate

704
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:49,079
This is a real classified US government program that ran

705
00:35:49,119 --> 00:35:53,519
for decades investigating psychic phenomena like remote viewing for intelligence

706
00:35:53,519 --> 00:35:54,960
gathering purposes.

707
00:35:54,559 --> 00:35:56,719
Speaker 1: Right, the government psychic Spies program.

708
00:35:56,920 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 2: During this program, one of their most renowned and apparently

709
00:36:00,119 --> 00:36:04,639
accurate remote viewers was a man named Joe mcmonagall. He

710
00:36:04,679 --> 00:36:08,199
was a highly decorated military officer, a Vietnam War hero,

711
00:36:08,519 --> 00:36:11,760
described as a total straight arrow, definitely not someone who

712
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:14,320
read comic books or was into fringed theories.

713
00:36:14,599 --> 00:36:16,599
Speaker 1: Okay, so what did mcmoneagall do.

714
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:20,719
Speaker 2: On one occasion under control conditions? Mcmonagle was given a

715
00:36:20,719 --> 00:36:24,199
set of geographic coordinates sealed in an envelope with absolutely

716
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:27,920
no context standard remote viewing protocol. He didn't know what

717
00:36:28,119 --> 00:36:28,719
or where he was.

718
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:31,119
Speaker 1: Supposed to be looking at and what did he report seeing.

719
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:34,719
Speaker 2: He reported seeing humanoid beings, but described them as very

720
00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:38,280
tall giants. He saw huge structures, evidence of vast cities,

721
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:42,159
a complex civilization, but he said their civilization was dying

722
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:44,960
and they seemed acutely aware of their impending doom.

723
00:36:45,159 --> 00:36:46,960
Speaker 1: And the coordinates? Where was he looking?

724
00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:50,119
Speaker 2: When Joe emerged from his remote viewing session, the project

725
00:36:50,119 --> 00:36:54,079
officer handed him the envelope containing the target information. The coordinates,

726
00:36:54,079 --> 00:36:57,440
it turned out, were from Mars, specifically the Sidonia region

727
00:36:57,679 --> 00:36:59,480
approximately one million years.

728
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:05,280
Speaker 1: BC one million BC. Giant beings, dying civilization.

729
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:08,599
Speaker 2: Mcmonigaill had reportedly never heard any of these specific theories

730
00:37:08,599 --> 00:37:11,599
about Mars, yet his remote viewing session seemed to describe

731
00:37:11,639 --> 00:37:15,639
elements remarkably similar to what Van Flanderen, Hogland, and even

732
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:18,599
Jack Kirby's story touched upon independently decades later.

733
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,800
Speaker 1: So the question hangs there was Kirby's nineteen fifty eight

734
00:37:21,880 --> 00:37:25,599
story just pure coincidental fiction, or did he somehow tap

735
00:37:25,639 --> 00:37:28,639
into something, maybe something he heard from his scientist friends,

736
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:32,440
or maybe something else His comic described nuclear war on Mars,

737
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:37,079
an exploded planet, creating the asteroid belt, survivors, building monuments,

738
00:37:38,199 --> 00:37:42,119
all the same core elements. It's a chilling conversions of ideas.

739
00:37:41,760 --> 00:37:44,719
Speaker 2: It really is. But there's one final dark twist to

740
00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:48,880
doctor Brandenburg's theory. He doesn't actually believe the nuclear explosions

741
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:51,840
came from the Martians themselves fighting each other. No, then

742
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:54,519
who He suggests it was an attack, an attack from

743
00:37:54,519 --> 00:37:59,079
somewhere or something else. Entirely, someone or something wanted Mars dead,

744
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:03,119
wanted that civilists wiped out, and whatever it was, they succeeded.

745
00:38:02,679 --> 00:38:05,039
Speaker 1: An external attack. That's even more terrifying.

746
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:09,840
Speaker 2: And Brandenberg's most chilling warning, based on his interpretation of

747
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:14,480
the data and this scenario is this Mars, he claims,

748
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:17,840
was only the beginning. Whatever did this might still be

749
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:18,360
out there.

750
00:38:18,480 --> 00:38:21,679
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a lot to take in the face on Mars.

751
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:25,360
The exploded planet theory, ancient nuclear war, maybe an external

752
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:28,719
aggressor It's an incredibly compelling narrative, isn't it.

753
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:31,840
Speaker 2: It absolutely is. All the pieces seem to fit together

754
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:36,320
with remarkable precision, maybe a little too perfectly for some skeptics.

755
00:38:35,960 --> 00:38:39,159
Speaker 1: Right, And that paradoxically is often The very problem critics

756
00:38:39,199 --> 00:38:42,079
point to, isn't it It can look like confirmation bias,

757
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:45,079
forcing the pieces to fit a preconceived narrative.

758
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:47,920
Speaker 2: That's a fair criticism to raise. Definitely, when a theory

759
00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:50,159
explains everything perfectly, you have to wonder if you're connecting

760
00:38:50,159 --> 00:38:51,400
dots that shouldn't be connected.

761
00:38:51,519 --> 00:38:54,440
Speaker 1: So what are the main counter arguments From the perspective

762
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:56,960
of mainstream science. How do they push back against these?

763
00:38:57,360 --> 00:38:59,400
Let's face it, pretty radical ideas?

764
00:38:59,679 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 2: Okay, let's break it down, starting with Van Flandern's solar

765
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:06,480
fission theory. The idea that the Sun ejected the planets

766
00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:10,679
well does elegantly explain things like why planets orbit and

767
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:13,079
a flat plane, and why they possess most of the

768
00:39:13,079 --> 00:39:14,960
Solar System's angular momentum.

769
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 1: The big problem is we've never seen it happen, right, That's.

770
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 2: The main critique. Yes, if stars regularly eject planets through fission,

771
00:39:22,079 --> 00:39:25,280
especially in their youth, we should observe it happening somewhere.

772
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:29,440
Astronomers have now cataloged thousands of star systems, many of

773
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:33,199
them young, but not one has ever been definitively caught

774
00:39:33,239 --> 00:39:34,360
in the act of solar fission.

775
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:36,760
Speaker 1: What was Van Flandern's response to that.

776
00:39:37,079 --> 00:39:40,679
Speaker 2: His response was reasonable, suggesting that maybe it only happens

777
00:39:40,679 --> 00:39:42,599
when stars were very very young, in a phase we

778
00:39:42,599 --> 00:39:45,000
haven't observed much, or maybe it's a rare event, or

779
00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:47,360
maybe we're simply looking at the wrong time in a

780
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:51,079
star's evolutionary cycle. While that's a fair point, it ultimately

781
00:39:51,159 --> 00:39:54,920
remains a theory without direct observational proof. It's an explanation

782
00:39:54,960 --> 00:39:58,000
that fits some facts but lacks that smoking gun observation.

783
00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:02,199
Speaker 1: Okay, what about the the exploded planet hypothesis for the

784
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:05,679
asteroid belt, the fate nor Maldeck idea. What are the

785
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:07,360
main scientific challenges there?

786
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:10,800
Speaker 2: Well, the biggest one, and critics always emphasize this is

787
00:40:10,880 --> 00:40:14,519
the mass issue. The entire asteroid belt combined, all those

788
00:40:14,599 --> 00:40:18,000
millions of rocks adds up to less mass than our

789
00:40:18,079 --> 00:40:21,119
own moon. How could that possibly be the remnants of

790
00:40:21,159 --> 00:40:22,280
a whole large planet?

791
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:24,719
Speaker 1: But didn't Olber's and van flander and have an answer

792
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:26,400
for that the five percent argument?

793
00:40:26,599 --> 00:40:29,679
Speaker 2: They did. As we discussed then, Flandering in particular did

794
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:32,960
meticulous calculations. His math showed that if a planet were

795
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:36,360
to explode violently in the vacuum of space, based on

796
00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:39,760
the physics of explosions and escape velocities, you'd only expect

797
00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:42,400
about five percent of its original mass to remain orbiting

798
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:44,880
in that region. The rest we flung out, fall into

799
00:40:44,920 --> 00:40:48,000
the sun or vaporized, and that five percent is remarkably

800
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:51,119
about the percentage of a hypothetical planet's mass that we

801
00:40:51,159 --> 00:40:53,320
actually observe in the asteroid belt today. So in that

802
00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:56,159
specific regard, the math aligned surprisingly well.

803
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,000
Speaker 1: So the mass argument isn't necessarily a killer for the theory.

804
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 2: It's debatable, but Van Flanderen provided a plausible quantitative defense.

805
00:41:04,519 --> 00:41:07,440
The perhaps more significant challenge is simply that we've never

806
00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:11,039
witnessed a planet explode, and beyond that, we lack a clear,

807
00:41:11,199 --> 00:41:14,840
agreed upon natural mechanism for how a planet could explode

808
00:41:15,119 --> 00:41:16,119
with that kind of force.

809
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:18,719
Speaker 1: Not volcanos or earthquakes.

810
00:41:18,320 --> 00:41:22,800
Speaker 2: No natural geological processes like volcanic or tectonic activity just

811
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:26,440
don't release that kind of energy. Even hypothetical natural nuclear

812
00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:28,840
reactors deep within a planet, like the ones found in

813
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:31,719
Oaklaw Gabon on Earth couldn't build up the pressure to

814
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:34,559
blow an entire planet apart. So if it did explode,

815
00:41:34,599 --> 00:41:37,280
the mechanism remains a mystery unless.

816
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:39,840
Speaker 1: Unless as the theory suggests, the explosion wasn't natural.

817
00:41:39,519 --> 00:41:42,960
Speaker 2: In origin precisely, which brings us neatly to Brandenburg's nuclear

818
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:43,519
war theory.

819
00:41:43,679 --> 00:41:46,760
Speaker 1: Right the xenon one two nine that's real data, isn't it.

820
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:48,159
NASA satellites measured it.

821
00:41:48,199 --> 00:41:51,440
Speaker 2: Absolutely. The documented existence of xenon one twenty nine on

822
00:41:51,519 --> 00:41:55,079
Mars and its elevated concentrations in certain areas compared to

823
00:41:55,119 --> 00:41:58,800
others into the Solar System average is real and based

824
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:01,039
on published NACA data. That's not in dispute.

825
00:42:01,119 --> 00:42:03,880
Speaker 1: So what's the counter argument? If it's a nuclear fingerprint,

826
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:05,280
isn't that pretty strong evidence?

827
00:42:05,519 --> 00:42:08,280
Speaker 2: Critics argue that while xenon one twenty nine is a

828
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:12,679
product offission, it can also potentially form through other, much

829
00:42:12,719 --> 00:42:17,119
slower processes over billions of years. Specifically, they point to

830
00:42:17,159 --> 00:42:20,880
cosmic race relation, high energy cosmic rays hitting elements in

831
00:42:20,880 --> 00:42:24,079
the Martian soil and atmosphere and breaking them down, sometimes

832
00:42:24,079 --> 00:42:26,960
producing isotopes like xenon one twenty nine, especially.

833
00:42:26,639 --> 00:42:30,199
Speaker 1: Since Mars has a weak magnetic field and thin atmosphere, right,

834
00:42:30,199 --> 00:42:31,639
it gets bombarded exactly.

835
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:34,840
Speaker 2: Mars has very little protection from cosmic radiation compared to Earth,

836
00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:39,159
so critics contend maybe that long term bombardment over billions

837
00:42:39,199 --> 00:42:41,760
of years is all we're observing, not the signature of

838
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:42,840
ancient nuclear bombs.

839
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:44,039
Speaker 1: What does Brandon Burg say to that?

840
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:49,119
Speaker 2: Brandenburg naturally counters this. He argues that the geographical distribution

841
00:42:49,239 --> 00:42:52,360
is wrong for cosmic rays. If it were just cosmic

842
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:55,880
rays showering the planet, you'd expect a more uniform distribution,

843
00:42:56,119 --> 00:42:59,679
perhaps varying by latitude or altitude, But not these intense

844
00:42:59,719 --> 00:43:03,280
hot spots concentrated in very specific areas like Sidonia and

845
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:06,760
Galaxy's chaos. He maintains the pattern looks much more like

846
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:11,039
fallout zones from specific large explosions. However, his critics remain

847
00:43:11,119 --> 00:43:15,119
largely unconvinced by that rebuttal alone, the standard explanation is

848
00:43:15,159 --> 00:43:17,199
still preferred by most planetary scientists.

849
00:43:17,519 --> 00:43:19,960
Speaker 1: Okay, and then there's the face on Mars itself, the

850
00:43:20,039 --> 00:43:23,199
visual centerpiece for Hogland. What's the official stance there now.

851
00:43:23,360 --> 00:43:25,679
Speaker 2: NASA's official stance has always been that it's a classic

852
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:29,239
case of peridolia, the well known psychological phenomenon of our

853
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:33,639
brain seeing familiar patterns, especially faces, in random or ambiguous stimuli,

854
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:36,440
like seeing animals in clouds or the man in the moon.

855
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:38,599
Speaker 1: So just a trick of light and shadow on a

856
00:43:38,679 --> 00:43:40,800
natural landform, that's the position.

857
00:43:41,519 --> 00:43:44,639
Speaker 2: They maintained that the original Viking one photos had low

858
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:49,320
resolution and specific lighting conditions they created the illusion. When

859
00:43:49,440 --> 00:43:53,119
later missions like Mars Global Surveyor photographed the same feature,

860
00:43:53,639 --> 00:43:57,039
known as the Sidonia Mensa, with much higher resolution cameras

861
00:43:57,039 --> 00:44:00,840
and different lighting angles, the face looked much less facelike

862
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:03,480
and more like a natural mesa, a flat topped hill

863
00:44:03,519 --> 00:44:04,440
eroded by wind.

864
00:44:04,559 --> 00:44:07,920
Speaker 1: Although some researchers still argue about the symmetry and details

865
00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:09,719
even in the later photos, don't they Oh.

866
00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:12,960
Speaker 2: The debate definitely continues in some circles, but the mainstream

867
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:15,960
scientific consensus is firmly on the side of natural formation

868
00:44:16,079 --> 00:44:19,960
and peridolia. However, it is worth noting just for balance,

869
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:24,199
that Richard Oglin, despite the heavy controversy surrounding the face

870
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:26,800
and some of his other interpretations, did make some other

871
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:30,199
specific predictions about Mars based on his Mars as a

872
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:33,159
former moon of an exploded planet model that were later

873
00:44:33,199 --> 00:44:36,679
confirmed by NASA missions, like what he predicted, for example,

874
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:38,920
that if Mars was once a tidally locked moon with

875
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:43,039
ocean's influenced by Maldeck, we should find significant salt deposits

876
00:44:43,119 --> 00:44:47,960
in valleys Marineris, where those hypothetical ancient oceans met and evaporated.

877
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:52,800
NASA's Mars Odyssey later found evidence consistent with large deposits

878
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:56,320
of chlorides and sulfates there. He predicted the northern plains

879
00:44:56,320 --> 00:44:59,159
would show clear geological and chemical signs of having been

880
00:44:59,199 --> 00:45:03,360
covered by ancient water. They absolutely do. He predicted that Mars,

881
00:45:03,639 --> 00:45:07,119
like other tidly stressed boons, should exhibit specific types of

882
00:45:07,119 --> 00:45:11,480
tectonic features related to that stress. Mars indeed exhibits features

883
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:14,679
like graybins and scarps that are consistent with past tidal forces.

884
00:45:14,760 --> 00:45:16,760
Speaker 1: So some of his predictions panned out. Even if the

885
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:19,840
central face idea is widely rejected.

886
00:45:19,679 --> 00:45:23,800
Speaker 2: It seems that way. So was it all just coincidence? Perhaps?

887
00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:27,360
Or perhaps Hogland was insightful about some aspects of Martian

888
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:30,639
geology derived from his model, even if he was mistaken

889
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:34,960
or overly imaginative about others, like the Sidonia structures. That

890
00:45:35,039 --> 00:45:38,800
seems a more nuanced conclusion than outright dismissing everything he

891
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:42,719
ever proposed based solely on the face. These are, after all,

892
00:45:42,840 --> 00:45:47,599
incredibly complex interpretations of remote data from another planet's deep past.

893
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:51,320
Speaker 1: Okay, So summing up the skepticism, no direct observation of

894
00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:56,039
solar fission. The asteroid belt mass needs the explosion physics explanation.

895
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:59,519
The nuclear signature on Mars could be explained by cosmic rays,

896
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:03,119
and the face is likely peridolia, though some related geological

897
00:46:03,159 --> 00:46:04,199
predictions were interesting.

898
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:06,320
Speaker 2: That's a fair summary of the main counter arguments.

899
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:08,559
Speaker 1: Yes, but here's what we know for sure. Regardless of

900
00:46:08,599 --> 00:46:12,840
the specific mechanism proposed, Mars is profoundly strange. It is

901
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:16,239
like two very different planets, almost jarringly stitched together. That's

902
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:17,199
not really debatable.

903
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 2: The dichotomy is real. Yes, the age difference to crustal

904
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:22,360
thickness difference, those are measured facts.

905
00:46:22,679 --> 00:46:26,320
Speaker 1: And Venus spins backwards. That's a fact. Uranus is tip

906
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:29,960
dramatically on its side, rolling around the Sun. Fact. Neptune's

907
00:46:30,039 --> 00:46:34,800
orbit defies conventional formation predictions. Fact, and the asteroid belt

908
00:46:34,840 --> 00:46:38,679
exists exactly where bodes Law predicted a massive planet should be.

909
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:39,840
That's also a fact.

910
00:46:40,159 --> 00:46:44,800
Speaker 2: The undeniable scars, the anomalies, they are definitely there. Something

911
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:48,920
profoundly violent, or at least highly unusual and disruptive happened

912
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:52,159
in our solar system's past. The evidence is quite literally

913
00:46:52,159 --> 00:46:55,039
written in the stars, etched into the very structure and

914
00:46:55,119 --> 00:46:56,920
dynamics of our cosmic neighborhood.

915
00:46:57,159 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 1: So the real question maybe isn't whether our solar system

916
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:02,880
was damaged or significantly altered from some initial state. The

917
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:05,559
evidence seems to suggest it was, but rather how or why,

918
00:47:06,199 --> 00:47:08,159
and maybe the most chilling question, the one were often

919
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:11,159
hesitant to ask. Could whatever happened happen again?

920
00:47:11,280 --> 00:47:13,880
Speaker 2: That does become the unsettling implication, doesn't it.

921
00:47:13,880 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 1: It's a poignant legacy for doctor Tom van Flandern, who

922
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:19,079
passed away back in January two thousand and nine. His

923
00:47:19,159 --> 00:47:22,679
exploded planet theory was largely dismissed by mainstream science during

924
00:47:22,679 --> 00:47:25,559
his lifetime. Many called him a brilliant crank.

925
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:28,760
Speaker 2: It's often the fate of those who proposed truly paradigm

926
00:47:28,800 --> 00:47:29,920
shifting ideas.

927
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:33,400
Speaker 1: He never lived to see water fully confirmed on Mars

928
00:47:33,440 --> 00:47:37,159
by later missions, never saw the detailed mapping of moonlike

929
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:41,079
tidle features on Mars verified, never knew that his calculations

930
00:47:41,119 --> 00:47:44,400
about the expected remaining mass and distribution of the asteroid

931
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:47,719
belt after an explosion would hold up surprisingly well to

932
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:51,559
further analysis. He apparently died, believing he had largely failed

933
00:47:51,599 --> 00:47:52,639
to convince his peers.

934
00:47:53,079 --> 00:47:57,000
Speaker 2: It's a sad footnote, but Van Flanderan saw something. He

935
00:47:57,079 --> 00:48:00,159
saw a pattern hidden in plain sight that most to

936
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:04,280
others were explaining away piece by piece. Our Solar system,

937
00:48:04,440 --> 00:48:09,519
he argued, is fundamentally broken, not metaphorically, but literally broken.

938
00:48:09,679 --> 00:48:13,360
Speaker 1: He'sa venus spinning the wrong way clockwise instead of counterclockwise

939
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:15,360
like every other planet, as if something hit it so

940
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:17,519
hard it completely flipped its rotation.

941
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:20,159
Speaker 2: He saw Uranus lying on its side, rolling around the

942
00:48:20,199 --> 00:48:23,239
sun sets, spinning like a top, its moons orbiting vertically.

943
00:48:23,280 --> 00:48:24,960
That's just not a natural formation state.

944
00:48:25,119 --> 00:48:28,159
Speaker 1: He saw Neptune's orbit making no sense based on gradual

945
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:31,199
accretion models, too elliptical, too far out, like it was

946
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:32,599
violently shoved there.

947
00:48:32,519 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 2: In Pluto, not even a planet anymore, behaving like a refugee,

948
00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:39,079
a moon that lost its home planet and got trapped

949
00:48:39,119 --> 00:48:42,079
in this weird, tilted, erratic orbit.

950
00:48:42,159 --> 00:48:45,719
Speaker 1: And then always back to Mars. Half smooth planes suggesting

951
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:50,639
ancient oceans half utterly destroyed, cratered highlands, its ancient ocean's gone,

952
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:54,679
its atmosphere stripped away, Strange nuclear isotopes lingering in its

953
00:48:54,719 --> 00:48:57,639
soil and specific hotspots. A planet that looks like it

954
00:48:57,679 --> 00:48:59,880
survived something it absolutely shouldn't have.

955
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:02,679
Speaker 2: Van Flander and traced it all back in his model

956
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:06,440
to two distinct cataclysmic events. Two planets in our Solar

957
00:49:06,440 --> 00:49:11,039
System utterly destroyed. First, Theatan, the planet he believed existed

958
00:49:11,039 --> 00:49:14,679
between Mars and Jupiter. Its explosion created the asteroid belt

959
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:18,119
and sent powerful shockwaves through the inner Solar System, perhaps

960
00:49:18,119 --> 00:49:19,239
causing initial damage.

961
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:20,440
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the main event.

962
00:49:20,639 --> 00:49:22,800
Speaker 2: No, in his timeline, that was just the warm up act,

963
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:26,559
perhaps destabilizing things. The truly monumental event, the one that

964
00:49:26,599 --> 00:49:29,679
caused the most widespread damage we still see today, was

965
00:49:29,719 --> 00:49:32,719
the destruction of a second, possibly larger planet, which he

966
00:49:32,760 --> 00:49:35,320
called Maldeck, the one Mars orbit.

967
00:49:35,159 --> 00:49:37,360
Speaker 1: Is, and when Maldeck exploded its.

968
00:49:37,199 --> 00:49:40,920
Speaker 2: Moon, Mars was violently flung into its current eccentric orbit,

969
00:49:41,239 --> 00:49:45,760
suffering catastrophic damage in the process. The enormous blast wave

970
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:49,000
Van Flander and calculated would have traveled outwards and inwards

971
00:49:49,119 --> 00:49:53,280
it impacted Venus, potentially causing its backward flip. The vast

972
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:57,519
debris cloud from Maldeck's destruction reached the outer planets significantly

973
00:49:57,559 --> 00:50:00,280
disrupting their orbits, tilting Uranus perturb.

974
00:50:00,159 --> 00:50:02,400
Speaker 1: Being Neptune and Earth did we get hit.

975
00:50:02,639 --> 00:50:06,280
Speaker 2: Earth mercifully likely caught some fragments too. Maybe some of

976
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:09,119
the large impact creators we see date back to this event.

977
00:50:09,559 --> 00:50:12,440
But according to his model, we were lucky. We were

978
00:50:12,519 --> 00:50:15,480
far enough away from Maldeck's location compared to Mars to

979
00:50:15,599 --> 00:50:19,559
escape the full brunt of the cataclysm. We survived, wounded, perhaps,

980
00:50:19,599 --> 00:50:20,199
but intact.

981
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:22,840
Speaker 1: Because here's what Van Flanderons seemed to understand with this

982
00:50:23,039 --> 00:50:26,159
chilling clarity. If it happened twice, if two planets in

983
00:50:26,159 --> 00:50:27,800
our system could be destroyed, it.

984
00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:31,400
Speaker 2: Could absolutely happen again. Whatever destroyed those planets, whether it

985
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:35,920
was some kind of escalating natural cosmic catastrophe, a devastating

986
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:40,559
interplanetary nuclear war, as brandon Burg suggests, or something else entirely,

987
00:50:40,679 --> 00:50:44,119
something we haven't even conceived of the underlying mechanism, the

988
00:50:44,119 --> 00:50:48,039
potential for such an event might still exist. The danger

989
00:50:48,079 --> 00:50:49,440
hasn't necessarily passed.

990
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:53,360
Speaker 1: We often like to think Earth is somehow special, uniquely protected,

991
00:50:53,400 --> 00:50:56,079
don't we. We call it the Goldilocks planet, where everything

992
00:50:56,159 --> 00:50:57,519
is just right for life.

993
00:50:57,599 --> 00:50:58,559
Speaker 2: It's a comforting thought.

994
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:01,559
Speaker 1: But perhaps we're not special at all. Perhaps we're simply

995
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:05,159
next in line, living on borrow time in a dangerous neighborhood.

996
00:51:05,199 --> 00:51:09,559
Speaker 2: It's a sobering perspective. Consider this, three planets generally considered

997
00:51:09,559 --> 00:51:11,920
to be within the habitable zone of our son Venus,

998
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:15,599
Earth and Mars. Based on these theories, one is dead

999
00:51:15,719 --> 00:51:18,880
and hypervolcanic, possibly due to catastrophe, One is dying or

1000
00:51:18,960 --> 00:51:22,719
long dead from catastrophe, and the third Earth continues to

1001
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:27,840
exist seemingly oblivious, perhaps ignoring the clear cosmic warnings embedded

1002
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:28,920
in the fates of its neighbors.

1003
00:51:29,159 --> 00:51:31,960
Speaker 1: We spend so much time and effort searching for aliens,

1004
00:51:32,000 --> 00:51:35,639
for extraterrestrial intelligence, because maybe, deep down we don't want

1005
00:51:35,639 --> 00:51:36,679
to be alone in the universe.

1006
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:38,559
Speaker 2: It's a fundamental human question.

1007
00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:41,079
Speaker 1: But perhaps we've been looking in the wrong place all along.

1008
00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:44,000
Maybe the aliens were here, right here, within our own

1009
00:51:44,079 --> 00:51:47,880
solar system. Maybe they lived on Mars, built monuments, created civilizations,

1010
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:52,239
and then they were gone, annihilated, And the.

1011
00:51:52,199 --> 00:51:55,679
Speaker 2: Face on Mars, if Hogland and others are right, might

1012
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:58,000
not be a natural mesa at all. It might be

1013
00:51:58,079 --> 00:52:00,760
exactly what Jack Kirby imagined in nineteen fifty eight. Their

1014
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:04,719
last message a warning carved in stone for any future

1015
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:07,880
civilization intelligent enough to find it and decipher it.

1016
00:52:07,960 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 1: But we can't read it, or, perhaps more accurately, we

1017
00:52:11,079 --> 00:52:14,760
choose not to. We prefer the comforting explanation of peridolia.

1018
00:52:15,039 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 2: Van Flander and Hogland Brandenburg. They dedicated significant parts of

1019
00:52:19,039 --> 00:52:21,280
their lives trying to tell us what they believed was

1020
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:25,719
the Solar system's real history, a history far more violent, dynamic,

1021
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:29,880
and ultimately destructive than the slow, peaceful accretion model we

1022
00:52:29,960 --> 00:52:35,239
generally accept. Planets, even entire civilizations, don't necessarily last forever.

1023
00:52:35,719 --> 00:52:36,280
Nothing does.

1024
00:52:36,719 --> 00:52:40,800
Speaker 1: Earth sits here, nestled between two worlds, Venus and Mars,

1025
00:52:40,840 --> 00:52:45,440
that bear the undeniable hallmarks of profound cosmic trauma. We

1026
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:49,079
study their ravaged corpses, analyze the scars, and perhaps we

1027
00:52:49,119 --> 00:52:53,159
mistakenly pretend we're somehow different, somehow immune to whatever happened

1028
00:52:53,199 --> 00:52:53,480
to them.

1029
00:52:53,880 --> 00:52:57,519
Speaker 2: But the data, the anomalies, the patterns, the very structure

1030
00:52:57,599 --> 00:53:02,320
of our cosmic neighborhood till a potentially different, more unsettling story.

1031
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:07,000
Venus fell, Mars fell, And the truly disturbing implication, according

1032
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:09,440
to these researchers and their theories, is that maybe some

1033
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:12,480
people within institutions like NASA know this story, or at

1034
00:53:12,559 --> 00:53:13,679
least strongly suspected.

1035
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 1: You think they have the data.

1036
00:53:14,960 --> 00:53:18,000
Speaker 2: They certainly have more data than anyone else. Every mission

1037
00:53:18,039 --> 00:53:21,440
to Mars, these researchers, argue, sends back information that concerns

1038
00:53:21,519 --> 00:53:25,119
or is consistent with this catastrophic history. But the argument goes,

1039
00:53:25,159 --> 00:53:28,280
they keep quiet about the most troubling interpretations. They show

1040
00:53:28,360 --> 00:53:31,639
us the beautiful, often photoshops pictures of red sunsets and

1041
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:33,199
ancient dried up river.

1042
00:53:33,159 --> 00:53:36,159
Speaker 1: Beds, the safe version of Mars exactly.

1043
00:53:36,320 --> 00:53:39,119
Speaker 2: But they don't emphasize the scars that could be interpreted

1044
00:53:39,159 --> 00:53:42,679
as evidence of war, the chemical signatures that might point

1045
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:47,880
to nuclear detonations, the geological dichotomies that suggest planetary catastrophe,

1046
00:53:48,159 --> 00:53:52,159
the potential warnings carved into the landscape itself. The critics

1047
00:53:52,199 --> 00:53:55,119
would say they treat the public like frightened children, that

1048
00:53:55,199 --> 00:53:57,840
they don't think we can handle the harsh reality that

1049
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:00,679
civilizations can die, that planets can be just destroid, that

1050
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:04,400
all things must end, including potentially our own world someday.

1051
00:54:04,480 --> 00:54:06,800
Speaker 1: And maybe maybe they're right, Maybe we can't handle it.

1052
00:54:07,119 --> 00:54:10,440
Speaker 2: That's the uncomfortable question, isn't it If our solar system

1053
00:54:10,519 --> 00:54:15,039
truly bears these undeniable marks of ancient cataclysmic events, And

1054
00:54:15,119 --> 00:54:18,159
if the very structures of our neighboring planets whisper these

1055
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:22,559
terrifying tales of destruction, what does that really say about

1056
00:54:22,599 --> 00:54:26,199
the fragility of life and indeed civilization anywhere in the cosmos?

1057
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:28,239
How common is catastrophe?

1058
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:31,559
Speaker 1: And maybe more importantly, what are we, as individuals and

1059
00:54:31,599 --> 00:54:34,559
as a species truly prepared to know about our own

1060
00:54:34,559 --> 00:54:37,760
cosmic past and our potential future. It's a heavy thought,

1061
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:38,639
it is.

1062
00:54:38,679 --> 00:54:40,760
Speaker 2: Indeed, it forces you to look at our place in

1063
00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:42,079
the universe quite differently.

1064
00:54:42,360 --> 00:54:44,000
Speaker 1: So the next time you look up at the night sky,

1065
00:54:44,119 --> 00:54:46,840
maybe you'll see it not just as distant, serene points

1066
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:50,800
of light, but perhaps as echoes of an incredibly violent history,

1067
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:54,880
and maybe just maybe as a stark, profound reminder of

1068
00:54:54,920 --> 00:54:57,599
our own vulnerability, our own precious place in the grand

1069
00:54:57,639 --> 00:54:59,639
and possibly dangerous cosmic story.