Nothing to say here about the snow, except that it's quite pretty. It was gorgeous yesterday, and today with the clear hard blue sky, the world has a crispness that makes those Maxfield Parrish pictures of winter look like Monet seen through Vaseline-covered glasses. Hope everyone got out of the driveway this morning, if you drove; finding a wall of snow boulders left by the plows is always disconcerting. Especially since the boulders didn't exist a day before. How snow spontaneously generates boulders is one of those things beyond my ken, but I'm not a science guy. As we'll soon find out.

SCIENCE! My Zite app knows I like UFO stories, so it kicks up all kind of breathless nonsense. This is a perfect example of the sort of thing that passes for SCOOPS and BREAKING NEWS in the world of UFOlogy:

It's never a good sign when the link to the study is the generic landing page - almost as if they want to leach some authority from the group without giving the specific page that mocks their claims. Nothing about Phobos is on the list of most-read stories. Instead you have this:

Well. Wiggle-match? You mean the method that uses the non-linear relationship between 14C age and calendar age to match the shape of a series of closely sequentially spaced 14C dates with the 14C calibration curve? I think that goes without saying. The page does have a story about Mars:

They're not kidding. They're immense.

That's a hundred miles wide. It takes a lot of water moving very fast for a long time to do that. But back to Phobos, if you don't mind.

Here the article references one of the most authoritative sources on the matter of hollow celestial objects that are actually spacecraft:

Yes, the article mentions "The World is Hollow, and I Have Touced the Sky," a Star Trek episode. As for that guy, he's Jon Lormer, imdb notes that he has quite an honor:

That doesn't exactly narrow it down, but it's helpful. Anyway, back to the possible reasons Phobos is hollow:

You can put me down for "no" on both.

Oh, come on. Maybe it's this guy's kidney stone!

It's possible! Researchers have placed that on the table! Oh, there's more:

In the world of UFology, that last sentence constitutes proof.

Now, the stuff that really ruins all the delicious talk of conspiracy and aliens and the like: facts. Phobos-Grunt was launched on November 9th 2011, and never made it out of earth orbit. It burned up on re-entry almost a year ago.

In the world of UFology, that last sentence constitutes proof. Even though I found references to the event all over the place, like here.

As for the ESA's report on a hollow Phobos:

Other than that, the story checks out completely. Hey, it could be true, but all these "aliens don't want us to explore Mars" stories look a bit silly after we've dropped another car on the surface. Doesn't mean that Phobos isn't a hollow planet-killing doomsday machine, of course. One can always hope.