Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for an old Vault episode. This one originally aired
Speaker 1: on March and it's called Jupiter the Destroyer Part one.
Speaker 1: Uh So this is about about both the God and
Speaker 1: the planet Jupiter and and they're potentially destructive power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, let's explore. Welcome to stot to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind production of my Heart Radio. Hey, you welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we bring you ill
Speaker 1: omens from the planet Jupiter. Today is gonna be the
Speaker 1: first of a two part series where we're going to
Speaker 1: be looking at the planet Jupiter and how Jupiter interacts
Speaker 1: with some some specific mythology about the wars before the
Speaker 1: world we know, and how that also relates to some
Speaker 1: very interesting scientific theories concerning the fate of the planets
Speaker 1: in our Solar system and in star systems beyond throughout
Speaker 1: the galaxy. But I start I wanted to start off
Speaker 1: today by talking about the belief that the motion of
Speaker 1: the planets can have dire effects on the fate of
Speaker 1: creatures here on Earth. Of course, this is a long
Speaker 1: time tenant of many of the world's different traditions of astrology.
Speaker 1: But like if you read astrology today, Rob, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've had this experience, there's little sense in
Speaker 1: in astrology today that like the planets are literally doing
Speaker 1: physical things to you, like they're reaching down with I
Speaker 1: don't know, with like gravity or winds or something to
Speaker 1: have physical effects on your life. Rather, the mechanism that
Speaker 1: is believed to to link the movement of the planets
Speaker 1: or the constellations or whatever uh to your fate is
Speaker 1: is a more obscure one. It's a kind of like
Speaker 1: in visible almost kind of young ian um anti causal relationship.
Speaker 1: Would you would you agree, Yeah, yeah, I would think so.
Speaker 1: And I mean not that I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time in the astrology section, but right, But sometimes people
Speaker 1: have believed that the movement of the planets or the
Speaker 1: constellations have more direct physical effects on the Earth that
Speaker 1: can absolutely influence the fate of people or the fate
Speaker 1: of nations. So I wanted to talk about one example
Speaker 1: that we discussed way back when we did an episode
Speaker 1: on Miasthma theory, and I remember the miasma theory was
Speaker 1: a it was a theory of disease that predated modern
Speaker 1: germ theory. It was the idea that disease was often
Speaker 1: was spread by like bad vapors or foul smelling odors,
Speaker 1: winds that went from you know, that that might come
Speaker 1: up from the earth or down from heaven and would
Speaker 1: bring the plague, or would bring malaria or something like that.
Speaker 1: And so the example I wanted to look at was
Speaker 1: how in the year thirteen, this was during the Second
Speaker 1: Plague pandemic, when the bubonic plague was sweeping through Europe.
Speaker 1: It was devastating towns and cities. Of course, people had
Speaker 1: no understanding of what was actually causing the disease. So
Speaker 1: King Philip the sixth of France called in scholars from
Speaker 1: the medical faculty of the University of Paris to see
Speaker 1: if they could figure out what was going on. And
Speaker 1: the scholars discussed things, they researched the matter, and they
Speaker 1: eventually came back with an answer. And their answer was this.
Speaker 1: On March Mars, Jupiter and Saturn had all lined up
Speaker 1: in conjunction and it happened within the House of Aquarius.
Speaker 1: And this was bad because to these scholars, Uh, there
Speaker 1: was a causative story to tell here. The conjunction of
Speaker 1: Jupiter and Saturn, to them was said to bring death
Speaker 1: and calamity, and the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars was
Speaker 1: said to bring pestilence on the breeze. And then this
Speaker 1: was both of the those things happening at the same time.
Speaker 1: So here I'm gonna quote from a historian named ole
Speaker 1: Jorgan Benedicto from his book The Black Death to thirteen
Speaker 1: fifty three. Quote. In this astrological theory of epidemiology, Jupiter
Speaker 1: was assumed to be warm and humid and to draw
Speaker 1: malignant vapors both from the ground and from water, while
Speaker 1: Mars was assumed to be hot and dry and therefore
Speaker 1: had the capacity to kindle such malignant vapors into infective fire.
Speaker 1: So under this theory, the movement of the planets would
Speaker 1: be directly responsible for calamity here on Earth. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: scientists today do not put a lot of stock in
Speaker 1: the motions of Jupiter and Mars in determining our fates.
Speaker 1: But we did want to talk about some ways that
Speaker 1: in a very real and material sense, local gas giants
Speaker 1: and in our case, that would be Jupiter in particular.
Speaker 1: We can also talk something about saturn Um can indeed
Speaker 1: shape the face eat of creatures dwelling on inner rocky planets.
Speaker 1: And so that's what we're going to focus on for
Speaker 1: the next couple of episodes, a number of scientific ideas
Speaker 1: about ways that the planet Jupiter could, like the Jupiter
Speaker 1: of myth that we're going to talk about in a
Speaker 1: few minutes, be a kind of cosmic destroyer or a
Speaker 1: cosmic creator deciding the fortunes of earth bound mortals like us.
Speaker 1: Without Jupiter, could we even exist? And how long could
Speaker 1: life go on? So this should be a fun one.
Speaker 1: If you know some of you out there, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not as crazy about the space episodes. And some
Speaker 1: of you might say, well, you know, I'm not crazy.
Speaker 1: It's crazy about the mythology episodes. Well, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: a little bit of mythology and a little bit of
Speaker 1: of space just spread throughout here. Um, So if you
Speaker 1: hate both topics, I guess it's time to click off.
Speaker 1: But I think we've heard from anybody who said that, No, no,
Speaker 1: nob um. I just I know, uh, some people aren't
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it's my mom. I'm not gonna can't remember
Speaker 1: my mom. THATTT might be less into the space episods. Uh.
Speaker 1: I guess one of the things about space, in talking
Speaker 1: about it is I always feel that it is nice
Speaker 1: to have some sort of human element there to to
Speaker 1: sort of attach us to it. Now, a lot of
Speaker 1: times that human element is just imagining if we are there,
Speaker 1: you know, or or talk about how we might get
Speaker 1: there one day, and just sort of put it in
Speaker 1: in in that kind of human context. And there's gonna,
Speaker 1: I guess, be some of that here. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, uh, the mythology provides that there's like the
Speaker 1: mythological idea of who Jupiter is, and then there is
Speaker 1: the planetary idea of what Jupiter the planet is. And
Speaker 1: it's ultimately a lot of fun to compare the two,
Speaker 1: right though there might not be a lot of I
Speaker 1: don't know, human interest or drama and looking just at
Speaker 1: the icy ridges of Yapotus or something, right, but those
Speaker 1: are some good icy ridges. But yeah, well, we'll try
Speaker 1: to give you some some narrative context here when when
Speaker 1: talking about the planets. So one of the first things
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention was I was recently reading about
Speaker 1: the etymology of the word Jupiter, and came across something
Speaker 1: that I did not know but I actually found really interesting. So,
Speaker 1: of course, the English word Jupiter comes to English through Latin,
Speaker 1: where it is a Jupiter spilt with an eye at
Speaker 1: the beginning. A lot of Latin words that start with
Speaker 1: a J in English actually start with an eye. There
Speaker 1: was no j in Latin, and this, of course was
Speaker 1: the name of the sky god and the chief of
Speaker 1: the Roman pantheon, Jupiter or Jove or Jupiter or Yove. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why we refer to the moons of Jupiter as
Speaker 1: the Jovian moons, right, synonymous in the Latin context. But so,
Speaker 1: so I was reading about okay, well, what goes back
Speaker 1: before that? It seems that the Latin word Jupiter traces
Speaker 1: back to a Proto Indo European root. And I I apologize,
Speaker 1: I don't know perfectly how to pronounce this, but it's
Speaker 1: something like deuce fatter. And remember, of course Proto Indo
Speaker 1: European in is a prehistoric lost language, so nobody speaks
Speaker 1: it today. In fact, nobody spoke it at any time
Speaker 1: that anybody was writing anything down. So this is a
Speaker 1: this is a prehistoric, pre written language that was the
Speaker 1: direct ancestor of a huge number of languages spoken throughout
Speaker 1: Europe and Asia today. It was probably originally spoken by
Speaker 1: people living somewhere around modern day Ukraine or southern Russia.
Speaker 1: But it is a language that has to be reconstructed
Speaker 1: by linguists by looking at all these different languages around
Speaker 1: the world and sort of tracing back their common roots.
Speaker 1: In this Proto Indo European language, do you spotter would
Speaker 1: have meant something like daylight sky father, and this would
Speaker 1: have been the sky god of the reconstructed Proto Indo
Speaker 1: European religion. Now, if you hear in that they're deuice Potter,
Speaker 1: you can hear where we get Jupiter from that. But
Speaker 1: you can also probably hear where the word zoo can
Speaker 1: be derived from that, right juice, And so again there
Speaker 1: is a reconstructed form of this religion. We don't have
Speaker 1: any written records of this religion. It existed before writing,
Speaker 1: but scholars can conclude some things about it with pretty
Speaker 1: high confidence by looking at what common elements appear in
Speaker 1: very geographically separated religions that have a Proto Indo European
Speaker 1: linguistic rout and this deity, this deuced potter one uh,
Speaker 1: seems to be very common to religions that are spread
Speaker 1: out all over the place. For example, this name formulation
Speaker 1: also appears in the Sanskrit rig Veda, where you get
Speaker 1: a god named like Diaus or something roughly equivalent to that.
Speaker 1: But in Roman religion, in particular, this ancient sky god
Speaker 1: tradition that of course had been channeled through the Greek
Speaker 1: stories of Zeus. Remember the the Roman mythology and the
Speaker 1: Roman gods are extremely close copies of the of the
Speaker 1: Greek gods, and there might be there are some appreciable differences,
Speaker 1: but there is enormous overlap between them. So for all
Speaker 1: practical purposes, Jupiter is Zeus. But in the Roman tradition,
Speaker 1: this god, this sky god, this chief of the pantheon,
Speaker 1: came to be associated with the planet Jupiter, which had
Speaker 1: been known since ancient times since it could be seen
Speaker 1: with the naked eye. And of course Jupiter, the planet,
Speaker 1: has mythological significance beyond the Roman connection. One example is
Speaker 1: that in the ancient Babylonian religion, the planet Jupiter is
Speaker 1: associated with another chief god, mar Duke, the chief god
Speaker 1: of the city of Babylon. Uh he's the slayer hero
Speaker 1: of the epic poem the Enuma a Leash, where there
Speaker 1: is a primeval chaos monster named Tiamat, a sort of
Speaker 1: saltwater dragon that arises from a previous generation of divine beings,
Speaker 1: and then Tiamat threatens to destroy the younger generation of gods,
Speaker 1: and mar Duke becomes sort of president of the God
Speaker 1: Club by going out to slate Yamat and the monsters
Speaker 1: at her command. And there are some interesting parallels here
Speaker 1: because a mar Duke, like Zeus and like Jupiter, is
Speaker 1: sort of a sky god. Now, I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that the broad contours of this story in the Inuma
Speaker 1: a Leash have a very strong echo in Greco Roman mythology,
Speaker 1: where Zeus, who would later become Jupiter to the Romans,
Speaker 1: also has to overthrow and destroy a pre existent class
Speaker 1: of divine beings to sort of pay the way for
Speaker 1: the younger generation of gods to take power. And in
Speaker 1: the Greek case, this earlier generation of divine beings were
Speaker 1: the Titans. This conflict in Greek religion that pits Zeus
Speaker 1: and the gods of Olympus versus the older beings of
Speaker 1: the previous divine generation is sometimes called the Titanomicy. The
Speaker 1: War of the Titans is what that means, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: the Titanomicy is an example of what is sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to as um a theomicy like THEO and then uh
Speaker 1: at the beginning of it, you know, a war of
Speaker 1: the gods. So the Titanomicy is just one in the
Speaker 1: Greek tradition, in the Trojan war is also essentially a
Speaker 1: Theo macky. There's also the Gigantomachi, which occurred after the
Speaker 1: war against the gods. This is the war between the
Speaker 1: Olympian gods and the giants who are the offspring of
Speaker 1: Gaya and the blood of Chronos Um. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of other religions that feature of THEO makis.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's the Norse uh god between the Aser
Speaker 1: and the van Air. There's the Vedic wars of the
Speaker 1: Devas and the Ostras. There's the Water War of Chinese
Speaker 1: mythology that that pitted the destructive water god U Gong
Speaker 1: Gong against Zoo wrong, the fire god. And then of
Speaker 1: course in Christian tradition we have this idea of a
Speaker 1: war in heaven uh and and I'm sure there're there
Speaker 1: are numerous other examples we could point to. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems to be very common throughout the myths of the
Speaker 1: world to imagine that it's some ancient time there was
Speaker 1: a conflict between a pre existent class of of divine
Speaker 1: beings and then some like newer or younger class of
Speaker 1: divine beings. It doesn't always break down along generational lines
Speaker 1: like that, but it certainly does in the Greek example. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we kind of get into this in our I had
Speaker 1: this idea of like, Okay, we have the King of
Speaker 1: the gods, and he shall reign forever and ever. But
Speaker 1: I feel like things feel a bit more tenuous with
Speaker 1: these earlier models, because it's like, well, this have been
Speaker 1: He's been ruling for a good three or four years now.
Speaker 1: There were some there's some other guys that came before him.
Speaker 1: I don't know what will come next. He has he
Speaker 1: doesn't get along with everybody heavy lies the crown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense too, if you're basing your
Speaker 1: ideas of of divine rule, uh in a mythological sense
Speaker 1: on the on the examples of rule that you see
Speaker 1: in the world around you. I mean, that's just the
Speaker 1: nature of things. Yes. Uh. So, now I want to
Speaker 1: move to reading a section from an ancient text known
Speaker 1: as Hessia's the Ogany. This is the the Genealogy of
Speaker 1: the Gods by the ancient Greek writer Hesiod, to give
Speaker 1: some color to this story we're telling. But first I
Speaker 1: need to set the stage before I get to the
Speaker 1: part that we're going to read. So I'm necessarily doing
Speaker 1: a bunch of condensing here, because there are a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of stories about like which divine beings emanated and
Speaker 1: gave birth to what. But the short version is there
Speaker 1: have already been a couple of generations of divine beings
Speaker 1: by the time we get the Olympian gods. Uh. The
Speaker 1: earth deity Gaya and the sky deity Uranas or Uranus
Speaker 1: Uranas together have a bunch of offspring. And these offspring
Speaker 1: include these beings called the Hecaton Curries or the hundred handers.
Speaker 1: H there were there were three of them, these three brothers,
Speaker 1: and they had some amazing body plans, you might say, yeah,
Speaker 1: fifty heads, a hundred arms. It's great. I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: looking up mostly modern illustrations of what this could have
Speaker 1: looked like, because there's a there's a temptation to want
Speaker 1: to kind of draw a turbo goro. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's been it's just too many heads and too many arms.
Speaker 1: It just becomes this mass of limbs and heads. But
Speaker 1: I've seen some people, some artists push this more in
Speaker 1: the direction of kind of like an amorphous being, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's the thing or some sort of a show
Speaker 1: god or something. You know. Yeah, just a kind of
Speaker 1: rat king god. Yeah. Now, Guya and Uranas also gave
Speaker 1: birth to the Cyclopes, who you know, we know about those.
Speaker 1: And then finally they gave birth to a bunch of
Speaker 1: gods that were called the Titans, and two of these titans,
Speaker 1: Chronus and Rhea. They together then sire a new generation
Speaker 1: of gods with names that might be more familiar Poseidon, Hades,
Speaker 1: demiter Hera, Zeus. Yeah, the members of the proper Greek
Speaker 1: pantheon of gods. Right, But as we mentioned, heavy lies
Speaker 1: the crown and Chronus. At this point, Cronus has assumed
Speaker 1: the throne of the of the heavens after castrating his
Speaker 1: father Uranas, so Chronus is in charge now. But Chronus
Speaker 1: is jealous and paranoid like like many kings of Greek
Speaker 1: myth are like a Chrysius. You know, in the Perseus narrative,
Speaker 1: he fears his own offspring um and be because he's
Speaker 1: been given an omen that one day he would be
Speaker 1: dethroned by his own offspring. So every time Reya gives
Speaker 1: birth to one of his offspring, Chronus would eat the
Speaker 1: newborn child. But then Zeus is born, and I guess
Speaker 1: Zeus is the youngest of the brood of the Olympian gods.
Speaker 1: And here Ya plays a trick on Chronus. She feeds
Speaker 1: him a rock. It's a very good trick. Instead, she
Speaker 1: she sends the real Zeus off to hide away in
Speaker 1: a cave and swaps out Zeus for a stone in
Speaker 1: a blanket and hands it over to Chronus, and Chronus
Speaker 1: just eats it up. And then Zeus is just training
Speaker 1: in a cave like a big training montage, getting ready
Speaker 1: for the rebellion against his father. Right, it's like Rocky
Speaker 1: four when he's out in the snow, you know, lifting
Speaker 1: the logs and everything getting ready. And so you have
Speaker 1: to imagine Chronus. Here is Ivan Draco and Zeus is
Speaker 1: Rocky and what's going to happen? Well, when Zeus has
Speaker 1: grown up. He somehow tricks Chronus into vomiting up all
Speaker 1: of Zeus's siblings, who are then able to join Zeus
Speaker 1: in making war on Chronus and the Order of the Titans.
Speaker 1: And they also enlist some of their allies, like some
Speaker 1: of the other primordial beings come to fight on the
Speaker 1: side of Zeus and the Olympians. The Cyclopes and the
Speaker 1: hecaton Kerries. They had previously those last two classes of
Speaker 1: beings had previously been imprisoned in the underworld of Tartarus,
Speaker 1: and they're sort of set free, and they joined in
Speaker 1: the fight. Zeus says to them, put down your chainsaw
Speaker 1: and listen to me. It's time for you to join
Speaker 1: in the fight, and they do. Now Here, we're gearing
Speaker 1: up for battle. And Robert, are you ready for us
Speaker 1: to read some from the theogony? That wasn't from the
Speaker 1: theogony that you just quoted about the chain's house. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that that was from a weird al dared stupid Well,
Speaker 1: then then carry on. This translation appears in Thomas G.
Speaker 1: Palma's Anthology of Classical myth Primary Sources in translation from
Speaker 1: Hackett Publishing, two thousand four. So the Olympian gods take
Speaker 1: their position. Quote they stood against the Titans on the
Speaker 1: line of battle, holding chunks of cliff in their rugged hands.
Speaker 1: Opposite them, the Titans tightened their ranks expectantly. Then both
Speaker 1: sides hands flashed with power, and the unfathomable sea shrieked eerily.
Speaker 1: The earth crashed and rumbled, the vast sky groaned and quavered,
Speaker 1: and massive Olympus shook from its roots under the immortals
Speaker 1: onslaught a deep trimmor of feet reached misty tartarus, and
Speaker 1: a high whistling noise of insuppressible tumult with heavy missiles
Speaker 1: that groaned and wind in flight, and the sound of
Speaker 1: each side shouting rose to starry heaven as they collided
Speaker 1: with a magnificent battle cry. And now Zeus no longer
Speaker 1: held back his strength. His lung seethed with anger, and
Speaker 1: he revealed all his power. He charged from the sky,
Speaker 1: hurtling down from Olympos in a fury of lightning, hurling
Speaker 1: thunderbolts one after another, right on target from his massive hand,
Speaker 1: a whirlwind of holy flame, and the earth that bears
Speaker 1: life roared as it burned, and the endless forest crackled
Speaker 1: in fire, and the continents melted, and the ocean streams boiled,
Speaker 1: and the barren sea. The blast of heat enveloped the
Speaker 1: Thornian Titans, and the flame reached the bright stratosphere, and
Speaker 1: the incandescent rays of the thunderbolts and lightning flashes blinded
Speaker 1: their eyes mighty as they were, heat so terrible and
Speaker 1: engulfed deep chaos. The sight of it all and its
Speaker 1: sound to the ears, was just as if broad Heaven
Speaker 1: had fallen on Earth. The noise of it crashing and
Speaker 1: of Earth being crushed would be like the noise that
Speaker 1: arose from the strife of the clashing gods. Winds hissed
Speaker 1: through the earth, starting off tremors and swept dust and
Speaker 1: thunder and flashing bolts of lightning, the weapons of Zeus,
Speaker 1: along with the shouting and din into both sides, reverberation
Speaker 1: from the terrible strife hung in the air, and sheer
Speaker 1: power shown through it. I love it. One can imagine
Speaker 1: like led Zeppelin or rage against the machine ring in
Speaker 1: the background. Yeah, or Chronus is like the witch king
Speaker 1: of Angmar and uh. But anyway, as Zeus and the
Speaker 1: Olympians are, of course the victors in this war, the
Speaker 1: titanomic he breaks in their favor. The Titans are defeated,
Speaker 1: and they are chained up in tartar Us, so they're
Speaker 1: could sort of thrown down into this hell like underworld
Speaker 1: and and imprisoned there. And and there are a few
Speaker 1: other disparate fates, like some of these primordial being side
Speaker 1: with the Olympians. Uh Atlas is one of the Titans.
Speaker 1: In particular, he's punished by being made to hold up
Speaker 1: the heavens forever. But it'll be interesting to keep this
Speaker 1: in mind later on when we talk about some of
Speaker 1: the astrophysics today, is that this idea that Zeus or
Speaker 1: his Roman counterpart Jupiter would have been these prolific destroyers
Speaker 1: that paved the way for the status quo of today,
Speaker 1: the you know, the way things have been ordained today
Speaker 1: by defeating this ancient class of gods that had existed
Speaker 1: since the beginning or shortly after it. And of course,
Speaker 1: and another funny thing about Zeus and Jupiter is that
Speaker 1: the slaying doesn't stop there. I mean, they are these
Speaker 1: these gods are prolific destroyers throughout all time of myth Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, they they won the crown through war
Speaker 1: and then wars are required to maintain the order. And
Speaker 1: then also you just have individuals who step out of line. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe in a way that is meaningful,
Speaker 1: but also sometimes the idea is just in a way
Speaker 1: where mortals are not are not allowed to question the
Speaker 1: gods or or or in any ways like them. So
Speaker 1: I thought we might run through some of the the
Speaker 1: murders or I don't know, executions I guess attributed to
Speaker 1: Jupiter and Zeus. Um. So first of all ones that
Speaker 1: seemed to be more specifically aligned with the Roman Jupiter.
Speaker 1: There's the story of Tillis Hostilius, who was killed by
Speaker 1: lightning bolt for botching the reading of a sacred right. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know it makes sense. Rights are important to religion.
Speaker 1: All this is it's it's it's part of the framework
Speaker 1: that's holding up the cosmic order of the universe. This
Speaker 1: guy is getting it wrong, so Zeus sends a lightning
Speaker 1: bolt down on him. Could you imagine if Seth could
Speaker 1: throw lightning at us every time we screwed up reading something? Oh,
Speaker 1: it would it would be it would be a blood bath. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now we mentioned in um the Titano macky. Sorry. Now,
Speaker 1: during the Titanomicy the war against the Titans. It's also said,
Speaker 1: uh that Jupiter killed his father the titan Saturn right.
Speaker 1: And Saturn is basically the equivalent of the Greek titan Chronus. Right.
Speaker 1: You get into different versions of it, particularly, I think
Speaker 1: some of the Greek variations of it, it's it's less
Speaker 1: a clear picture of him having killed. Sometimes it's the
Speaker 1: dividing up. I mean, it's it's kind of like when
Speaker 1: you do them with a titan or a god. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes that kind of marvel uh universe system
Speaker 1: comes into play where nobody really dies. There's always a
Speaker 1: way they could come back. Now, murders attributed more properly
Speaker 1: to Zeus. Um, boy, there there are a number of
Speaker 1: them here. First there's Asclepius, and uh, this one's interesting
Speaker 1: because he was essentially killed by Zeus for practicing necromancy,
Speaker 1: for raising the dead. Asclepius was some kind of healer figure,
Speaker 1: wasn't he. Yeah, But you're not supposed to heal too
Speaker 1: much because when you're miss you're interfering with the divine
Speaker 1: order of things. That's over the line. Now there's salmon As,
Speaker 1: who is executed for us actually pretending to be Zus,
Speaker 1: that's a no no. Then there's another Titan here, the
Speaker 1: Titan Minnotius, who is also killed during the war against
Speaker 1: the Titans. And then when you get into the myth
Speaker 1: of like Hayn, the like Haan was this individual. There's
Speaker 1: a whole cool story to this. I think we've we've
Speaker 1: touched on it before on the show. But essentially, uh,
Speaker 1: he was punished by being turned into a wolf. But
Speaker 1: he had a number of sons, and a lot of those.
Speaker 1: If you look at lists of people that were killed
Speaker 1: by Zeus, his sons make up a whole subsection of
Speaker 1: that list. And then there's a faith on the son
Speaker 1: of Helios, who is essentially executed for bad driving. Uh,
Speaker 1: but bad driving with the sun chariot. So you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's one thing. If if if you're just you know,
Speaker 1: misusing a normal chariot, but if it's the chariot of
Speaker 1: the Sun itself, well that's dangerous. And now you're toying
Speaker 1: with the gods. But of course, beyond specific murders or
Speaker 1: executions or killings however you want to establish them, Jupiter
Speaker 1: or Zeus, you know, he tended to punish gods, mortals,
Speaker 1: and Titans with various imprisonments transformation in his tortures. He
Speaker 1: is the King of the gods, after all, and then
Speaker 1: he has to dish out this punishment to maintain cosmic balance.
Speaker 1: But but also due to sort of the outside nature
Speaker 1: of his own powers and his otherwise humanoid demeanor. You know,
Speaker 1: he is still essentially a king. And while a human
Speaker 1: king with human cravings and imperfections, it certainly has an
Speaker 1: outsized ability to create chaos. Uh, it's even more so
Speaker 1: with the God of gods. So he's a being of
Speaker 1: intense gravity and mass, and those who involve themselves with
Speaker 1: him risk just being crushed by that mass. Right, And
Speaker 1: this brings us back, of course to the planet, which,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier, you know, as you can tell
Speaker 1: from the from the English word for the planet, the
Speaker 1: Romans came to associate this chief of their pantheon with
Speaker 1: the bright light in the sky that actually is the
Speaker 1: planet Jupiter. Yeah, so obviously Jupiter is big. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's gonna come as a as a surprise to
Speaker 1: anyone out there. And some of the facts that we're
Speaker 1: gonna lay out for you here are kind of sort
Speaker 1: of the typical songs of Jupiter that we must sing
Speaker 1: just to remind you how big Jupiter is in relation
Speaker 1: to Earth. Uh So, let's refresh. First of all, Jupiter
Speaker 1: is eleven times larger than Earth. That's in terms of diameter, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you line them up, Jupiter is more massive than
Speaker 1: all the other planets of the Solar System combined. That
Speaker 1: is incredible, because there's some there's some other big ones.
Speaker 1: Jupiter is three hundred and seventeen point eight times as
Speaker 1: massive as Earth, and you could fit almost thirteen hundred
Speaker 1: earths inside of Jupiter. So basically, if Jupiter was a
Speaker 1: gumball machine and you were putting Earth's inside it, that's
Speaker 1: about how many you could fit. Uh So these are
Speaker 1: pretty standard facts. I got these from NASA and from
Speaker 1: Universe Today, and yeah, you've probably heard them before, but
Speaker 1: I think it it just bears reminding just how big Jupiter,
Speaker 1: and therefore how massive, how just gravitationally potent and powerful.
Speaker 1: You know, I bet you could fit more earths inside
Speaker 1: Jupiter Earth was cube shaped rather than round. You ever
Speaker 1: look at that like the packing efficiency of ball shapes
Speaker 1: versus other shapes. Yeah, I guess, I guess so. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it also it makes you wonder how many humans
Speaker 1: could fit inside Zeus or Jupiter the god, how many
Speaker 1: gods can fit inside Chronus? It seems like a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, well the baby gods, that's true, they're smaller
Speaker 1: than Yeah. How big was that rock? You think that
Speaker 1: Cronus had to eat like to trick him into thinking
Speaker 1: it was Zeus? I mean, are we are we talking
Speaker 1: just like a you know, hand sized rock or is
Speaker 1: this like a mountain that he ate? I think it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's size the size of a baby god.
Speaker 1: So then I guess the question is how big is
Speaker 1: a baby god? I don't know. Uh. There, so the
Speaker 1: difference between Earth and Jupiter is so great that it
Speaker 1: can even play into our sci fi models and uh
Speaker 1: and I think this is great because it's also I
Speaker 1: think helps make our point here. I was reading reading
Speaker 1: about this. This is some work from David Boulderstone from
Speaker 1: the University of Leicester. He asked a couple of questions
Speaker 1: regarding Jupiter and planet sizes and energy. Back in twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: this would have been an article title That's No Moon
Speaker 1: by Boulderstone at All, published in the Journal of Special Topics,
Speaker 1: University of Leicester. Department of Physics and Astronomy. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this journal is fun. It's an undergraduate journal, but
Speaker 1: it's for papers by physics students, like working out the
Speaker 1: math of weird problems involving superpowers and destroying planets. I
Speaker 1: think I recall one paper on there that was about
Speaker 1: whether you could drive a boat in Jupiter's atmosphere. That
Speaker 1: was really funny. Uh, it's it's stuff like that, So
Speaker 1: you can find a lot of really fun topics. The
Speaker 1: topics are quite special in fact. Yeah, and as you
Speaker 1: can guess from the title, that's no moon. This paper
Speaker 1: concerns the Death Star. So the main questions asked by
Speaker 1: this paper and you should look it up if you
Speaker 1: can find it for free online if you if you're
Speaker 1: if you really want to geek out on your your
Speaker 1: star wars and uh science. Here first of all, asked,
Speaker 1: is it possible for something the size of the Death
Speaker 1: Star so uh physical construction more or less the size
Speaker 1: of of Earth's moon uh, to generate enough power to
Speaker 1: destroy a rocky planet like Earth. And then the secondary question,
Speaker 1: if so, would it be possible to generate enough power
Speaker 1: to destroy a gas giant the size of Jupiter? So
Speaker 1: a lot of this paper is about you know, doing
Speaker 1: the math, making a number of necessary assumptions. Uh, and
Speaker 1: without you know, geeking out too hard on questions about well,
Speaker 1: what does a khyber crystal really do to energy and
Speaker 1: so forth. But ultimately they decided that the Earth is
Speaker 1: well within the star, the Death Star's energy budget, so
Speaker 1: it could totally blow up our planet, no questions asked.
Speaker 1: Cool but good. But Jupiter, Jupiter, this would be a challenge. Quote,
Speaker 1: Jupiter requires much greater energy demands and would put considerable
Speaker 1: strain on the Death Star. To destroy a planet like Jupiter,
Speaker 1: it would probably have to divert all remaining power from
Speaker 1: all essential systems and life support, which is not necessarily possible. Okay,
Speaker 1: So granted this is not like this is not firm
Speaker 1: and set side. Is this a speculation on the power
Speaker 1: of the Death Star. But think about that. That is
Speaker 1: how massive and tough the planet Jupiter is. If it
Speaker 1: was Jupiter versus the Death Star, the Death Star would
Speaker 1: not completely win. Uh. The Death Star is not powerful
Speaker 1: enough to destroy Jupiter. No, Jupiter absolutely is a local bully.
Speaker 1: Jupiter has a mass and a gravitational influence that is
Speaker 1: unrivaled in the solar system, of course, apart from the
Speaker 1: Sun itself. This does make me think of Percy Shelley's
Speaker 1: verse play Prometheus Unbound, where the god Jupiter is the villain.
Speaker 1: He's this cruel, tyrant god who has to be destroyed
Speaker 1: in order to free the world from his grip. And
Speaker 1: he he's destroyed with the help of this being of
Speaker 1: the void called the Demogorgon, which we explored in a
Speaker 1: was it was it last October that we did that
Speaker 1: episode or maybe two octobers ago, But yeah, there's one
Speaker 1: part where the spirit of the Earth itself is speaking
Speaker 1: of Jupiter in Prometheus Unbound, and it says, I dare
Speaker 1: not speak like life lest heavens fell king should hear
Speaker 1: and link me to some wheel of pain more torturing
Speaker 1: than the one whereon I roll. So Earth is already
Speaker 1: on a wheel of pain? What what if it gets worse?
Speaker 1: Could could Jupiter put Earth on a worse wheel of pain?
Speaker 1: The answer is yes, thank Okay. So here I wanted
Speaker 1: to shift to talking about some astrophysics, and specifically I
Speaker 1: want to get to a hypothesis put forward in in
Speaker 1: one interesting paper that came out a few years ago
Speaker 1: that has some parallel else to the titanomicy. So first,
Speaker 1: I think we should look at some exo planets, because
Speaker 1: you know, it's weird. I can still remember a time
Speaker 1: when the idea of planets orbiting other stars was mostly
Speaker 1: a matter of speculation, you know, with a few stray
Speaker 1: bits of evidence here and there. But within the past
Speaker 1: decade or so, exo planet research has just exploded, and
Speaker 1: I think this is largely due to a number of
Speaker 1: new telescopes coming online and new detection techniques. But I
Speaker 1: remember one of the big moments here in the history
Speaker 1: of exoplanet research was this dump of data on hundreds
Speaker 1: of new exo planets from the Kepler Space Telescope. I
Speaker 1: think this was Do you remember when this happened, Rob, Yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it was hugely illuminating. But it also raises these questions
Speaker 1: about what kinds of planets are out there, and what
Speaker 1: kind of differences do we see when we compare our
Speaker 1: Solar system to the types of stellar systems that are
Speaker 1: common throughout the galaxy. And so here I wanted to
Speaker 1: turn to something interesting I was reading. It was a
Speaker 1: blog post by the astrophysicist and science writer Ethan Seagull
Speaker 1: called this is why you must never try and colonize
Speaker 1: a super Earth planet. You've probably heard this term super
Speaker 1: Earth so but that term can actually be fairly misleading,
Speaker 1: and this post gets into why that is. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of follow his logic here. So first
Speaker 1: of all, you can observe that here in our Solar System,
Speaker 1: we've got two kinds of planets pretty much. You have small,
Speaker 1: rocky planets with a thin atmosphere or no atmosphere, and
Speaker 1: those are those are closer into the Sun. So you've
Speaker 1: got Mercury, Venus, Earth Mars rocky core, very little atmosphere
Speaker 1: relative to gas giants. And then further out you have
Speaker 1: these larger gas planets with some kind of solid or
Speaker 1: metal core surrounded by dense gases extending out for thousands
Speaker 1: of kilometers in radius. How do these different types of
Speaker 1: planets form Well, the leading theory on the formation of
Speaker 1: the planets is that our Solar System began as a
Speaker 1: huge cloud of interstellar gas and dust floating in space.
Speaker 1: And this would have been made up of atoms and
Speaker 1: molecules that were partially left over from previous generations of
Speaker 1: stars that may have exploded in a supernova or been
Speaker 1: torn apart in other events, you know, neutron star collisions
Speaker 1: and things like that billions of years ago, or just
Speaker 1: hydrogen that's been floating around out there in space since
Speaker 1: the Big Bang. But so you've got all this gas
Speaker 1: and dust just floating around, and at some point this
Speaker 1: huge cloud of gas and dust collapsed, meaning it started
Speaker 1: to fold in upon itself and become much denser. And
Speaker 1: there are certain they're there are different things that could
Speaker 1: have caused this. Could have been caused by gravitational or
Speaker 1: magnetic disturbances, maybe another star exploding nearby, sending material and
Speaker 1: a shock wave through the cloud. Um But when the
Speaker 1: cloud collapsed, all of that dense matter pull together by
Speaker 1: gravity at the center of the cloud started to become
Speaker 1: a star, which would be our sun, but in this
Speaker 1: kind of larval stage, it would be known as a
Speaker 1: solar nebula. It's a cloud on the way toward becoming
Speaker 1: a sun. So you can picture a kind of huge
Speaker 1: wheel of spinning gas and dust orbiting around a dense
Speaker 1: hot center and getting more thinned out as you move
Speaker 1: out from the center. Now, eventually gravity pulls things together
Speaker 1: so much that the material at the center of this
Speaker 1: spinning disk under under all this heat and pressure. As
Speaker 1: it gets denser and denser, starts to cause hydrogen atoms
Speaker 1: to fuse into helium atoms, and this is the beginning
Speaker 1: of the nuclear fusion reaction that powers our sun. And
Speaker 1: of course this releases tremendous amounts of energy in the process.
Speaker 1: You get radiation, heat, and sunshine. Meanwhile, the outer parts
Speaker 1: of this spinning wheel, they keep spinning around the newborn
Speaker 1: star at the center, and eventually clumps of gas and
Speaker 1: dust in side this spinning disk start to be attracted
Speaker 1: to each other and to attract more gas and dust
Speaker 1: to themselves because of gravity, and they form these larger
Speaker 1: and larger clumps of matter still in orbit around the star.
Speaker 1: And of course these accumulating clumps would eventually turn out
Speaker 1: to be solid stuff like planets, moons, comets, and asteroids,
Speaker 1: and one of the biggest of these early forming clumps
Speaker 1: would become Jupiter. Now, this is a normal way for
Speaker 1: for star systems to form. But coming back to that
Speaker 1: that blog post by Seagull that I was talking about,
Speaker 1: sometimes we would just assume that other stellar systems should
Speaker 1: be like ours, with small, rocky planets towards the you know,
Speaker 1: in smaller orbits or closer orbits around the Sun, and
Speaker 1: then bigger gas giants farther out. But actually it looks
Speaker 1: like our Solar System is rather unusual in this regard.
Speaker 1: To read from Seagull quote. When we look at our
Speaker 1: most successful exoplanet hunting missions, Kepler and tests, the most
Speaker 1: abundant class of world that a found is an in
Speaker 1: between type commonly known as super Earth's. Despite the allure
Speaker 1: of a planet that might be Earth like, only larger
Speaker 1: and with more room for life forms on it, super
Speaker 1: Earths are nothing like our science fiction imaginings. Here's why
Speaker 1: you must never try and call an ice one. So
Speaker 1: in our Solar System, smaller rocky planets are close to
Speaker 1: the star within what's known as the frost line, as
Speaker 1: a certain distance out from from the host star, and
Speaker 1: the outer planets beyond the frost line are these gas giants.
Speaker 1: But actually we know now from exoplanet surveys that this
Speaker 1: is somewhat arbitrary. Planets of any mask and any size
Speaker 1: can orbit in very close to the host star. You
Speaker 1: can have a planet as big as Jupiter orbiting really
Speaker 1: close to our Sun, making a full circuit within days.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard about these types of planets that referred
Speaker 1: to as hot jupiters, So it doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: the way it is here and uh and as see said,
Speaker 1: the most common type of planet we've actually found out
Speaker 1: there are these super Earth So these would be planets
Speaker 1: of two to ten Earth masses, So once you get
Speaker 1: to about double the mass of Earth, you're in super
Speaker 1: Earth territory. Now, an important thing to point out here
Speaker 1: is that to some extent, by necessity, our picture of
Speaker 1: what kind of planets are out there is going to
Speaker 1: be influenced by our detection methods, like what types of
Speaker 1: planets we are particularly good at spotting using the methods
Speaker 1: available to us. So it's possible that these types of
Speaker 1: planets may be overrepresented in surveys. But still it does
Speaker 1: appear that there are lots and lots of super Earths
Speaker 1: around stars throughout the rest of the galaxy. And despite
Speaker 1: the name, these super Earth planets are not necessarily much
Speaker 1: like Earth at all. One factor is how much gas
Speaker 1: these planets retain around them as they form. Because when
Speaker 1: you think about a planet, you know whether it's a
Speaker 1: rocky plant it like Earth, or a gas giant like Jupiter.
Speaker 1: There are going to be a couple of things working
Speaker 1: against each other that helped determine what types of volatiles
Speaker 1: you can keep stuck to you. One is going to
Speaker 1: be your mass and thus your gravity that really helps
Speaker 1: keep the atmosphere stuck to you. But then another thing
Speaker 1: is going to be is going to be solar radiation,
Speaker 1: because the Sun is always going to be blasting you
Speaker 1: with solar winds and solar radiation that want to strip
Speaker 1: away volatiles from the planet and blow them out into space.
Speaker 1: And this is something we can see happening to other planets,
Speaker 1: like I think you know. One of the theories of
Speaker 1: how Mars ended up with such a thin atmosphere today
Speaker 1: is that it once may have had a thicker atmosphere,
Speaker 1: but the Sun kind of blasted that atmosphere further out
Speaker 1: into space over time. Now it's nice for us that
Speaker 1: Earth is able to maintain an atmosphere because we need
Speaker 1: it in order to breathe, but actually having too much
Speaker 1: mass and thus too much gravity and thus too much
Speaker 1: atmosphere can really make it impossi sable for creatures like
Speaker 1: us to survive on a planet. To read from seagull quote,
Speaker 1: as long as the mass remains below a certain threshold,
Speaker 1: the radiation from the nearby star will hit these easily
Speaker 1: boiled gases and hit them with enough energy that they'll
Speaker 1: escape from the planet in question. But it rise above
Speaker 1: that threshold, and even the ultraviolet radiation and solar wind
Speaker 1: particles emitted from the star within the Solar system won't
Speaker 1: be able to kick those light atoms and molecules away. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if you are too low in mass
Speaker 1: and too close to the star, the star will blast
Speaker 1: away your atmosphere. But if you raise a planet's mass
Speaker 1: beyond a certain threshold, it's gravity is going to get
Speaker 1: so strong, strong enough to withstand that solar assault and
Speaker 1: hold onto its volatiles like gases and water. And you
Speaker 1: get enough mass together in one place, and it will
Speaker 1: start suctioning up material from all around it. It will
Speaker 1: become this great accumulator. And of course, if it gets
Speaker 1: enough mass that atoms that its course are undergoing fusion,
Speaker 1: then you've just created a new star. But if you
Speaker 1: if you're not, if you don't have quite that much mass,
Speaker 1: what you end up creating is a gas giant, a
Speaker 1: gas planet even even smaller than Jupiter and Saturn planets.
Speaker 1: More on the on the scale of Neptune are going
Speaker 1: to have these thick, accumulated atmospheres that will make the
Speaker 1: surface uninhabitable. So Seagull calls attention to a really important
Speaker 1: paper from published in the Astrophysical Journal by Jinging Chin
Speaker 1: and David Kipping called Probabilistic Forecasting of the Masses and
Speaker 1: Radii of Other Worlds. And this is basically a survey
Speaker 1: that says there are pretty much four types of planets
Speaker 1: that you expect to find in our in our galaxy,
Speaker 1: you get rocky worlds like Earth, and then you get
Speaker 1: gas planets with with big what was called volatile envelopes,
Speaker 1: like Neptune. And then you get very big gas giants
Speaker 1: like Jupiter, and then you get basically fully fledged stars.
Speaker 1: Just a planet gets so big that it's a star
Speaker 1: in its own And one of the important things for
Speaker 1: us here is that category of the Neptune like planets.
Speaker 1: Seagull points out that if you're talking about a planet
Speaker 1: with a density roughly equal to Earth's, which is about
Speaker 1: six grams per cubic centimeter, you can really only get
Speaker 1: about thirty percent larger in radius than Earth is and
Speaker 1: still be a rocky planet. You start getting bigger than that,
Speaker 1: and your mass means that you will be less like
Speaker 1: Earth and more like Neptune, a minor gas planet clinging
Speaker 1: to a deep blanket of hydrogen and other gases with
Speaker 1: maybe thousands of times the atmospheric pressure of Earth at
Speaker 1: the surface. So I feel like we don't appreciate this
Speaker 1: enough when we think about this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: super Earth's orbiting other stars, that you don't have to
Speaker 1: go much bigger than Earth before you're starting to turn
Speaker 1: into an uninhabitable gas planet, or at least uninhabitable for
Speaker 1: the kinds of life that we understand. And these kinds
Speaker 1: of planets litter the galaxy, planets that are a little
Speaker 1: bit bigger than Earth, probably enveloped in a gas cloud
Speaker 1: that would make the surface fully uninhabitable for us uh
Speaker 1: seagull rites quote. Once you get to about twice as
Speaker 1: massive as Earth, or just about twenty five to thirty
Speaker 1: larger and radius than our planet, you're no longer rocky
Speaker 1: with only a thin atmosphere, but are overwhelmingly likely to
Speaker 1: be Neptune like with a full fledged, large envelope of hydrogen, helium,
Speaker 1: and other light gases. And so for this reason, if
Speaker 1: you hear references to the abundant super Earth's in the
Speaker 1: Milky Way, these are not good places for humans to colonize,
Speaker 1: probably not at least, and probably not great places to
Speaker 1: look for life that is a close analog to Earth life.
Speaker 1: Some people have seen calling them many Neptunes rather than
Speaker 1: super Earth's. But this brings us back to an interesting
Speaker 1: question about our own solar system. Why does our Solar
Speaker 1: system look like it does? Why does it have a
Speaker 1: planet like Earth rather than a bunch of these in
Speaker 1: vernal super earths like so many other stars in our galaxy?
Speaker 1: And there was a paper published in Proceedings of the
Speaker 1: National Academy of Sciences in that offers one hypothesis to
Speaker 1: answer this, So why does our Solar system look the
Speaker 1: way it does? This paper is called Jupiter's Decisive Role
Speaker 1: in the Inner Solar System's Early Evolutions is by Constantine
Speaker 1: Batigen and Greg Laughlin. Now, in addition to this paper,
Speaker 1: I was looking at a couple of write ups on
Speaker 1: it that quoted the authors, one in NAT Geo by
Speaker 1: Andrew Physicis and one in Scientific American by Lee Billings.
Speaker 1: And so the short version here is that the authors
Speaker 1: of the study in argue that in the newly forming
Speaker 1: Solar System, Jupiter briefly migrated inwards from the place where
Speaker 1: it first formed, and as it moved inward into the
Speaker 1: inner Solar System, it caused a series of cascading effects
Speaker 1: that would have smashed other early forming super Earth's in
Speaker 1: its wake, and that the current inner planets like Earth
Speaker 1: are actually formed from the debris left over after this
Speaker 1: catastrophic series of collisions caused by Jupiter's inward migration. And
Speaker 1: this broader hypothesis about the ancient inner migration of Jupiter
Speaker 1: is sometimes called the Grand Tach hypothesis. Basically, it goes
Speaker 1: that lots of astronomers used to think that planetary orbits
Speaker 1: were as a rule, highly stable and nearly circular, unlikely
Speaker 1: to change. But when we look at other stars again,
Speaker 1: that's just not what we find. Sometimes we see weird
Speaker 1: kind of changes or eccentricities in planetary orbits. And so
Speaker 1: to explain the Grand Tach hy hypothesis, I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote from this article in Scientific American by Lee Billings
Speaker 1: called Jupiter, Destroyer of Worlds, may have paved the way
Speaker 1: for Earth, where Billings describes the Grand Tach hypothesis by
Speaker 1: saying that it posits quote. In the first few million
Speaker 1: years of our Solar systems existence, Jupiter migrated into and
Speaker 1: then back out of the inner Solar System, following a
Speaker 1: course similar to a sailboats when it tacks around a buoy.
Speaker 1: Back then, Jupiter would have still been embedded in a
Speaker 1: gas rich disc. Much of that gas was spiraling down
Speaker 1: towards the Sun, so much that the action would have
Speaker 1: sapped some of Jupiter's angular momentum too, causing the giant
Speaker 1: planet itself to spiral into the vicinity of where Mars
Speaker 1: is today. Jupiter would have kept falling in towards the
Speaker 1: Sun if not for being caught by the subsequent formation
Speaker 1: of Saturn, which began drifting in as well. As the
Speaker 1: two giant planets came closer together, they were caught in
Speaker 1: an orbital resonance. This resonance expelled all the gas between them,
Speaker 1: gradually reversing their death spirals and causing them to tack
Speaker 1: back out to the outer Solar System. So this grand
Speaker 1: Tach hypothesis, if true, would explain several things. It would
Speaker 1: explain why Mars is so all when we might expect
Speaker 1: it to be larger. In the words of Billings. It
Speaker 1: would also explain the distribution of icy and rocky bodies
Speaker 1: in the asteroid belt and other strange features of the
Speaker 1: Solar System. But if the Grand Tack is correct, Jupiter's
Speaker 1: orbit would have strayed into the inner regions of the
Speaker 1: Solar System, and its gravitational influence would have caused the
Speaker 1: realignment of the orbits of existing early forming super Earth's,
Speaker 1: sometimes causing their orbits to overlap one another, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they would actually have major collisions. You would really only
Speaker 1: need one such catastrophic collision in order to have a
Speaker 1: chain reaction that could annihilate these early forming inner planets.
Speaker 1: One one crash could lead to what the authors here
Speaker 1: called a collisional cascade. The studies author Greg Laughlin is
Speaker 1: quoted in the in these news articles by saying, quote,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing we worry about if satellites were
Speaker 1: to be destroyed in Low Earth or it, their fragments
Speaker 1: would start smashing into other satellites, and you'd risk a
Speaker 1: chain reaction of collisions. Our work indicates that Jupiter would
Speaker 1: have created just such a collisional cascade in the inner
Speaker 1: Solar System. And to quote here from Billings quote, the
Speaker 1: simulation suggested that Jupiter's inward spiral would send swarms of
Speaker 1: one hundred kilometer wide planetary building blocks cascading into the
Speaker 1: inner Solar System. The giant planet's gravity would also sling
Speaker 1: those building blocks and the inner planets themselves into overlapping
Speaker 1: elliptical orbits, creating an interplanetary demolition derby of whirling, colliding,
Speaker 1: fragmenting worlds. Now this, I mean, this sounds like a
Speaker 1: titanomic e Yeah to me. I mean this is a
Speaker 1: war of the gods in which maybe the gods themselves
Speaker 1: are not destroyed, but there's a lot of destruction um
Speaker 1: going on between them. Yeah, exactly right. I mean that's
Speaker 1: why I was making this connection. And I do want
Speaker 1: to be very clear we are suggesting a connection based
Speaker 1: on like metaphorical similarities, because there are actually people in
Speaker 1: the more Velakovsky vein who think that you could draw
Speaker 1: literal parallels between things described in myth and ancient movements
Speaker 1: of the planets, which I think is not probably not true.
Speaker 1: Like Emmanuel Velakowski, one of the things he wrote was
Speaker 1: that you know, like miracles described in the Bible, about
Speaker 1: like pillars of fire and stuff like that would have
Speaker 1: been caused by ancient planets moving around in their orbits
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know stuff like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence for this in the modern world, but
Speaker 1: fantastically weird hypotheses that some people still believe for some reason,
Speaker 1: not not actual scientists. All of this stuff we're talking
Speaker 1: about would have been before we even had the Earth
Speaker 1: as it exists today, So this would not have been
Speaker 1: things that people could have witnessed. But the metaphorical similarity
Speaker 1: to these uh you know, uh, theomicy myths is is
Speaker 1: fantastically cool. Yeah, and you can you can easily get
Speaker 1: into comparisons of like what does it mean to have
Speaker 1: terrific power? You know, whether you're that that power is
Speaker 1: coming via the mass of some sort of a planet,
Speaker 1: or if it's coming through the you know, the power
Speaker 1: of a of a single warrior king in in history.
Speaker 1: And I like that it's it's creating this metaphorical residence
Speaker 1: that it's not just Jupiter destroying this early generation of
Speaker 1: of primordial beings like the Titans, but it's also creating
Speaker 1: the new divine order because, according to the author's here,
Speaker 1: a second generation of planets after this you know, destruction
Speaker 1: cascade within the inner Solar System caused by Jupiter. If
Speaker 1: this hypothesis is correct, a second generation of planets would
Speaker 1: inform out of the whirling field of debris that's left over.
Speaker 1: So the pulverized remnants of these ancient super earths would
Speaker 1: have a couple of fates, Like some of the debris
Speaker 1: would get dragged down into the Sun, and then some
Speaker 1: of the leftover chunks would become the bodies of planets
Speaker 1: like Earth and Venus after Jupiter migrates back out away
Speaker 1: from the Sun again. Yeah, it's like in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the war. Um, you know, Zeus has to say, well, um,
Speaker 1: looks okay, Poseidon Hades, Um, we gotta divvy this up. Uh,
Speaker 1: somebody's gotta make the ocean's work. Somebody's got to keep
Speaker 1: the underworld running clean. Um, so let's let's get to it.
Speaker 1: These are jobs now, now, the the aftermath of the
Speaker 1: war defines our roles. Now. One thing that doesn't perfectly
Speaker 1: match up with the story in Greek myth but does
Speaker 1: seem just generally mythologically interesting is that if the Grand
Speaker 1: Tach hypothesis is correct, that Saturn would have been responsible
Speaker 1: for pulling Jupiter out of the fray right, pulling Jupiter
Speaker 1: back out away from the Sun. Now, Saturn again is
Speaker 1: associated with Chronus, the father of Jupiter, who was actually
Speaker 1: the main enemy here. So that part doesn't really line up,
Speaker 1: but but I like it anyway. Well, you know, don't
Speaker 1: discount the bond between father and son. Who knows, even
Speaker 1: after you fought one another in battle, right, And I
Speaker 1: just imagine like the six hours Snider cut of this myth, Like,
Speaker 1: I can imagine this scene where yeah, they've been battling
Speaker 1: each other, but then, uh, you know, the Saturn reaches
Speaker 1: out to him and and and and saves him from
Speaker 1: from destruction or something. My son, I am sorry, I
Speaker 1: tried to eat you while digesting that stone, I realized.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what he realized. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think Chronus learns lessons. Chronus does not seem like a
Speaker 1: lesson learner. Well, I don't know if any of the
Speaker 1: gods do, particularly, I mean not really. It's not really
Speaker 1: a role for them. It's for mortals are the ones
Speaker 1: who learn the lessons. Uh, the gods are the ones
Speaker 1: who teach the lessons. Yeah, so I think that's maybe
Speaker 1: gonna have to do it for this episode, but in
Speaker 1: the next episode we wanted to come back and look
Speaker 1: at more interesting ways that the tyrant Jupiter could indeed
Speaker 1: be the decider of the fates of Earth, acting as protector,
Speaker 1: creator and destroyer all in one. So so come back
Speaker 1: next time for more Jupiter myths and Jupiter science. That's right,
Speaker 1: should be a good time. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: want to check out other that's the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind, including past episodes that have dealt with with
Speaker 1: Saturn and Jupiter uh, mainly with the moons of of
Speaker 1: Saturn and then also the Jovian moons UH, then you
Speaker 1: can find those in the Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed, and you can find that podcast feed wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, wherever that happens to be. We
Speaker 1: used to ask that you rate, review and subscribe. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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