Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In it's Saturday,
Speaker 1: We're going into the vault. This episode originally aired on
Speaker 1: March and it is the sequel to the one that
Speaker 1: ran last Saturday. This is Jupiter the Destroyer, Part two.
Speaker 1: Ready yourself, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back with part two of our discussion of
Speaker 1: Jupiter the Destroyer. In the last episode, we ended up
Speaker 1: talking about some of the myths of Zeus and Jupiter,
Speaker 1: Zeus's war against the Titans, and how that related to
Speaker 1: some ideas in astrophysics about how an early forming Jupiter
Speaker 1: in the solar nebula of our of our young Solar
Speaker 1: system may have played a very important role in the
Speaker 1: destruction of early forming super Earth's in the inner Solar System,
Speaker 1: leading to or clearing the way for the eventual creation
Speaker 1: of rocky planets like the Earth we live on today.
Speaker 1: So that last episode was kind of it was kind
Speaker 1: of a mash up we had we had some planetary science,
Speaker 1: we had some mythology. It's like we had two turntables
Speaker 1: and uh, and we had two different records and we
Speaker 1: kind of mixed and mashed them both. Uh. So we're
Speaker 1: we're kind of like your DJs. We well, we we're
Speaker 1: your hosts, except no substitutes. Uh. And we're gonna have
Speaker 1: more of the same in this episode. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: plenty of planetary science, but we're also gonna have mythology.
Speaker 1: So uh, if you love both, stay tuned, because you're
Speaker 1: gonna get everything you love. If you lean more towards
Speaker 1: one direction of the other, well it's still hang on
Speaker 1: because we're gonna take you on a ride. But if
Speaker 1: you're only interested in when we talk about the Texas
Speaker 1: Chainsaw Massacre movies and stick around anyway because who knows
Speaker 1: what will come up. Well that that movie also is
Speaker 1: astronomical in its own wise, that's true. So maybe I
Speaker 1: thought we should start just by doing a brief refresher
Speaker 1: on one of the studies we talked about in the
Speaker 1: last episode, because it kind of ties into some of
Speaker 1: the stuff I'm going to talk about right after. Um. So,
Speaker 1: one of the studies we looked at last time was
Speaker 1: published in in p N A. S. And it was
Speaker 1: by Constantine Batigan and Greg Laughlin, and it's called Jupiter's
Speaker 1: Decisive Role in the Inner Solar System's early evolution. And
Speaker 1: the rough outline is that the authors here argue that
Speaker 1: they put together a simulation that assumes a version of
Speaker 1: what's known as the Grand tax scenario, and that's where
Speaker 1: in the early solar nebulas, So when the Solar system
Speaker 1: is first forming, it's this big disc of gas and
Speaker 1: dust all swirling around this newly forming Sun. When that's
Speaker 1: going on, a young Jupiter migrated from somewhere around five
Speaker 1: astronomical units out in radius from the Sun into about
Speaker 1: one point five astronomical units and then reversed course and
Speaker 1: went back out to a larger orbital radius when it
Speaker 1: was pulled outward by the gravitational influence of Saturn. And
Speaker 1: the authors here right quote, we proposed that the primordial
Speaker 1: nebula driven process responsible for retention of Jupiter and Saturn
Speaker 1: at large orbital radii and sculpting Mars low mass, is
Speaker 1: also responsible for clearing out the Solar systems innermost region. So,
Speaker 1: like we talked about last time, this would be wiping
Speaker 1: out these early forming super Earth's or mini Neptunes that
Speaker 1: were forming near the Sun and thus making room and
Speaker 1: freeing up some materials for rocky planets like Earth and
Speaker 1: Venus to form. And if you remember the details we
Speaker 1: talked about last time, this would have happened according to
Speaker 1: these authors here via a what they call a collisional cascade.
Speaker 1: So Jupiter's inward migration would hurl all of these planetesimals
Speaker 1: into um what they call mean motion resonances low order
Speaker 1: mean motion residences, shepherd ng and exciting their orbits, so
Speaker 1: basically just causing chaos in the inner Solar System where
Speaker 1: things would smash into each other and then ultimately spiral
Speaker 1: into the Sun and be vaporized down there in the
Speaker 1: bottom of the Solar System. And then finally, they write,
Speaker 1: in this scenario, the Solar systems terrestrial planets formed from
Speaker 1: the gas starved mass depleted debris that remained after the
Speaker 1: primary period of dynamical evolution. So under this scenario, it
Speaker 1: is the gravitational influence from a coalescing Saturn that finally
Speaker 1: pulls Jupiter back out of the fray back into the
Speaker 1: outer Solar System. But I wanted to think about another
Speaker 1: way that gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, or like
Speaker 1: if you imagine another solar system somewhere else in the galaxy,
Speaker 1: multiple jupiters can interact with one another in catastrophic ways
Speaker 1: that have major influence on the other planets in that
Speaker 1: star system. Because going to the mythological analogy, one Zeus
Speaker 1: or one Jupiter is bad enough. Got a couple, you
Speaker 1: you're really running into trouble. Wow, they're not going to
Speaker 1: tolerate each other, that's right, though, it is funny that
Speaker 1: literally in our Solar system, if you look at the
Speaker 1: mythological counterparts of the three the first three outer planets
Speaker 1: you get to after the asteroid belt, you've got Jupiter,
Speaker 1: you got Saturn, and then you got Uranas and there
Speaker 1: if you look at their mythological counterparts, each one ascending
Speaker 1: out there is the father of the other who was
Speaker 1: defeated by the Sun. So Jupiter or Zeus defeated Chronus,
Speaker 1: which is Saturn, and dethroned him, throw him into Tartarus.
Speaker 1: But Chronus previously the Titan had defeated Uranos or Uranus
Speaker 1: by castrating him and throwing his genitals into the ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like if you've been to thrown, you get pushed
Speaker 1: further out of the solar hierarchy. Yeah, I guess so. Now,
Speaker 1: now that's an interesting question, which is more like Tartarus
Speaker 1: being cast into the sun like these early super earths
Speaker 1: may have been, or being cast farther out into a
Speaker 1: greater orbital radius where you're you're very cold and very
Speaker 1: lone lee. I guess I go with the cold and
Speaker 1: lonely uh interpretation more again, just in terms of thinking
Speaker 1: about what mythological punishments would be, like I tend to imagine, uh,
Speaker 1: the prison of the Titans as being cold and lonesome.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I wanted to, uh now now talk about
Speaker 1: the idea of Jupiter's going eccentric, and uh, usually the
Speaker 1: word eccentric, how do we use that? We use the
Speaker 1: word eccentric to mean weird, but in kind of a
Speaker 1: harmless way, like it's the nice version of weird, or
Speaker 1: the or the at least the rich version of weird,
Speaker 1: right right, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know exactly what
Speaker 1: you mean by that. But now in this case, this
Speaker 1: would be uh eccentric in a way that is that
Speaker 1: is not at all harmless and potentially could be world ending.
Speaker 1: Uh So I wanted to look at a blog post
Speaker 1: by an American astrophysicist living in France named Sean Raymond,
Speaker 1: who I wanted to bring this up because I think
Speaker 1: reading his blog on his website was one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I ended up wanting to do this pair of
Speaker 1: episodes about Jupiter. I was originally reading his website because
Speaker 1: he was one of the authors of a study about
Speaker 1: moons of moons that I talked about for an episode
Speaker 1: of The Artifact, where I was saying like, like, how
Speaker 1: many levels of orbits can you go down? You know,
Speaker 1: the the so the our our Sun orbits the center
Speaker 1: of the Milky Way galaxy, and then the Earth orbits
Speaker 1: the Sun, and then the moon orbits the Earth. But
Speaker 1: could the moon have its own moon? And it turns
Speaker 1: out the answer is yes, there's nothing in physics that
Speaker 1: prevents moons from having moons. But of course, every every
Speaker 1: step you go down that ladder of orbits within orbits,
Speaker 1: the maximum size of the orbiting object gets smaller and smaller,
Speaker 1: And if you include really small stuff, I think moons
Speaker 1: of moons can have moons. But anyway, through that, I
Speaker 1: ended up reading some posts on this guy's website. So
Speaker 1: he's a professor of astrophysics at the University of Bordeaux
Speaker 1: in France, and his blog is fun. He he sometimes
Speaker 1: like writes poems about astrophysics, and that's weird stuff on there.
Speaker 1: But there was this one post that I thought was
Speaker 1: really interesting and got me thinking about this topic and
Speaker 1: reading other stuff about it. And it was a post
Speaker 1: called how planets die when good Jupiters go bad? And
Speaker 1: the gist of this post here is about how planets
Speaker 1: like Jupiter have the potential to destroy the solar systems
Speaker 1: that they dwell within and in other planetary systems around
Speaker 1: other stars in the galaxy. There is evidence that gas
Speaker 1: giants like Jupiter have indeed already destroyed other planets in
Speaker 1: in their solar systems. Uh Now, of course, as we
Speaker 1: talked about in the last episode, Jupiter is the largest
Speaker 1: planet in our Solar system. It's more than three hundred
Speaker 1: times more massive than Earth. What was it was like
Speaker 1: three hundred and seventeen times as massive as Earth or something,
Speaker 1: I mean, just huge. And of course the Sun is
Speaker 1: the largest gravitational influence in our Solar system, but Jupiter
Speaker 1: is second in that regard, and Jupiter has more effects
Speaker 1: on what happens to the rest of the objects in
Speaker 1: the Solar System. Then you might imagine Raymond talks about
Speaker 1: some stuff that we didn't really get into in the
Speaker 1: last episode. Like one of the things he mentions is
Speaker 1: that Jupiter probably would have blocked large icy bodies from
Speaker 1: the outer Solar System from invading the inner Solar System
Speaker 1: when the Solar System was first forming. It would have
Speaker 1: cleared this large gap in the solar nebula disc that
Speaker 1: was forming around the early Sun uh and with its
Speaker 1: gravity it would prevent large icy objects from migrating inwards.
Speaker 1: Of course, we already talked about that Batigan and Laughlin
Speaker 1: idea that if it's correct, during Jupiter's Grand tach or
Speaker 1: the movement in and then out again UH, it would
Speaker 1: have had these catastrophic implications for early forming super Earth's
Speaker 1: or many neptunes close to the Sun through this collisional
Speaker 1: cascade uh and would have allowed small rocky planets like
Speaker 1: Earth to take shape in the aftermath. But Jupiter also
Speaker 1: we should remember, and this is one thing we're gonna
Speaker 1: look at in several different ways today. Jupiter plays a
Speaker 1: major role in influencing what kinds of space objects crash
Speaker 1: into Earth and at what rate and at what velocity, Because,
Speaker 1: to read from Raymond here quote, Jupiter's gravity determines how
Speaker 1: comets enter the Inner Solar System and how long they
Speaker 1: spend near the planets with the potential to crash into
Speaker 1: Earth before launching them into interstellar space. And this has
Speaker 1: implications both ways. So it means that Jupiter can act
Speaker 1: as a kind of destroyer, flinging objects in our direction
Speaker 1: in a dangerous way. But Jupiter can also act as
Speaker 1: a kind of protector, shepherding objects away from Earth and
Speaker 1: keeping us safe. And so Jupiter's effect on the movements
Speaker 1: of space objects in the Inner Solar System, like asteroids
Speaker 1: and especially comets, I think will have powerful effects on
Speaker 1: things like the water contents of Earth and the biological
Speaker 1: development of Earth, which will come back to as we
Speaker 1: go on. But coming back to the idea of eccentric
Speaker 1: jupiters now, I mentioned in the last episode that sometimes
Speaker 1: when we look out at other stars in our galaxy,
Speaker 1: we can see that they have large exoplanets, large gas
Speaker 1: giants in very eccentric orbits. The orbits of most of
Speaker 1: the planets in our Solar System are nearly circular. They're
Speaker 1: not perfectly circular, but they're pretty close. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: roughly circular. If you look at the orbit of some comets, though,
Speaker 1: it is a completely different story. There are comets that
Speaker 1: orbit the Sun in these incredibly squashed, squeezed out oval trajectories. Uh.
Speaker 1: And these orbits that deviate from near circularity are called eccentric.
Speaker 1: And of course the more squashed out they get, the
Speaker 1: more highly eccentric they are. So if you're trying to
Speaker 1: picture it, you can think of a more eccentric orbit
Speaker 1: is like a rubber band being stretched out instead of
Speaker 1: allowed to just like sit slack in a circle. And
Speaker 1: in fact, exoplanet research reveals that around other ours in
Speaker 1: the galaxy there are gas giants like Jupiter that have
Speaker 1: orbits more like these comets. So imagine a Jupiter or
Speaker 1: a Saturn with a highly eccentric orbit more like a
Speaker 1: stretched out rubber band. These types of planets exist, and
Speaker 1: the question is, well, how does that happen? Well, Raymond
Speaker 1: discusses one way, when gas giants act upon one another
Speaker 1: in dangerous ways. So large gas giants exert gravitational influence
Speaker 1: not only on comets, not only on the moons that
Speaker 1: orbit them, but also on one another. You know, if
Speaker 1: you have like two jupiters orbiting a star, they will
Speaker 1: have influence on the paths that they each take. Uh.
Speaker 1: Remember thinking again about the way that a Saturn may
Speaker 1: have pulled Jupiter back out of the inner Solar System
Speaker 1: according to the Grand Tach hypothesis. So if you have
Speaker 1: two gas giants that are affecting one another gravitationally, it
Speaker 1: can throw their orbits off course. And sometimes these gravitational
Speaker 1: interactions can even put them into orbital patterns, uh, such
Speaker 1: that one gas giant gets gravitationally ejected out of the
Speaker 1: Solar System by the gravitational influence of the other. Like
Speaker 1: it does sort of a gravity sling shot like we
Speaker 1: might do with a with one of our space probes,
Speaker 1: but on a planet, and just like throws it way
Speaker 1: out of there, and then the other one remains, but
Speaker 1: in this stretched out eccentric orbit. And as you might
Speaker 1: well imagine, these gravitational disturbances in the orbits of gas
Speaker 1: giants can have horrible effects on the planets nearby. So
Speaker 1: if there are earthlike inner planets in one of these scenarios,
Speaker 1: they tend to get cast into the pit of Tartarus. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this could actually this could be either of the
Speaker 1: Tartarus scenarios we were talking about earlier in the in
Speaker 1: the closest thing to a literal sense, right, They either
Speaker 1: get cast way out into nowhere, into space, or they
Speaker 1: get thrown into the Sun or destroyed by collisions, possibly
Speaker 1: with gas giants themselves or with other rocky planets or planetestimals,
Speaker 1: and then those the debris from those collisions can spiral
Speaker 1: into the Sun, or they get ejected and then just
Speaker 1: plunge forever into the void. Yeah, it's the thing about
Speaker 1: the Amokies. They tend to they tend to throughout the
Speaker 1: old order in place it was something new. You know.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of one of the possible explanations for
Speaker 1: Umu Mua, that object, interstellar object that we did a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes about that. Some people, I think, probably
Speaker 1: very prematurely, we're trying to say it was an alien probe,
Speaker 1: and I don't think there's good evidence of that. But
Speaker 1: one of the ideas about what this object probably is
Speaker 1: because it had strange characteristics, like it's kind of elongated
Speaker 1: and seemed to be moving in a kind of tumbling motion.
Speaker 1: One of the ideas is that it is part of
Speaker 1: an object that was destroyed or rejected from its host
Speaker 1: star system by a gravitational disturbance like this. Now, most
Speaker 1: of the time, when a Jupiter turns murderous, when when Jupiter,
Speaker 1: you know, when when his hand flashes with power, as
Speaker 1: it says in the in has He, it's the agony
Speaker 1: um when a gas giant goes rogue and destroys the
Speaker 1: other planets. Most of the time it happens early in
Speaker 1: the formation of the Solar System, shortly after most of
Speaker 1: the material and the nebula disc is dissipated and absorbed
Speaker 1: by newly forming planets. And the reasoning here is that
Speaker 1: without the stabilizing presence of this cloud like disk, a
Speaker 1: jupiter like planet can start going off the rails very quickly.
Speaker 1: But sometimes a gas giant can turn into the destroyer.
Speaker 1: Its hand can flash with power later in its lifespan,
Speaker 1: for example, if its orbit is disturbed by external influence.
Speaker 1: An example here could be another star passes too close
Speaker 1: to the Solar System and this uh this causes gravitational disturbances,
Speaker 1: throws the orbit of the jupiter like planet off course,
Speaker 1: and then the same thing happens. It just it starts
Speaker 1: this cascading series of effects on the orbits of other planets.
Speaker 1: And you know, many of these inner rocky planets are
Speaker 1: just destroyed, they're they're sent down into the sun on Well,
Speaker 1: you know, if we're to to to draw in comparison
Speaker 1: to maybe not literal the literal mythology, but just sort
Speaker 1: of the nature of mythologies and belief I'm reminded of
Speaker 1: what happens when a foreign um religion or foreign deity
Speaker 1: uh comes too close to an establish religion and deity.
Speaker 1: You know, it can also result in a fair amount
Speaker 1: of disorder uh and a realigning of the order of things. Yes,
Speaker 1: the realignment of a pantheon in the presence of a syncretism.
Speaker 1: Right when we emerge to religions together. If you merge
Speaker 1: to two stars gravity is too close to one another,
Speaker 1: this can definitely realign things and possibly result in a monotheism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: more on that in a bit. So, Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: want to be clear, we're not saying there's any reason
Speaker 1: to think that this is likely to happen to our
Speaker 1: solar system anytime soon like that that that's not the
Speaker 1: implication here, but it is scary to imagine that it
Speaker 1: does sometimes happen around other stars, and at least is
Speaker 1: possible in theory that you know, you can have this
Speaker 1: influence from some kind of external object, another star passes
Speaker 1: too close or something. This can nudge the orbit of
Speaker 1: a previously pretty stable Jupiter like planet, leading to a
Speaker 1: cascade of effects like we just talked about, and then
Speaker 1: the Earth like planets have an appointment with the wicker Man.
Speaker 1: And uh. One interesting thing that Raymond mentions in this
Speaker 1: blog post is he does some rough calculations and guesses
Speaker 1: that about half of the stars in the Milky Way
Speaker 1: galaxy with gas planets have annihilated the rocky planets through
Speaker 1: a process like this. And remember that it's much more
Speaker 1: likely for to happen early during formation, when when the
Speaker 1: disk is first sorting itself out, but it can, in
Speaker 1: some rare cases happen later. And I guess this all
Speaker 1: comes down to the fact that we have a Jupiter
Speaker 1: and we still exist. So it looks like in in
Speaker 1: some sense we're one of the lucky ones. But it's
Speaker 1: also true that the influence of Jupiter or gas giants
Speaker 1: in general, especially Jupiter in our case, doesn't stop there.
Speaker 1: I mean the influence on Jupiter on the history of
Speaker 1: the planet Earth appears to be pervasive. I was looking
Speaker 1: at one study by A. Lisa V. Quintana, Thomas Barclay,
Speaker 1: William J. Baruki, Jason f Row, and Johnny Chambers from
Speaker 1: the Astrophysical Journal called the Frequency of Giant Impacts on
Speaker 1: Earthlike Worlds, and I was reading some write ups of this,
Speaker 1: and basically, these researchers did some simulations of what happens
Speaker 1: in different types of Solar System configurations where you have
Speaker 1: a Jupiter present, or where you don't have a Jupiter present,
Speaker 1: where you have multiple jupiters, and their simulations revealed that
Speaker 1: in general, gas giants like Jupiter have complicated effects on
Speaker 1: rocky inner planets like Earth. So young Jupiter, they think,
Speaker 1: probably flung material into the cores of newly forming rocky
Speaker 1: planets when the Solar System was young, and this would
Speaker 1: have helped planets like Earth come together faster than rocky
Speaker 1: planets in the Solar System without a nearby gas giant.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, by hoarding materials to themselves,
Speaker 1: gas giants limit the number of rocky planets that form
Speaker 1: around a star. So if you have a star without
Speaker 1: a planet like Jupiter, it can have way more rocky
Speaker 1: planets out there. Um. And then if you don't have
Speaker 1: any nearby gas giants, young rocky planets are subjected to
Speaker 1: a much longer period of early bombardment where they're just
Speaker 1: constantly being hit with impacts from space by smaller objects
Speaker 1: from the solar nebula cloud. And a planet like Jupiter
Speaker 1: makes that cloud disappear faster and thus makes the early
Speaker 1: bombardment period last a shorter span of time. But then again,
Speaker 1: you can also look at ways that a planet like
Speaker 1: Jupiter ends up accelerating larger objects like comets into the
Speaker 1: inner Solar System and controlling how long they stay there
Speaker 1: in the Inner Solar System. Uh. And of course those
Speaker 1: things can lead to impacts later on down the line
Speaker 1: that a act Earth life. So Jupiter is once again
Speaker 1: sort of protecting and attacking in tandem. Yeah. I guess
Speaker 1: the relationships between humans and gods that they tend to
Speaker 1: be a little bit unhealthy. But then again, I mean
Speaker 1: there there are reasons. I guess what we've gone through
Speaker 1: here kind of uh, you know, justifies the ways of
Speaker 1: God demand uh to some extent than well, Rob I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but I am ready to mount
Speaker 1: an apologia for Jupiter pluvious. Yeah, let's do it. Let's
Speaker 1: let's talk Jupiter the god a bit more. Um Again,
Speaker 1: I think this comparison between planet Jupiter and the god
Speaker 1: Jupiter is is increasingly apt the more you look at it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in this episode, we're talking a good deal and
Speaker 1: we're still talking about Jupiter the destroyer and Jupiter um
Speaker 1: of of passionate lashing out against a humanity. But but
Speaker 1: also Jupiter the protector, Jupiter the Lord of Earth, because
Speaker 1: he enforces his order upon it and he is in
Speaker 1: many ways its protector. And he was also expressly stated
Speaker 1: to be the protector of the Roman state. The White
Speaker 1: Ox was his favorite sacrifice, and it could afford an
Speaker 1: entire year's protection uh from the Lord of the gods. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he probably took this sort of thing seriously, seeing
Speaker 1: as how he was also the god of oaths and treaties.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a rules Yeah. Yeah, so you know
Speaker 1: he's lawful. Whatever else he is, he's he's lawful. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I was, well, maybe he's the emblem of lawfulness
Speaker 1: to others. I don't know, does he have to follow
Speaker 1: the laws himself. Well, I mean he's he's in. It's
Speaker 1: here in a tough spot, like if you can't, who
Speaker 1: are you going to report him to write? Uh? I
Speaker 1: was reading the Imperial Ideology of Rome and the Principalities
Speaker 1: and Powers in Romans eight thirty one through thirty nine
Speaker 1: by Sun Cho Hong in scripture and interpretation from two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and Home points that imperial Roman propaganda
Speaker 1: expressly stated that the safety of the entire human race
Speaker 1: lay in the hands of mighty Jupiter. And this is
Speaker 1: the point pressed by Cicero, among others. And I believe
Speaker 1: in the particularly in on the ends of Good and Evil.
Speaker 1: I want to read a quote here from it, uh,
Speaker 1: And this is not I want to stress that Cicero
Speaker 1: goes into a lot more detail about all this, and
Speaker 1: he's he's crafting a much greater point, uh than this.
Speaker 1: This is just a fragment. But he does a right
Speaker 1: or he does say. Quote, when we call Jupiter all
Speaker 1: powerful and all good, and likewise, when we speak of
Speaker 1: him as the salutary God, the hospitable God, or as state,
Speaker 1: or we mean it to be understood that the safety
Speaker 1: of men is under his protection This reminds me of
Speaker 1: like when when presidents of the United States will say, like,
Speaker 1: the president's first responsibility is to keep America safe. This
Speaker 1: seems like a very close analogy. It's just like, first
Speaker 1: of all, I am, I am the daddy, and it
Speaker 1: is it is all protection from me. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: seems to be again Cicero's saying all other things in
Speaker 1: this work, uh, I mean additional things, but this seems
Speaker 1: to be like a major talking point for just Roman
Speaker 1: propaganda in general. But so there's the thing that's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting about Jupiter that I think we would recognize
Speaker 1: as commons say in like Indian religion, uh, that gods
Speaker 1: can have multiple manifestations or faces. Yes to the Romans
Speaker 1: didn't exactly have one Jupiter. They had multiple aspects of Jupiter.
Speaker 1: Now sometimes these are referred to more as uh as epithets,
Speaker 1: you know, just a just different descriptions of of Jupiter.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, I think the line between the two, you know,
Speaker 1: you can see where it enters a gray area, Like
Speaker 1: if you're just describing different properties of the same being,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's only a short hop and a
Speaker 1: jump to having different uh different you know beings entirely,
Speaker 1: you know, in the Christian tradition, you see, you see
Speaker 1: some of this right because on one hand, and you
Speaker 1: it's what you can talk about like God the Father,
Speaker 1: and you can talk about like different divisions of the
Speaker 1: same being. But on the other hand, you see throughout
Speaker 1: you know, Christian history a a tendency to want to say,
Speaker 1: focus on, say that the feminine aspects of Christ uh
Speaker 1: in you know, certainly in in visual representation, but also
Speaker 1: then embodying different ideas of what Christ was. And then
Speaker 1: that maybe um stamped down out of fear of heresy,
Speaker 1: the idea that if people keep going in this direction,
Speaker 1: it will butt off into an alternative Jesus. So you
Speaker 1: can you can tell how how the sort of thing
Speaker 1: can lead to the division um. Even at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like saying, okay, we have all these
Speaker 1: instead of having just a dozen gods, we could have
Speaker 1: maybe have um. We could you know, still have other gods,
Speaker 1: but we could also have just like a dozen different
Speaker 1: versions or different um incarnations of the same being. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of what you see with Jupiter here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Romans had an idea of what we now call superstition,
Speaker 1: you know, that comes from a Roman idea meaning basically
Speaker 1: being too religious, because picking up off what you were
Speaker 1: just saying, there is a pattern I think throughout the
Speaker 1: religions of the world where when people get incredibly invested
Speaker 1: in their religion, like very passionate about it, they are
Speaker 1: prone more often too too religious innovation, and religious innovation
Speaker 1: can lead to you know, you start really focusing on
Speaker 1: maybe one aspect of an existing God or something, maybe
Speaker 1: that becomes a new God, and then you've got a
Speaker 1: new cult, and that that new cult could maybe undermine
Speaker 1: things that came before. Now, there was in the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: while the Romans were incredibly tyrannical, there was a kind
Speaker 1: of weird religious pluralism there where there there could you know,
Speaker 1: you could have a lot of different kinds of religious
Speaker 1: beliefs in the Roman Empire and it would be mostly
Speaker 1: okay as long as you weren't causing trouble. But there's
Speaker 1: always I think a certain fear of religious innovation stemming
Speaker 1: from too much interpretive interest in the nature of God's
Speaker 1: in religious matter is among the existing religious authorities. That
Speaker 1: makes sense, Yeah, yeah, totally. Um so, so I know
Speaker 1: I was reading all this, it didn't it did raise
Speaker 1: an interesting question for me, like, given all these different
Speaker 1: aspects of Jupiter, and I'll get into what they are
Speaker 1: here in in a minute. Uh, you know the fact
Speaker 1: that Jupiter had his own priests and that Romans tended
Speaker 1: towards syncretism, which we already mentioned. This is the combining
Speaker 1: of different theological ideas, like instead of hearing about a
Speaker 1: new God, uh, for instance, in a territory that you
Speaker 1: have absorbed into your empire, instead of saying, okay, that
Speaker 1: God's out. Wait whatever you're doing to that God, forget it,
Speaker 1: instead saying, well, actually that God is part of our pantheon,
Speaker 1: or that God is actually Jupiter, that sort of thing. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I look at the way that the Romans
Speaker 1: essentially just adopted almost wholesale, originally the mythology of the Greeks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so given given this, and given that the situation
Speaker 1: with the different aspects of Jupiter, um, I was wanting
Speaker 1: do do we see in this at least a movement
Speaker 1: toward monotheis him, Because that, of course is one of
Speaker 1: the things about the Roman Empire is that it eventually
Speaker 1: it becomes a Christian empire. There's this movement towards monotheistic
Speaker 1: Christian belief. Well, I don't know if this helps with
Speaker 1: the point you're developing. But the but the secular biblical
Speaker 1: historian Bart Irman, who's a previous guest on the show,
Speaker 1: he was on the show last year. He's got a
Speaker 1: book about why Christianity eventually overtook the Roman Empire and UH,
Speaker 1: and his theory on that, which seems very reasonable to me,
Speaker 1: is that the main thing going for Christianity is that,
Speaker 1: unlike all of the other religions in the Roman Empire
Speaker 1: at the time, or most of the other religions in
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire at the time, Christianity was evangelical and
Speaker 1: it was exclusive, so they were trying to convert people
Speaker 1: to it. And unlike the existing Roman religions, you couldn't
Speaker 1: add other gods into Christianity, or you weren't supposed to.
Speaker 1: I mean, some people probably did, but mostly Christians were
Speaker 1: preaching that no, once you're a Christian, you can only
Speaker 1: believe in Jesus and you have to forget all these
Speaker 1: other gods. And over time those dynamics led to effects
Speaker 1: where Christianity would just grow and grow and it would
Speaker 1: push out because every new Christian wasn't just like a
Speaker 1: pagan adopting one additional god. But now like they weren't
Speaker 1: a pagan anymore that you want, you weren't to lay
Speaker 1: allowed to keep your old gods as well, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think even though if we're looking at this,
Speaker 1: we're thinking, okay, you're you're going to the temple that's
Speaker 1: just to Jupiter. You're worshiping Jupiter, maybe in different aspects,
Speaker 1: but you're you're you're pretty much focusing on him. Even
Speaker 1: if you did not worship any of the other gods
Speaker 1: in the Roman pantheon, that wouldn't be monotheism. That would
Speaker 1: be what is called hino theism, which is the adherence
Speaker 1: to one particular god out of many. So saying like, yeah,
Speaker 1: all these other gods they're they're fine, they exist, but
Speaker 1: this is my guy, this is my gal. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that that was common in the Roman Empire, that you
Speaker 1: believe in the other gods, and you would maybe respect
Speaker 1: the other gods, but you might have like a personal
Speaker 1: favorite god who you were really devoted to. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: even in that work on a Sistero that I was
Speaker 1: quoting earlier, Um, he's he's mentioning adherence to Jupiter, but
Speaker 1: he's also in the same work mentioning adherence to smaller
Speaker 1: household gods. So yeah, you can you can see that
Speaker 1: if if suddenly you're like, no, you can't keep your
Speaker 1: household gods, you have to pretty much abandon the old way,
Speaker 1: uh and and and take to this new one. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to cut off the other gods
Speaker 1: from your life. I could see that being maybe something
Speaker 1: that keeps you from drifting back into another one. Sure.
Speaker 1: Like like if you if you have to get this
Speaker 1: new video game and you have to throw out all
Speaker 1: your other video games, well, if you get bored with
Speaker 1: the new one, you're not going to go back to
Speaker 1: the old ones because they're not in the house anymore. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you only got one game. Now you get bored
Speaker 1: with it. What you start doing is looking for glitches
Speaker 1: in the game to exploit and start trying to break
Speaker 1: the physics, which you could look at it for in
Speaker 1: religious point of view. You start maybe innovating how the
Speaker 1: religion works, thinking about maybe I've received a new vision
Speaker 1: that tells me that the priests don't have it exactly right.
Speaker 1: This is the version. Yeah, yeah, new new fan theories
Speaker 1: about exactly what what Mario means to the franchise, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Now I was I was looking around about at this
Speaker 1: about this question of of monotheism and polytheis him in
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire? And uh, there's an interesting sounding book.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're familiar with this author, but
Speaker 1: it came It was by Stephen Mitchell, who I think
Speaker 1: has done a lot of work in religion and involved
Speaker 1: in some translations of various works such as the Guita.
Speaker 1: But he has this book called One God, Pagan Monotheism
Speaker 1: in the Roman Empire, and it discusses the complexity of
Speaker 1: the shift from polytheism to monotheism, but also it deals
Speaker 1: with this idea of quote pagan monotheism. And apparently historians
Speaker 1: have some historians have considered the various Roman cults to
Speaker 1: be something we might interpret as monotheistic structures. Um, so
Speaker 1: this kind of thing might be worth a deeper dive
Speaker 1: in a later episode, because it's apparently it's not a
Speaker 1: cut and dry issue. Rob. I was just trying to
Speaker 1: look up and figure out I'm not quite sure the answer.
Speaker 1: If this is the same Stephen Mitchell who did one
Speaker 1: of my favorite poetry translations A translation of Rainner Maria
Speaker 1: Rilka's Archaic Torso of Apollo into English. It's uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever read this. His translation is
Speaker 1: the version that ends an English thing for here there
Speaker 1: is no place that does not see you. You must
Speaker 1: change your life. Oh wow, No, I don't think I've
Speaker 1: read that, but but it it might bob be him.
Speaker 1: It looks like he's He was involved in a number
Speaker 1: of translations and adaptations, including like the Guida, but also
Speaker 1: like the Iliad. Uh, you know various some some Chinese
Speaker 1: works in their um you know, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of stuff. Well, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if it's the same Stephen Mitchell, but if so, that
Speaker 1: that's a good translation of that poem Archaic Torso of Apollo,
Speaker 1: you can look up um So. I didn't have time
Speaker 1: to to really dig into this one God book, but
Speaker 1: I just want to read a quick quote that I
Speaker 1: found in it from author Stephen Mitchell on this topic. Quote,
Speaker 1: Pagan polytheis did not individually become monotheist, but through philosophy
Speaker 1: and the comparing of religious ideas, by adopting and inventing
Speaker 1: new cults and learning how to individualize and express religious experience.
Speaker 1: They transformed ancient religion into a terrain of human experience
Speaker 1: where much, including monotheism, was possible. Oh that's interesting looking
Speaker 1: at the possibility that a trend towards monotheism could actually
Speaker 1: emerge from the kind of commerce of religious ideas that
Speaker 1: you would have in a very uh pluralistic, multicultural empire. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of gets back to the point where you
Speaker 1: were you're mentioning earlier. So let's get into some of
Speaker 1: these aspects of Jupiter, these different Jupiter sub brands, if
Speaker 1: you will, that were available under the Roman Empire. Uh
Speaker 1: so um. In addition to sense of the sources I
Speaker 1: mentioned already, I was also looking at aspects of Jupiter
Speaker 1: on Coins of the Roman Mint by Philip V. Hill
Speaker 1: from this is from nineteen sixty. But this one, this
Speaker 1: particular article is one that dealt more exclusively with aspects
Speaker 1: of Jupiter has represented on coins, um, which is also
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. So let's start with Jupiter stature, who we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. That's that's who Cistero is referring to. And
Speaker 1: this is he who stays panic in battle. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is uh, this is Jupiter depicted with a scepter and
Speaker 1: a thunderbolt. And this is the Jupiter that gives you courage,
Speaker 1: that gives you resolved to not be crushed by fear. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it stays panic means like holds back panic, not
Speaker 1: like he keeps you panicked right right now. So so
Speaker 1: that's obviously a big one. You know what, what one
Speaker 1: of the reasons to appeal to a god is like
Speaker 1: for strength, right, Like give me that strength, give me
Speaker 1: the resolve to to not run away, especially if you're
Speaker 1: dealing with a warring empire. Likewise, along those lines, another
Speaker 1: big one was Jupiter Victor, the giver of victory, depicted
Speaker 1: it as seated and holding a statue all victory and
Speaker 1: a scepter or spear. This was especially prominent on coins,
Speaker 1: and then it might be invoked. This version of Jupiter
Speaker 1: might be invoked either celebrate an actual victory that occurred
Speaker 1: or in anticipation of an upcoming victory. So this is
Speaker 1: Jupiter the conqueror, Jupiter what is best in life? Right? Yes?
Speaker 1: What to crush the Titans see them driven before you
Speaker 1: hear their lamentations from Tartarus. Yeah, but of course the
Speaker 1: Jupiter I mean, presumably God also has to govern, and
Speaker 1: certainly the Roman Empire would have realized that as well.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to conquer, but then you need to
Speaker 1: hold your territory. And that's where the next aspect comes
Speaker 1: in Jupiter conservator. Uh, this is a Jupiter that holds
Speaker 1: a thunderbolt, but he's holding it above the image of
Speaker 1: the Roman emperor, so he's kind of a preserver of rule.
Speaker 1: That's a kind of a halo concept. I think, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like saying, like the will of Jupiter resonates through
Speaker 1: the emperor, and he was the one who rules over
Speaker 1: these lands. Now one of the big ones is Jupiter
Speaker 1: Optimus Maximus or Jupiter Optimus Maximus capital Linus. And this
Speaker 1: is the most powerful aspect of Jupiter, all powerful as such,
Speaker 1: the temple of Jupiter optimist Maximus was the most important
Speaker 1: temple in ancient Rome, local gated on Capitol Line Hill. Now,
Speaker 1: some other versions you had Jupiter full gore. This is
Speaker 1: the lightning Jupiter, but not passively so like Jupiter often
Speaker 1: has lightning, but this is like Jupiter with the aggressive stance,
Speaker 1: like he's going to smite you, gonna hurl the thunderbolt
Speaker 1: for some reason when you said that I pictured not Jupiter,
Speaker 1: but I guess uh, an analog to Jupiter Marduke holding
Speaker 1: holding this. Yeah, that's the famous image, but Marduke is
Speaker 1: often pictured in kind of a fighting stance from the side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one that was referred to as a Jupiter Dolicinus.
Speaker 1: And this was the focus of a Roman mystery cult,
Speaker 1: originally a local hit tight hurry and god of fertility
Speaker 1: and thunder. So here we see an example of of
Speaker 1: of the of Romans combining ideas. Another deity from another
Speaker 1: land is taken in and becomes an aspect of Jupiter.
Speaker 1: Then you have a Jupiter ruminus. This is the breast
Speaker 1: feeder of all life. And then as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: Jupiter pluvious. This is this cinder of rain. In times
Speaker 1: of drought, special sacrifices were made in the name of
Speaker 1: Jupiter Pluvius, and these were called aquilsum. Uh. So this
Speaker 1: is where we're getting back to consideration of not only
Speaker 1: the mythic Jupiter, but but the the Jupiter the planet
Speaker 1: as well. Uh. The idea of Jupiter as as he
Speaker 1: who delivers the rain, he who delivers the water. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so we already talked about some ways that Jupiter
Speaker 1: has has influenced what kind of stuff smashed into the
Speaker 1: the forming and then the early Earth to determine its composition,
Speaker 1: what size it would grow to, and what was on
Speaker 1: its surface and what kind of volatiles it had in
Speaker 1: terms of an atmosphere and possibly surface water. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: and so in this I mean, we're still talking about
Speaker 1: the planet Jupiter pelting the rocky planets with stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's still ultimately a violent relationship. But but the
Speaker 1: idea here is that is Jupiter is not only throwing thunderbolts. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Jovian bombardments might have included water or would be water,
Speaker 1: specifically hydrogen rich material. And this wind's up locked into
Speaker 1: Earth's crust and mantle and emerges later to bond with
Speaker 1: oxygen to become water. Uh. So one of the sources
Speaker 1: we're looking at with this, as Nola Taylor red article
Speaker 1: for Smithsonian dot com from back in focusing on the
Speaker 1: work of French astronomer Shawn Raymond, who we've already talked about, uh,
Speaker 1: whose models predict this possible gas giant thrown delivery of
Speaker 1: water rich material to the inner planets. Also key is
Speaker 1: the work of andre Isadoro, who along with Raymond, published
Speaker 1: a paper on this in seventeen titled Origin of Water
Speaker 1: in the Inner Solar System. Okay, so what do they argue? Okay?
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that four point five billion
Speaker 1: years ago, the massive center of the and in this
Speaker 1: I'm gonna touch on some stuff we've already gone through.
Speaker 1: But then the massive center of the cloud of gas
Speaker 1: and cosmic dust begins to form into a central star,
Speaker 1: our Sun. But the remaining cloud remained and its contents
Speaker 1: would in time form into the planets. But the water
Speaker 1: rich region of the disc would have been located several
Speaker 1: astronomical units away from the Sun. The temperature in the
Speaker 1: inner region was too high, so that water then ultimately
Speaker 1: has to move back to the inner planets to become
Speaker 1: a part of them so that we can have water
Speaker 1: on Earth. So this would have occurred um between during
Speaker 1: a five to ten million year period between the Sun's
Speaker 1: formation and the dissipation of the gas disc. During this time,
Speaker 1: the gas giants formed, and quote Jupiter's rapid growth gravitationally
Speaker 1: disturbed thousands of water rich planetismals, dislodging them from their
Speaker 1: original orbits. Okay, so we see yet again, Jupiter as
Speaker 1: it's coming together, begins to throw its weight around, it
Speaker 1: exerts gravitational influence, and in this case would have started
Speaker 1: pulling in these uh, these planetesimals, these these objects, you know,
Speaker 1: objects that might be I don't know, asteroid sized or larger,
Speaker 1: that have some kind of water hydrogen content on them,
Speaker 1: and then slamming them into the inner solar system. Right.
Speaker 1: It's it's basically you know, what it reminds me of
Speaker 1: is I don't know if you've seen these sort of
Speaker 1: vaudevillian skits where like you have your your your bad comic,
Speaker 1: you're sort of Fozzy Bear type, and he's on stage,
Speaker 1: he's bombing. I mean, he's just really dogging it up. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so that the audience is of course pelting him
Speaker 1: with fruits and vegetables and he either catches one in
Speaker 1: his mouth and begins to eat it, or catches something
Speaker 1: like catches the carrot and starts eating it. So like
Speaker 1: they're they're pelting and they're engaging in violence, but they're
Speaker 1: throwing nutrients at him and he is like, yes, I
Speaker 1: am hungry, I shall eat that is that's kind of
Speaker 1: the relationship going on here. Um, well, the fozzy bear effect,
Speaker 1: I'm going to call it anyway. UM. I was reading
Speaker 1: some more about this. Um uh Isidoro had provided some
Speaker 1: quotes about this that were used in press really as
Speaker 1: and write ups, in particular one that was on Eureka
Speaker 1: alort dot com. And this is what they said, quote
Speaker 1: in our own Solar system. The model shows that ice
Speaker 1: is from the outer Solar system snowed down on the
Speaker 1: Earth in three waves. The first came as Jupiter swelled up,
Speaker 1: the second was triggered during Saturn's formation, and the third
Speaker 1: would have occurred when Uranus and Neptune migrated inward before
Speaker 1: being blocked by the other two and sent back to
Speaker 1: the outskirts of the Solar system. Ah, and that ties
Speaker 1: into something that I was talking about earlier when I
Speaker 1: was mentioning that blog post by Sean Raymond, one of
Speaker 1: the authors here that the early forming Jupiter, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if he's saying also maybe Saturn too, but
Speaker 1: at least definitely Jupiter and perhaps also Saturn would have
Speaker 1: prevented these icy bodies ran Us in Neptune from migrating
Speaker 1: inward towards the inner Solar system. And messing with the
Speaker 1: planets that were forming down in closer to the Sun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, if you have an all powerful guide
Speaker 1: like Jupiter, one of the things that that they're supposed
Speaker 1: to do is keep keep his dreaded father and grandfather
Speaker 1: from taking over creation again, right, I mean, that's why
Speaker 1: we're putting up with all of this right right now.
Speaker 1: One other neat thing about this that the authors point
Speaker 1: out is that, you know, it might not just be
Speaker 1: a quirk of our own Solar system. It might not
Speaker 1: just be the peculiar peculiar story of of life on
Speaker 1: Earth and life in this system. This could be going
Speaker 1: on anywhere that you have both giant planets and terrestrial planets. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is the sort of thing that if this
Speaker 1: is true, this would be another thing to look for
Speaker 1: in our exoplanet surveys. Look for situations where you have
Speaker 1: like the right proportions and right arrangements of gas giants
Speaker 1: and rocky inner planets where this same bombardment of water
Speaker 1: could happen. Yeah, this is really interesting and uh. And
Speaker 1: of course in the specific case of Earth, it of
Speaker 1: course goes without saying that we couldn't have life on
Speaker 1: Earth without surface. You know, plenty of surface water on Earth.
Speaker 1: So so this is something that uh, if if this
Speaker 1: mottle of the early Solar System is correct, this would
Speaker 1: again be crucial to us being here at all. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Now I've got another thing that, again,
Speaker 1: a an astrophysical theory that, if correct, would be crucial
Speaker 1: for us being here at all. Uh. And this would
Speaker 1: have more to do with the history of life on Earth.
Speaker 1: Once you've already got the rocky planet Earth, and you've
Speaker 1: already got Earth life, what happens to shape the course
Speaker 1: of evolution on the surface of this planet. Well, there
Speaker 1: is a new paper published in uh Nature Scientific Reports
Speaker 1: in one so I think it was just out last month.
Speaker 1: It was in February of this year by I'm here
Speaker 1: Sarage and Abraham Loeb or Avy. Loeb called the breakup
Speaker 1: of a long period comet as the origin of the
Speaker 1: dinosaur extinction. Uh. And so I was briefly reading a
Speaker 1: Harvard gazette right up of of this study. Not gonna
Speaker 1: go super in depth about it, but basically what the
Speaker 1: authors argue here is that Jupiter's gravitational field influenced objects,
Speaker 1: a comment probably originating from the Ort Cloud. So that's
Speaker 1: way out there past the Kuiper Belt. You know, this
Speaker 1: huge sphere of icy objects, way way out in the distance,
Speaker 1: beyond the orbit of Neptune, beyond the orbit of Pluto,
Speaker 1: beyond the Kuiper Belt. Even that Jupiter disturbed the orbit
Speaker 1: of one of these comets from the Ort Cloud, and
Speaker 1: this disturbance of its orbit sent it really close to
Speaker 1: the Sun where tidal forces then broke the commet apart.
Speaker 1: And this would increase the rate of comets that would
Speaker 1: bombard the Earth. And these commets would include objects like
Speaker 1: the chicks Alube impact object, which hit the Earth about
Speaker 1: sixty six million years ago, and according to the leading
Speaker 1: theory today, is probably the main thing responsible for the
Speaker 1: extinction of the non avian dinosaurs. And so Lowe Ban
Speaker 1: Saraj here argue that it is the gravitation sational influence
Speaker 1: of Jupiter that increases these kinds of impacts through the
Speaker 1: mechanism I just described, And Sarage is quoted in this
Speaker 1: Harvard Gazette piece where he says, quote, basically, Jupiter acts
Speaker 1: as a kind of pinball machine. Jupiter kicks these incoming
Speaker 1: long period comets into orbits that bring them very close
Speaker 1: to the Sun. When you have these sun grazers. It's
Speaker 1: not so much the melting that goes on, which is
Speaker 1: a pretty small fraction relative to the total mass, but
Speaker 1: the comet is so close to the Sun that the
Speaker 1: part of it that's closer to the Sun feels a
Speaker 1: stronger gravitational pull than the part that is farther from
Speaker 1: the Sun, causing a tidal force. You get what's called
Speaker 1: a tidal disruption event. And so these large comets that
Speaker 1: come really close to the Sun break up into smaller
Speaker 1: comets and basically on their way out, there's a statistical
Speaker 1: chance that these smaller comets hit the Earth. So huge
Speaker 1: icy objects from out in the Orc cloud getting diverted
Speaker 1: by the gravitational influence of Jupiter so that they pass
Speaker 1: really close to the Sun. They sort of shatter as
Speaker 1: they do so because the tidal forces from the Sun
Speaker 1: are so strong, and then they turn into a kind
Speaker 1: of buckshot blast of huge icy objects in the inner
Speaker 1: Solar System that can hit Earth and potentially cause mass extinctions.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the arguments that they also
Speaker 1: bring up is that the is that it looks like
Speaker 1: the carbonaceous content of the object that caused the KPg
Speaker 1: extinction is more similar to stuff you're you're likely to
Speaker 1: find in these deep space or cloud objects then in
Speaker 1: things you're more likely to find closer to the inner
Speaker 1: Solar System, like in the asteroid belt. So again, this
Speaker 1: is another argument that is based on simulations and statistical analysis.
Speaker 1: But if this is correct, it is yet another one
Speaker 1: of the many ways that Jupiter would be responsible for
Speaker 1: the fact that we exist at all. While it was
Speaker 1: you know, calamitous for the non avian dinosaurs, it paved
Speaker 1: the way for the age of mammals. I like that
Speaker 1: if if this worked true, this is true, we we
Speaker 1: might need a new aspect for the god Jupiter, maybe
Speaker 1: Jupiter or extinct or god of extinctions, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: good with He could be shown holding a lizard in
Speaker 1: one hand and a thunderbolt in the other, like he's
Speaker 1: about to like smash it in his palm. His hand
Speaker 1: flashes with power, but it's against a bunch of had restaurs.
Speaker 1: They're trying to guard their eggs, and he's like, well
Speaker 1: he was probably his thinking was, probably look these these
Speaker 1: these life forms. They're not worshiping me. Now, Honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't think they're going to be worshiping worshiping me anytime soon.
Speaker 1: Unless I really shake things up. I'm just gonna smite
Speaker 1: a lot of them, right, you know what I really like.
Speaker 1: I really like the look of that rat like creature
Speaker 1: down there, and it's gonna be twinkle in its I
Speaker 1: think some some good things could happen if I give
Speaker 1: the rats a chance. Though, it does make me wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, did I wonder if Jupiter slash Zeus got
Speaker 1: up to you know, his normal tricks. Did he go
Speaker 1: down and take the form of different uh dinosaurs and
Speaker 1: mate with the dinosaur ors to create like certain demi
Speaker 1: god dinosaurs that would have been just you know, extra
Speaker 1: powerful amid their dinosaur brethren. What would the dinosaur mythology
Speaker 1: version of the minotaur be would be like a Tyrannosaurus
Speaker 1: rex with the head of a triceratops, I guess. But
Speaker 1: but then again, I don't know. I feel like like
Speaker 1: the minotaur is one of those beasts that's kind of
Speaker 1: born out of um feuding with the gods and disobeying
Speaker 1: the gods. I don't know. I guess the dinosaurs, just
Speaker 1: by refusing to worship, are just not being capable of it.
Speaker 1: You know, the gods could have taken that the wrong
Speaker 1: way and dished out some punishment. But um, I don't
Speaker 1: know like this, I think this would be a rich
Speaker 1: area for I don't know, an action figure line or
Speaker 1: maybe a comic book like the The The Age of
Speaker 1: of Gods and Dinosaurs. Um, what would that have been like? Also?
Speaker 1: I mean if if humans weren't even in the game yet,
Speaker 1: I guess uh, any form that the Jupiter took would
Speaker 1: be that of a dinosaur, So like, how would he appear?
Speaker 1: Would he appear as a as a great t rex
Speaker 1: or some sort of enorma I mean, he is a
Speaker 1: god of the sky. Maybe he takes the form of
Speaker 1: a of of an enormous um of you know, flying reptile.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Jupiter is quetzalcoatlas. Oh yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be fitting, especially since you know humans found those
Speaker 1: bones and named it after a god. So what what
Speaker 1: better form for the sky god to take? We're all
Speaker 1: but I think we gotta call it there. But this
Speaker 1: has been a lot of fun. Yeah, this has I
Speaker 1: love getting the switch back and forth between the planetary
Speaker 1: and the mythological. I should mention, however, we mostly speak
Speaker 1: of the Roman gods as figures of the past, just
Speaker 1: as we do with Greek deities in ancient Egyptian deities.
Speaker 1: But we should also mention that there are modern worshippers
Speaker 1: as well, not only of of of Greek deities in
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian deities, but also of of Roman Jupiter. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, after all, just as modern humans reach for
Speaker 1: new models, entirely new models of religion, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: drawing things even out of popular culture like Star Wars
Speaker 1: or The Dude, we also reach for the old ones
Speaker 1: and reconstructions of the old ones. Thus we do see
Speaker 1: Roman polytheistic reconstructionism uh in several different groups and forms.
Speaker 1: So um uh just always worth worth mentioning. I don't
Speaker 1: think we we blasphemed too much in this regarding Jupiter,
Speaker 1: but uh an a right, if anyone out there who's
Speaker 1: actively involved in a religion or some sort of spiritual
Speaker 1: movement that that that reveres Jupiter, I would I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. I'd love to know you know,
Speaker 1: how do you think of Jupiter? How does how does
Speaker 1: this material sit with you? Um? So yeah, I always
Speaker 1: find that kind of thing interesting. We have in the
Speaker 1: past heard from at least one listener who um engages
Speaker 1: in a religious model that incorporates Egyptian deities. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah, all right, Well, if you would like
Speaker 1: to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: you know where to find them. Find them in the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed That is where
Speaker 1: core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind published on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursday that's the main show. That's the main event,
Speaker 1: but then we also have listener mail on Monday's. On
Speaker 1: Wednesday's we do the artifact episodes unless they've been preempted
Speaker 1: for some reason, and then on Friday's we do Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. That's our time to just cut loose and
Speaker 1: discuss some weird movies, and then we run a little
Speaker 1: rerun over the weekend in the form of a vault episode.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts. For my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. The present, Joy Joy,
Speaker 1: Thy po