Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it is Saturday, so
Speaker 2: we are heading down into the vault for an older
Speaker 2: episode of the show. This one originally published on April ninth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, and it's called In the Name of Osiris.
Speaker 2: I think it was a follow up of our series
Speaker 2: on Osiris.
Speaker 1: That's right. This one, I believe, mostly revolves around things
Speaker 1: in the scientific realm that are just named after Osiris
Speaker 1: but are still fun to talk about.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Last week
Speaker 1: on the show, we did a two parter about the
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian underworld fertility god Osiris, and today's episode is
Speaker 1: kind of a spin off of that. Well, I think
Speaker 1: you're going to have more fun if you go into
Speaker 1: this episode with some familiarity regarding the mythology in question.
Speaker 1: So I would say, if you have a choice in
Speaker 1: the matter, yeah, go back and listen to the two
Speaker 1: previous episodes about Osiris the God and surrounding mythology. Go
Speaker 1: ahead and listen to those, but it's also not completely necessary.
Speaker 1: The basic gist here is okay, Osiris is a mythological
Speaker 1: figure who continues to resonate with people around the world,
Speaker 1: and even his name has this kind of regal mystery
Speaker 1: to many of us. Just to say the name allowed Osiris,
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of summons a certain amount of
Speaker 1: mystery and I don't know, strangeness and power into the
Speaker 1: room with you. And scientists are far from immune to
Speaker 1: such charms. So we have various things in the scientific
Speaker 1: and technological world that are named after him. In some
Speaker 1: cases we're talking about highly tortured acronyms. Other times there
Speaker 1: seems to be, you know, even less connection. So we're
Speaker 1: not going to touch on everything in the scientific and
Speaker 1: technological world that is named after Osiris. There are some
Speaker 1: things we're not going to get into, like there is
Speaker 1: an exoplanet that is nicknamed Osirius, not officially named Osiris.
Speaker 1: But we are going to talk about two things in particular.
Speaker 1: You know, it's an opportunity to chat about some very
Speaker 1: deserving science in the name of Osiris, as you know,
Speaker 1: as well as some scientific tidbits that we might not
Speaker 1: otherwise have discussed.
Speaker 2: Right, So, first up, I wanted to talk about a
Speaker 2: couple of aspects of Osiris REX, which was the name
Speaker 2: of an asteroid sample return mission operated by NASA, as
Speaker 2: well as the original name of its associated spacecraft, but
Speaker 2: it has since been resurrected with a new identity. It
Speaker 2: has now been reborn as Osiris APEX. I'll explain that
Speaker 2: in a minute.
Speaker 1: Well, that sounds really cool too, and I mean, if
Speaker 1: nothing else, this is just an awesome name for a
Speaker 1: space mission.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying to discern the mythological significance of going
Speaker 2: from Rex to APEX. I guess that would be like
Speaker 2: going from Osiris the King to Osiris the Peak.
Speaker 1: That's what Apex means. I think in either a case,
Speaker 1: I mean it is fitting to name things in space
Speaker 1: or sent into space after Osiris, given the ancient Egyptians
Speaker 1: fascination with the stars.
Speaker 2: Fair enough, So I'll start with just a very short
Speaker 2: rough sketch of the mission history and then come back
Speaker 2: and talk about a couple of aspects of it. So
Speaker 2: Osiris REX launched in September twenty sixteen, and in twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen successfully achieved a deep space rendezvous with its target,
Speaker 2: an asteroid called one oh one nine five five Binu
Speaker 2: b NNU. The spacecraft spent roughly two years after that
Speaker 2: orbiting Binu, mapping its surface, doing analysis of the asteroid
Speaker 2: from orbit, and trying to select an ideal landing zone,
Speaker 2: which proved a bit more difficult than had originally been anticipated.
Speaker 2: In October of twenty twenty, o Cyrus Rex managed to
Speaker 2: touch down on the surface of Binu and collect a
Speaker 2: sample of its regolith. The regolith is the rocky outer
Speaker 2: soil covering the object. But it was not like a
Speaker 2: full landing where it sat down and chilled for a while.
Speaker 2: It was a touch and ghost sampling operation, so it
Speaker 2: touched down, it sort of poked the asteroid with a
Speaker 2: mechanism called its sampling arm, so it had kind of
Speaker 2: a leg or a limb that came out below it
Speaker 2: that poked down into the asteroid's regolith, did a blast
Speaker 2: of nitrogen gas to try to stir up some of
Speaker 2: the soil, captured a bunch of it, and then blasted
Speaker 2: right back.
Speaker 1: Off its kind of like a mosquito.
Speaker 2: Didn't land for as long as a mosquito, though, it
Speaker 2: was more like if a mosquito just had to kind
Speaker 2: of like jab you and then retreat. Gotcha, like if
Speaker 2: a mosquito would fly down, poke you hit your blood
Speaker 2: vessels under the skin with a blast of nitrogen gas,
Speaker 2: cause a little sort of explosion of blood, and then
Speaker 2: just suck up a bunch of that as it is
Speaker 2: bouncing back off of your skin. But anyway, the sampling
Speaker 2: was successful. It got a significant amount of the material
Speaker 2: from Binu, and then it lifted off and returned to Earth,
Speaker 2: which and so the spacecraft didn't fully return to Earth,
Speaker 2: but it had a capsule that was for the sample return,
Speaker 2: which touched down on Earth. I think it landed in
Speaker 2: Utah in September twenty twenty three, and the asteroid soil
Speaker 2: sample was intact and it was ready to be studied.
Speaker 2: So that is something we now have in the possession
Speaker 2: of Earth scientists who have already gotten to work analyzing
Speaker 2: it and doing science on the basis of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a pretty impressive technological achievement, you know, not
Speaker 1: even just all the details of just making sure everything
Speaker 1: lines up just ride here.
Speaker 2: In many ways, I mean, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: things that are hard about doing a mission like this,
Speaker 2: So of course there is, just there are the navigational
Speaker 2: challenges of trying to intersect with a small, fast moving
Speaker 2: object in space, like an asteroid. There is once you
Speaker 2: get there, the selection of the landing zone, this difficult
Speaker 2: touch and go maneuver, to try to capture a piece
Speaker 2: of the asteroid some soil from it without contaminating it,
Speaker 2: to get that safely back to Earth on intact and uncontaminated.
Speaker 2: And then also things people might not even think of.
Speaker 2: For example, when the spacecraft and the probe were conducting
Speaker 2: their operations on the asteroid surface, that's not something that
Speaker 2: like a human pilot can operate in real time with
Speaker 2: a joystick because it's so far away. There's a significant
Speaker 2: travel time for information back and forth between mission control
Speaker 2: here on Earth and the probe. So essentially these these
Speaker 2: maneuvers had to be pre programmed so that the probe
Speaker 2: could carry them out on its own, because there wouldn't
Speaker 2: be enough real time exchange of information for like a
Speaker 2: human pilot to see what's happening in the moment and adjust.
Speaker 2: You have to like make sure you've programmed it correctly
Speaker 2: in advance, and it can do what it needs to
Speaker 2: do without you being able to intervene. But anyway, after
Speaker 2: the successful conclusion of the Osiris Rex mission, the spacecraft
Speaker 2: was given a new mission and a new name to
Speaker 2: rendezvous with and study the asteroid nine nine nine four
Speaker 2: two Apofice, and, in keeping with its new role, the
Speaker 2: new name Osiris APEX. So, as you previewed a minute ago,
Speaker 2: rob Osirius Rex is an acronym. It's one of these
Speaker 2: kind of I always wonder how these things exactly come
Speaker 2: together when, like, you know, you select all the things
Speaker 2: and they're supposed to stand for what it actually does,
Speaker 2: but then it makes a word that already exists, and
Speaker 2: you're like, that didn't happen by accident? Who organizes the
Speaker 2: acronym formation process?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it's like it's one of these
Speaker 1: situations where you sort of you get in within spitting
Speaker 1: distance of a really cool word, and then you start
Speaker 1: turning the screws to get it a little closer, you know,
Speaker 1: because you're not hitting Osiris rex, you know, first try
Speaker 1: with no manipulation.
Speaker 2: Certainly not so it's not without it being an Osiris miracle.
Speaker 2: But okay, So it stands for origins, spectral interpretation, resource identification,
Speaker 2: and security regalith Explorer, So those parts of the name
Speaker 2: are basically a summary of what Osiris Rex was meant
Speaker 2: to study or what types of questions it was meant
Speaker 2: to help illuminate. So, for example, origins refers to the
Speaker 2: fact that the target of the mission is what has
Speaker 2: sometimes been called a time capsule. Asteroid. Binu was selected
Speaker 2: because it is thought to be a pristine four point
Speaker 2: five million year old, carbon rich asteroid that has been
Speaker 2: preserved in essentially the same condition since the Solar System
Speaker 2: was formed. So by looking at what it's made of,
Speaker 2: we can learn more about the early days of the
Speaker 2: Solar System and learn about the initial distribution of things
Speaker 2: of various minerals and organic compounds and things like that.
Speaker 2: It'll help teach us more about how the Solar System
Speaker 2: was formed and give us points of comparison between it
Speaker 2: and other objects in the Solar System that have been
Speaker 2: changed more over time. And so the spectral interpretation part
Speaker 2: this refers to the use of spectral analysis and astronomy
Speaker 2: looking at patterns of light colors reflected off of an
Speaker 2: object to determine its composition. The respectral analysis of Binu,
Speaker 2: of course, and there is spectral analysis of asteroids, even
Speaker 2: just from scopic observatories to try to determine their composition,
Speaker 2: so it would help illuminate those questions as well. There
Speaker 2: is a resource identification in the name that's understanding the
Speaker 2: chemical and geological makeup of a carbon rich asteroid. The
Speaker 2: security in the name is an interesting thing, you might think, Wait,
Speaker 2: what is this referred to security? Well, that refers to
Speaker 2: security for the whole of Earth, because it turns out,
Speaker 2: of all the asteroids we know about today, Binu is
Speaker 2: one of the most potentially dangerous to our planet. Binu
Speaker 2: passes near to Earth about once every six years, and
Speaker 2: scientists have calculated that in the year twenty one eighty two,
Speaker 2: its path will bring it close enough that there is
Speaker 2: about a one in twenty seven hundred chance of a
Speaker 2: collision on that pass. So you can get some relief
Speaker 2: from the relentless like asteroid bound for Earth headlines in
Speaker 2: that when it comes to the larger known space objects
Speaker 2: and the most troubling ones won't get close to us
Speaker 2: for a long time, and even when they do, based
Speaker 2: on what we know today, the chances of a direct
Speaker 2: hit are like one in several thousand at worst. Now,
Speaker 2: how bad would it be. If Binu did hit Earth,
Speaker 2: it would be not as bad as some impacts in
Speaker 2: Earth's history, but it would be quite bad. Benu is
Speaker 2: about half a kilometer wide with a mass of about
Speaker 2: sixty seven million metric tons, so it would probably not
Speaker 2: be large enough to cause worldwide calamity. It wouldn't be
Speaker 2: like the you know, the object associated with the death
Speaker 2: of the non avian dinosaurs. It would not be like
Speaker 2: the KPg extinction object, but it would It would be bad.
Speaker 2: It would be extremely locally destructive depending on where and
Speaker 2: how it hit. So part of the mission was also
Speaker 2: focused on studying the forces acting on the trajectory of
Speaker 2: asteroids so we can better predict their course over time,
Speaker 2: because probably the thing we need to best understand in
Speaker 2: order to defend Earth from dangerous near earth objects is
Speaker 2: a very accurate prediction system for the future movements of
Speaker 2: space objects. Right now, we can predict with pretty good accuracy,
Speaker 2: but over time that accuracy degrades. Right, so the farther
Speaker 2: out into the future you're looking, the harder it is
Speaker 2: to predict how close something is going to be. And specifically,
Speaker 2: the Osiris REX mission was looking at the influence of
Speaker 2: something called the Yarkovsky effect, and to do a short
Speaker 2: summary of that, when an asteroid is flying through space
Speaker 2: and rotating. This is specifically for a rotating object, its
Speaker 2: surface goes through patterns of heating and cooling depending on
Speaker 2: which side is facing the Sun. So as one side
Speaker 2: of the asteroid faces the Sun, it gets star baked
Speaker 2: and it heats up, and then as the asteroid rotates,
Speaker 2: the hot side turns away from the Sun and cools,
Speaker 2: and that cooling means the asteroid is radiating infrared photons
Speaker 2: into space. This radiation actually provides its own small amount
Speaker 2: of thrust, so as it's radiating that heat off into space,
Speaker 2: there's a bit of a push created there, and the
Speaker 2: effect is fairly small, but for relatively small objects and
Speaker 2: affecting the path over large periods of time, it can
Speaker 2: make a big difference. This does affect the asteroid's path
Speaker 2: through space, which makes it harder to predict the orbit
Speaker 2: of a rotating asteroid farther into the future, and that's
Speaker 2: something that we need to be able to do if
Speaker 2: we want to identify threatening near earth objects and protect
Speaker 2: Earth by potentially pushing them off course.
Speaker 1: Right right, which to your point is essential with objects
Speaker 1: that we already know are going to get maybe a
Speaker 1: little too close for comfort. Anyway, we need a note
Speaker 1: like to what degree these estimates can be off? You know, exactly,
Speaker 1: how how much sway there is in the movement of
Speaker 1: one of these asteroids in our predictions exactly.
Speaker 2: And then finally, so that's the Osiris part of the name.
Speaker 2: That finally there's the REX part that stands for Regolith Explorer,
Speaker 2: and this is the sample return aspect of the mission.
Speaker 2: So Osiris REX was the first successful US mission to
Speaker 2: return a sample from an asteroid. That was not the
Speaker 2: first such mission worldwide. Actually, the first successful asteroid sample
Speaker 2: return was carried out by the Japanese Space Agency. That
Speaker 2: was the Hyabusa probe, which got a sample of small
Speaker 2: dust grains from an asteroid called twenty five one three
Speaker 2: Itokawa and return to the material to Earth in twenty ten.
Speaker 2: Though Osiris REX is not just a duplicate of that
Speaker 2: mission because it targeted a different type of asteroid, and
Speaker 2: also Binu was able to get a lot more just
Speaker 2: mass of material returned to Earth for us to work on.
Speaker 2: Now here's something about the naming of this asteroid that
Speaker 2: is kind of backwards, of which is kind of the
Speaker 2: opposite of what you might expect. The asteroid Binu got
Speaker 2: its name by association with the Osiris REX mission, so
Speaker 2: it was originally called nineteen ninety nine RQ thirty six,
Speaker 2: but in advance of the mission in twenty thirteen, the
Speaker 2: Planetary Society held a competition to name the asteroid, and
Speaker 2: a kid from North Carolina who is nine years old
Speaker 2: at the time named Mike Pusio came up with the
Speaker 2: idea of naming it Binu, which was the name of
Speaker 2: a pre existing deity from Egyptian mythology, an animal formed
Speaker 2: god often depicted as a long legged bird, though there's
Speaker 2: some dispute over which natural bird, if any, it's supposed
Speaker 2: to correspond to. I'll talk about that a bit more
Speaker 2: in a minute. But Pusio apparently picked the name for
Speaker 2: the asteroid because of the Osiris RECX probes resemblance to
Speaker 2: a long legged bird and rob if you look, I
Speaker 2: attached an image of the spacecraft here for you to
Speaker 2: have a gander at. I can see this here, so
Speaker 2: the solar panel flaps are very much like wings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, excellent. You know, I got to hand it
Speaker 1: to this nine year old. This is a great space
Speaker 1: nerd and a great mythology nerd, two great nerdoms for anyone,
Speaker 1: especially this at this age.
Speaker 2: Now we're getting a little off track of the mission here,
Speaker 2: but I actually got interested in the concept of Binu itself,
Speaker 2: and the context of this episode is the Egyptian mythology.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to follow this tunnel under the pyramids
Speaker 2: for a moment. So Binu, you can if you're looking
Speaker 2: this up. It's sometimes as the god's name is spelled
Speaker 2: Binu with two ends or Banu with one n so
Speaker 2: b in U. Sometimes the asteroid is with two ends.
Speaker 2: It is a figure associated with the creation of the
Speaker 2: world and with the creator Sun God. And for what
Speaker 2: I'm about to discuss. My main sources Geraldine Pinch's Handbook
Speaker 2: of Egyptian Mythology. So, according to Pinch, in some Egyptian myths,
Speaker 2: Binu is said to be the oldest creature living during
Speaker 2: the creation of the world, when a hill of dry
Speaker 2: land was first raised out of the darkness, out of
Speaker 2: the waters of chaos, the Binu bird landed on this earth.
Speaker 2: So it was the first living animal, and its cry
Speaker 2: was the first sound. The moment of its cry marked
Speaker 2: the first moment of time, and the cry of the
Speaker 2: Binu bird will also sound again at the end of
Speaker 2: the world to mark the time when all order will
Speaker 2: again descend into chaos. The Binu bird seems to have
Speaker 2: been related to, or possibly the inspiration for, the Greek
Speaker 2: myth of the phoenix. In the Egyptian context, there was
Speaker 2: a binu bird that was believed to dwell in Heliopolis,
Speaker 2: and kings would pray to the bird for the renewal
Speaker 2: of strength after they had been in power for thirty years.
Speaker 2: And here I just want to read a section from
Speaker 2: Pinch on the connection between the Binu bird and Osiris
Speaker 2: as well as another major god from the pantheon. Quote,
Speaker 2: both Ray and Osiris could be identified with the Binu bird,
Speaker 2: an expression of the secret knowledge that these two gods
Speaker 2: were one. As a manifestation of Osiris, the Binu bird
Speaker 2: led the spirits of the dead through the dangers of
Speaker 2: the underworld. Some spells in the Book of the Dead
Speaker 2: aim to assist the dead to transform themselves into Binu
Speaker 2: birds so that they can travel freely between worlds.
Speaker 1: All right, so a kind of psycho bomb.
Speaker 2: Here, Yeah, I think it's interesting that you would get
Speaker 2: both that so the binu could be a creature that's
Speaker 2: sort of a guide because remember in you know, there
Speaker 2: are different visions of the Egyptian and afterlife. But in
Speaker 2: some views of this, you know, it's an adventure. It's
Speaker 2: like a journey that you have to go through and
Speaker 2: face obstacles along the way. And there is also there's
Speaker 2: the famous judgment, the weighing of the heart against the
Speaker 2: feather of mott. But there are also, you know, the
Speaker 2: these trials you must go through, like facing facing dangers
Speaker 2: throughout the landscape of the dead, and the Binu bird
Speaker 2: here apparently apparently could be a guide in that process.
Speaker 2: But you could also, if you knew the right spells,
Speaker 2: just turn into a binu bird, which seems even better.
Speaker 2: Now coming back to whether this bird has a counterpart
Speaker 2: in nature, Early texts describing the binu bird seem to
Speaker 2: be talking about a yellow wagtail, which is a small
Speaker 2: bird that eats insects and tends to seek out wet,
Speaker 2: open countries such as marshland. However, Pinch notes that in
Speaker 2: later art the binu bird is depicted somewhat differently as
Speaker 2: a huge heron, and this is why you'll see pictures
Speaker 2: of a hair and often if you google Binu, this
Speaker 2: is I think more New Kingdom art. And I found
Speaker 2: a photo of some of this art for you to
Speaker 2: look at here rob and the outline here Binu is
Speaker 2: a heron that would have been taller than a human
Speaker 2: with its neck outstretched, so a very big heron, and
Speaker 2: extant herons can get quite large. The still living Goliath
Speaker 2: heron or Ardia goliath can reach a height of about
Speaker 2: five feet or roughly one hundred and fifty centimeters. But
Speaker 2: apparently there was an extinct giant heron that grew even larger,
Speaker 2: known today as the Binu heron or Ardia binuids, bones
Speaker 2: of which have been found from the Arabian Peninsula dating
Speaker 2: back to the third millennium BCE. So this is a
Speaker 2: giant heron that would have been alive during human history
Speaker 2: here and so this isn't known, but it has been
Speaker 2: speculated that this bird could have inspired the iconography of
Speaker 2: Binu and thus also perhaps the story of the Fetes.
Speaker 2: Fascinating now, how much larger was this like a twenty
Speaker 2: foot tall heron? No, it is bigger than any living heron,
Speaker 2: but not by a huge amount. I think it would
Speaker 2: have been roughly maybe six feet tall, still a big bird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I mean it just there any kind of
Speaker 1: heron species you encounter in the wild, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a breathtaking and magical experience and imagining like the
Speaker 1: largest of herons here, this extinct species. This would have
Speaker 1: been quite an impressive side.
Speaker 2: Now, before we move on from Osiris Rex, there is
Speaker 2: one interesting thing I wanted to talk about from the
Speaker 2: sampling portion of the mission. Apparently this asteroid had some
Speaker 2: surprises waiting for us when we got there. So I
Speaker 2: mentioned already that the sampling mechanism how work to get
Speaker 2: some of the regulith from the surface of this asteroid.
Speaker 2: It did not involve a permanent landing, so you didn't
Speaker 2: have to worry about that. It was a touch and
Speaker 2: go operation, so you would descend, you would poke the
Speaker 2: surface with the sampling arm, issue a blast of nitrogen gas,
Speaker 2: scoop up a bunch of what was stirred up, and
Speaker 2: then blast off and retreat immediately. But despite this, once
Speaker 2: we actually reached the asteroid, it proved a lot trickier
Speaker 2: of an object to touch down on than was initially
Speaker 2: expected because it had been thought that the surface of
Speaker 2: Binu would be relatively smooth, or at least have large
Speaker 2: smooth patches. I think the asteroid that had been targeted
Speaker 2: by the Japanese Hyabusa probe had more kind of beachy areas,
Speaker 2: you know, with like smooth, fine grained areas where you
Speaker 2: know you could select a good landing zone. But for
Speaker 2: some reason, Binu was when we got there, more of
Speaker 2: a sort of a hell of bl It was a
Speaker 2: very rocky, bouldery surface, more uneven than expected. So the
Speaker 2: team had to very carefully map out the surface to
Speaker 2: select an ideal landing spot, and there were not many.
Speaker 2: They ended up selecting a place that was known as
Speaker 2: the Nightingale Crater. But then there was another surprise waiting
Speaker 2: when they actually went to initiate the touchdown and sample
Speaker 2: retrieval moment. So the craft was descending and it poked
Speaker 2: the asteroid, and then the sampling arm sank. It sank
Speaker 2: into the surface. I've seen this described as like poking
Speaker 2: into a swamp. Now, of course, it's not actually that
Speaker 2: there was liquid water on the surface of Benu. Instead,
Speaker 2: it's just that the soil covering its surface was a
Speaker 2: lower density than expected, so the sampling arm just kind
Speaker 2: of plunged in. I want to read a quote here
Speaker 2: from a space Died Calm article by Teresa Pultova talking
Speaker 2: about this moment.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: The descent was smooth, but when Osiris wrex's sample collection
Speaker 2: device pressed into the asteroid surface, something unexpected happened. Contrary
Speaker 2: to expectations, the surface behaved almost like a swamp. Within
Speaker 2: a few seconds, the spacecraft sank nineteen inches or fifty
Speaker 2: centimeters deep into Binu. As the sample collection had sucked
Speaker 2: in the sample and the spacecraft's backaway thrusters fired, a
Speaker 2: huge wall of debris rose from the crater, engulfing the
Speaker 2: ascending spacecraft and Rob I've attached some pictures for you
Speaker 2: to look at here because there's sort of like an
Speaker 2: animation you can look up of this of the spacecraft's
Speaker 2: camera had a camera facing directly down along the axis
Speaker 2: of the sampling arm, so you're looking down as it's
Speaker 2: descending towards the surface, and you can just see when
Speaker 2: it touches suddenly it goes and then there's this explosion
Speaker 2: and there's just stuff all over the place, and then
Speaker 2: it zooms back out and you can see like before
Speaker 2: and after images of the crater where it touched down,
Speaker 2: where like major rocks and boulders are moved all over
Speaker 2: the place. It just seems like this is you know,
Speaker 2: it reminds you that asteroids, especially smaller asteroids like this,
Speaker 2: are not necessarily not necessarily solid objects. That it might
Speaker 2: be better to think of something like Binu not as
Speaker 2: like a solid hunk of rock in space, but like
Speaker 2: a big pile of rubble that's loosely bound together by gravity.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean even in our descriptions of
Speaker 1: like the size of these things, we compare them to
Speaker 1: things like skyscrapers, you know, or how big they are
Speaker 1: in comparison to a car, So we tend to get
Speaker 1: these kind of solid ideas in our mind. Yeah, towards
Speaker 1: to your point, it's more like a big ball of
Speaker 1: accumulated space rubble.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But despite the fact that it was a hell
Speaker 2: of boulders and sort of a dry swamp of sadness,
Speaker 2: the mission was a success. We got plenty of material
Speaker 2: from the surface. I think the initial goal was to
Speaker 2: get at least sixty grams and they got well over
Speaker 2: That's plenty of material to study. And now the spacecraft
Speaker 2: is being repurposed. It is slated to enter the orbit
Speaker 2: of the asteroid Apofas in twenty twenty nine. Apophus, by
Speaker 2: the way, another Egyptian mythology tie in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the great serpent, I believe right.
Speaker 2: It's a monster god figure associated with chaos and destruction,
Speaker 2: kind of reptilian in nature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Pinch describes it. It's sometimes depicted more like
Speaker 1: a crocodile, but more frequently as a great serpent, and
Speaker 1: it is like it is one of, if not the
Speaker 1: most important chaos monster of Egyptian mythology.
Speaker 2: But interesting thing to study because Apofus was previous thought
Speaker 2: to be an asteroid that may in fact threaten Earth,
Speaker 2: but because of the unpredictability of its orbit, when later
Speaker 2: we got more precision about its trajectory, it was sort
Speaker 2: of ruled out. So for a while people were thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: this one might really be a candidate for danger, but
Speaker 2: actually now it's it's nothing to worry about, but still
Speaker 2: worth study.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And the more we understand how these things
Speaker 1: move and what impacts their course, the more we can
Speaker 1: protect ourselves, and the more the more information we have
Speaker 1: moving forward. Thus, again the security aspect of the Osiris
Speaker 1: rex that we just described earlier. That's Osyrus Rex in
Speaker 1: all caps except for the X, because again it is
Speaker 1: a regular explorer at the end. All right, Well, from there,
Speaker 1: the next logical place to go is of course to
Speaker 1: talk about bees, perfect and in general. You know, this
Speaker 1: is a fine area of connection for a nigition god
Speaker 1: because the ancient Egyptians were particularly connected with the honey bee.
Speaker 1: As biologist, author and former guests on the show Jeene
Speaker 1: Kritsky points out in his excellent twenty fifteen book The
Speaker 1: Tears of Ray, the honey bee was a pervasive cultural
Speaker 1: motif in ancient Egypt, in large part because of their
Speaker 1: perceived connection to the sun god Ray or Raw, whose
Speaker 1: very tears were said to be honeybees. And on top
Speaker 1: of this, honey and other bee products like wax were
Speaker 1: prized and used for a variety of medicinal, culinary, religious,
Speaker 1: and economic purposes. So again that's the god Ray or Ra.
Speaker 1: And you know, as we already alluded to in this episode,
Speaker 1: there are connections between Ray and Raw and of Cyrus.
Speaker 1: But you may be wondering, okay, are there any specific
Speaker 1: be connections to Cyrus. So I have Kritsky's book on
Speaker 1: the shelf here, so I picked it up, and I
Speaker 1: consulted it once more to see what he had to
Speaker 1: say specific about Osiris. So I'm going to run through
Speaker 1: just a few examples here. The book includes an image
Speaker 1: from the Tomb of Usarat depicting the offering of honeycomb
Speaker 1: to Osiris. So this is Theban Tomb t. T. Fifty
Speaker 1: six in the Theban Necropolis near Luxor New Kingdom period.
Speaker 1: I believe he also has an example He mentions the
Speaker 1: tomb of Minmos, which includes the passage Osiris bee keeper
Speaker 1: of Aman, bearer of incense, minmost justified, possessor of honor
Speaker 1: before the Great God, and this is from the eighteenth
Speaker 1: or nineteenth dynasty, I believe indirectly. The Salt eight twenty
Speaker 1: five Papyrus includes a spell that involves using bees wax
Speaker 1: figures to quote kill the name of Seth, in this
Speaker 1: case used against Seth. But such figurines made out of wax,
Speaker 1: which rarely survived, were seemingly burnt in spells against mundane
Speaker 1: enemies as well. You could use them against great cosmic
Speaker 1: entities like Seth, but you could also use them just
Speaker 1: a guess, against your actual real world enemies. Okay and
Speaker 1: Kritzky also includes some other mentions to support the idea
Speaker 1: that honey or honeycomb. In particular, these were often used
Speaker 1: in temple rituals concerning gods, including the god of Cyrus.
Speaker 1: So are we going to talk about honey bees now? No,
Speaker 1: We're in fact going to talk about a genus of
Speaker 1: bee found only in Central and South America, so completely
Speaker 1: removed from ancient Egyptian culture, but still named after Osiris.
Speaker 1: So the genus Osiris is classified under the Osserini tribe,
Speaker 1: which in turn is classified under the family Apidae, which
Speaker 1: itself contains well over five thousand species of bees. So
Speaker 1: I looked at a few different bee manuals on this.
Speaker 1: Ultimately we're dealing with some bees here that are not
Speaker 1: as well researched, and we'll get into some of the
Speaker 1: research the reasons for that. But as Charles Duncan Mitchner,
Speaker 1: this guy was one of the leading experts on bees
Speaker 1: who have nineteen eighteen through twenty fifteen. He describes them
Speaker 1: in The Bees of the World, Volume one from two
Speaker 1: thousand as klecto parasites. They seem to have likely evolved
Speaker 1: independently of nobindet klepto parasitic bees and this is based
Speaker 1: on various features that they have that are also found
Speaker 1: in non parasitic bees, which are absent in other examples
Speaker 1: of klepto parasitic bees. He points out that Osiris bees
Speaker 1: have relatively thin, but smooth and shiny skins, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like smooth, shiny exoskeletons, and no protective spines.
Speaker 1: But they do have an enormous sting, and this will
Speaker 1: We'll come back to some of the reasons for this
Speaker 1: as we proceed here, but he writes that quote, parasites
Speaker 1: commonly have stronger stings than their non parasitic relatives. There
Speaker 1: are exceptions to that rule, but by and large you'll
Speaker 1: find that they put far more evolutionary energy is put
Speaker 1: into these kind of like offensive slash defensive weapons.
Speaker 2: I already have some thoughts about why that might be,
Speaker 2: but I bet you'll illuminate me.
Speaker 1: So the whole gist of klepto parasites, as we've discussed
Speaker 1: on the show before, comes down to the laying of
Speaker 1: one species eggs in the nest of another species. And
Speaker 1: the classic of that example of this from the world
Speaker 1: of birds is of course the cuckoo bird. And here
Speaker 1: we're talking about so called cuckoo bees. This is more
Speaker 1: specifically known as brood parasitism. Another source I was looking
Speaker 1: at for this is a really nice write up on
Speaker 1: the topic on the website Entomology Today by Meredith sweet Walker,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting. As a former avian endocrinologist, she seems
Speaker 1: especially well positioned to compare cuckoo birds to cuckoo bees.
Speaker 1: She points out that cuckoo bees are actually more generally
Speaker 1: as a social parasites as well, because they generally have
Speaker 1: to infiltrate or in some cases anyway we'll get into
Speaker 1: the details here. In many cases we're talking about bees
Speaker 1: that have to infiltrate an entire use social hive structure
Speaker 1: or nest structure in order to deposit their eggs. So
Speaker 1: they can't simply like sneak in, dump their egg and
Speaker 1: run and be like he he, Now you have to
Speaker 1: raise my young. There's a lot more involved here.
Speaker 2: Like they actually have to blend in with the hive.
Speaker 1: Right, And I don't want to discredit the complexity of
Speaker 1: cuckoo birds. As we've talked about on the show before,
Speaker 1: there's kind of like a mafia esque situation involved there
Speaker 1: as well, with additional so it's not just dump and
Speaker 1: run with cuckoo birds either. But the world of bees
Speaker 1: is different from the world of birds. So she points
Speaker 1: out that in some species of bumblebee, we see and
Speaker 1: we're talking about non parasitic bumble bees here, we do
Speaker 1: see examples of nest usurpation, in which one queen bust
Speaker 1: into the nest of another queen of her same spec
Speaker 1: kills that queen and takes over the brood. So this
Speaker 1: doesn't have to happen, It doesn't always happen, It only
Speaker 1: occurs under certain ecological conditions. You could probably compare this
Speaker 1: broadly to things like cannibalism, where you know, you have
Speaker 1: species that are not obligate cannibals by any stretch, but
Speaker 1: if conditions are right, they will engage in that behavior.
Speaker 2: Right, Obligate cannibalism is impossible, yeah, but you can have
Speaker 2: an adaptation that where a certain type of animal is
Speaker 2: more inclined to resort to cannibalism if conditions are dire
Speaker 2: right right.
Speaker 1: So here with brood parasitism, we do, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: have true kleptoparasite bees that are obligate brood parasites. They
Speaker 1: have evolved to depend on the practice absolutely otherwise they
Speaker 1: can't reproduce at all, and obviously all of their efforts
Speaker 1: have to be aimed on another bee species. So that's
Speaker 1: sort of the origin story of how we can get
Speaker 1: to this area where we have obligate brood parasitic bees.
Speaker 1: So cuckoo bumblebees, she points out, can't produce their own workers.
Speaker 1: They lack pollen baskets on their legs. This prevents them
Speaker 1: from feeding their own offspring, and they also can't produce
Speaker 1: enough wax to build their own nests. So without those adaptations,
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of frees you up from like
Speaker 1: a evolutionary energy standpoint, where do they focus that extra energy?
Speaker 1: Will they focus it into the blunt offensive power needed
Speaker 1: to conquer another brood? So we're talking busting in, overpowering
Speaker 1: other workers, if workers are present, killing the rival queen,
Speaker 1: and then taking over the nest. And what do you
Speaker 1: need to carry this out? Well, in many cases you
Speaker 1: need heavier armor to protect yourself, more powerful mandibles, and
Speaker 1: key to what we just said earlier, an enhanced stinger.
Speaker 1: But she stresses that target selection is also key here
Speaker 1: because if they go after the if a cuckoo bumblebee
Speaker 1: goes after a nest that's too large. The workers are
Speaker 1: just going to overpower her and kill her in self defense.
Speaker 1: And if the nest is too small, while she may
Speaker 1: conquer it, then there won't have there won't be enough
Speaker 1: of a work force to serve her need. So it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a delicate balance interesting, but ultimately the
Speaker 1: battle and the regicide here is only the first phase,
Speaker 1: because afterwards the conqueror has to be able to quickly
Speaker 1: de escalate things and convince the colony that she's the
Speaker 1: rightful queen and that work can continue mostly as before.
Speaker 1: And I guess you can. You know, you can easily
Speaker 1: answer morphize here and compare this to you know, examples
Speaker 1: from like military history, like Okay, you're going to conquer
Speaker 1: a kingdom, but now what are you going to rule it?
Speaker 1: And what do you have to do in order to
Speaker 1: pull that off?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess there's some persuasion involved there.
Speaker 1: Right, And so in the world of bees, scent is
Speaker 1: absolutely key with the interloper, the invader, the kleptoparis, depending
Speaker 1: largely on one of two strategies depending on species. So
Speaker 1: one strategy is simply scent acquisition. So the cuckoo bees
Speaker 1: bumblebees that use this method, they don't have much of
Speaker 1: a scent on their own. They're kind of like scent neutral,
Speaker 1: you know, stealth scent, I guess, And they just simply
Speaker 1: acquire the scent of the nest they've invaded via contact
Speaker 1: with workers and various nest materials.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there's stuff lying around that smells, right, you
Speaker 2: can just kind of like rub yourself on all that
Speaker 2: and it'll be good enough.
Speaker 1: Right. But the more advanced method here is actual scent mimicry.
Speaker 1: And this is a case where the cuckoo bumblebees in
Speaker 1: question actively mimic the chemical cues of the host species.
Speaker 2: Wow, I wonder what is the mechanism for doing that,
Speaker 2: being able to like sample a smell and then recreate
Speaker 2: it yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or you know, they have evolved over time to
Speaker 1: prey on particular you know, a particular species or a
Speaker 1: particular suite of species. I'm guessing here, So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting, like in one case, either just simply acquiring
Speaker 1: the necessary sense to command the new environment, or you
Speaker 1: have evolved over time to be able to mimic the
Speaker 1: necessary chemical cues in either case, it is it's fascinating
Speaker 1: manipulation of a use social environment.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, Walker strusts that there's much that's not known about
Speaker 1: how these bees function. They're they're pretty understudied. For instance,
Speaker 1: it's assumed that workers continue to raise the alien larvae
Speaker 1: because at this point their resistance to outsiders in general
Speaker 1: has been lowered. But we just don't know for sure.
Speaker 1: And I feel like we might have touched on this
Speaker 1: before regarding parasites in general. But she points out that
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that brood parasites parasite bees are
Speaker 1: under studied in general is that we easily fall into
Speaker 1: making a kind of moral judgment about parasites, and so
Speaker 1: you often see people who study bees tending to gravitate
Speaker 1: towards non parasitic species, even thinking of them as quote
Speaker 1: unquote true bees, you know, sort of siding with the complex,
Speaker 1: uh sort of you know, use social civilization builders, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to side with the the invaders, that
Speaker 1: the thieves and the tyrants. Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd go out on a limb and say, these
Speaker 2: bees don't know any better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's I mean, really even I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: thing about the about even a use social uh you
Speaker 1: know bee hive situation. Uh, there's no good or evil there,
Speaker 1: there is just there is just life. There is just
Speaker 1: the uh uh, the will of the hive. But uh, anyway,
Speaker 1: getting back to Osirius bees, and again with a huge
Speaker 1: caveat that there's a lot we don't know, and that
Speaker 1: in general parasitic bees are understudied and Osirius bees as well.
Speaker 1: So Osirius bees are not bumblebees. So a lot of
Speaker 1: what I just said is not going to actually apply
Speaker 1: to what we're talking about here. So these bees are
Speaker 1: more wasp like in appearance. I included a picture of
Speaker 1: one individual for you to look at below here Joe,
Speaker 1: But anyone else out there, you can easily do a
Speaker 1: Google image serch and there various entomology profile pages with images.
Speaker 1: They're they're generally pale, sometimes almost yellow or green, and
Speaker 1: according to Sam Droge and Lawrence Packer in the book Bees,
Speaker 1: an up close look at pollinators around the world, most
Speaker 1: of the time when an entomologist names something after a
Speaker 1: god from any mythology, they're basically just sort of showing
Speaker 1: off their knowledge of mythology, you know, just saying like
Speaker 1: you probably shouldn't read too much into the invocation of
Speaker 1: any god, much less Osirus in this case, but they
Speaker 1: do point out that the invocation of Osiris is perhaps
Speaker 1: kind of on point here given the colorization, because again,
Speaker 1: remember the green skin of Osiris, and with Osiris bees
Speaker 1: the skin is also reportedly often kind of this pale
Speaker 1: green or pale yellowish green color. I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's particularly present in the image that I included here
Speaker 1: for you, Joe, but still I will value the.
Speaker 2: Connection here fair enough. I don't think I've ever seen
Speaker 2: a green looking bee. I'd like to see that now.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned earlier, these Osiris bees also pack very
Speaker 1: large stingers, so I think that the species number I've
Speaker 1: seen for Osiris bees is something like thirty two, perhaps
Speaker 1: more than that, but not by a tremendous amount, and
Speaker 1: is mentioned already and is cited as well in Lawrence
Speaker 1: Packer's Bees of the World. Yeah, they have these oversized stingers,
Speaker 1: but they also don't have the extra armor associated with
Speaker 1: various cuckoo bumble bees, so they're actually rather slim and smooth,
Speaker 1: so they're not just complete tanks. We might think of
Speaker 1: them a little differently, almost more like a sleek assassin
Speaker 1: with an oversized weapon. Okay, And indeed, that's that's how
Speaker 1: Packer kind of describes them. It's kind of an egg
Speaker 1: assassin or queen assassin. So they have the greatly oversized
Speaker 1: stinger that's curved, and even the abdomen harnessing the stinger
Speaker 1: is elongated, so it gives them extra reach. So you
Speaker 1: can kind of think of like a swordsman using a
Speaker 1: rape year, you know, how they're able to lunge in
Speaker 1: and close the distance a lot more effectively. And he
Speaker 1: says that that quote there is evidence that the sting
Speaker 1: is used to kill the host egg. And in the
Speaker 1: book by Packer and Droge, they also point out that
Speaker 1: the adaptation could be primarily for dealing with the main
Speaker 1: nest document. They also stress, quote, almost nothing is known
Speaker 1: about the makeup of these nest parasites. But it's my understanding,
Speaker 1: based on the context of these descriptions and some details
Speaker 1: about the bees that they seem to target, that these
Speaker 1: are not large hives or nests that they're going after,
Speaker 1: but rather they're going after solitary ground nesting.
Speaker 2: Bees here, oh okay.
Speaker 1: And thus they don't apparently have to protect themselves from
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of workers. It's not this full blown,
Speaker 1: you know, battle tank invasion like we see in some
Speaker 1: of these cuckoo bumblebees. Instead, it's like, get in there,
Speaker 1: do what you got to do. Stab an egg that's
Speaker 1: already there, kill the the the queen if she is
Speaker 1: already there and she messes with you. But but that's
Speaker 1: the extent.
Speaker 2: Of it, the infiltrator model.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again with this case, not a lot of
Speaker 1: connective tissue between Osiris the god and the thing named
Speaker 1: after Osiris. But you know, now that we've talked about
Speaker 1: both Osiris Rex and Osiris Bees, I do see like
Speaker 1: some sort of loose similarities here. Like we talked about
Speaker 1: how the god Osiris is the opener of the way.
Speaker 1: You know, he's the he goes somewhere in a sense
Speaker 1: that has never been visited before. He makes it possible
Speaker 1: for others to go there as well, you know, brings
Speaker 1: knowledge or you know, it is one that journeys. And
Speaker 1: certainly with Osiris Rex, this lines up with some of this.
Speaker 1: You know, goes to a place that we have not
Speaker 1: explored before, makes certain things possible in the future that
Speaker 1: are even protective in nature. And I don't know. With
Speaker 1: the Osiris bees. You know, it's a little more if
Speaker 1: we're to again anthropomorphized recklessly, kind of sinister. But these
Speaker 1: are bees that open away that venture somewhere else and
Speaker 1: make life possible in a way that it wasn't possible
Speaker 1: before there, at least for this for their species.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to make the connection between
Speaker 2: the Osiris bees and Osiris rex because of the stinger
Speaker 2: and the sampling arm.
Speaker 1: There you go. I think there's a connection to be
Speaker 1: made there, long stinger, long sampling arm. And we were
Speaker 1: comparing mosquitos earlier. But you know, we get into some
Speaker 1: of the particulars here, and we're often talking about repurposed
Speaker 1: ovipositors and so forth. So yeah, I think that's valid
Speaker 1: as well. All right, well, we're going to go ahead
Speaker 1: and close the book here again. There you'll find some
Speaker 1: other things named after Osiris. There are some exoplanets, some asteroids,
Speaker 1: some individual craters that are named after Osiris. But I
Speaker 1: feel like these were the most compelling examples to draw
Speaker 1: on for this episode. But if you disagree, if you
Speaker 1: have a particular favorite Osiris, or if you in your
Speaker 1: line of work or some line of work you're familiar with,
Speaker 1: there is another acronym involving or invoking of Cyrus or
Speaker 1: any other interesting Egyptian mythological figure, write in we would
Speaker 1: love to hear about it. Just a reminder that Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we
Speaker 1: do listener mail, On Wednesdays we do a short form episode,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
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