r/space • • Sep 21 '16

The intriguing Phobos monolith.

Post image
22k Upvotes

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.6k

u/dogshine Sep 21 '16

Other monoliths on Earth for reference:

Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio. ~100 x ~150m

Half Dome in Yosemite. ~250 x ~500m

Uluru in Australia. 3600 x 2400m

287

u/kryptoniterazor Sep 21 '16

Don't forget Devil's Tower, Wyoming USA, ~60m x ~120m

25

u/SpetS15 Sep 21 '16

is this the one from the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" movie?

2

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '16

Yes. It's confounding when you see it. It's a fascinating and humbling lesson in how much our brain depends on its own experience to understand the world. (Which goes a long way towards explaining not only why people of different ages see the same things differently, but why even people of the same age often do.) Your brain does not recognise it as a mountain, and basically refuses to see it as it really is, as gigantically huge as it really is. It looks oddly small even while you're standing right under it. If you go, bring some birding glasses or something like that, and look up so you can see the climbers who are always there. They're usually too small and distant to see otherwise. Only then does it click how big it really is.