Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and today we bring you ill omens
Speaker 1: from the planet Jupiter. Today is gonna be the first
Speaker 1: of a two part series where we're going to be
Speaker 1: looking at the planet Jupiter and how Jupiter interacts with
Speaker 1: some some specific mythology about the wars before the world
Speaker 1: we know, and how that also relates to some very
Speaker 1: interesting scientific theories concerning the fate of the planets in
Speaker 1: our solar system and in star systems beyond throughout the galaxy.
Speaker 1: But I start I wanted to start off today by
Speaker 1: talking about the belief that the motion of the planets
Speaker 1: can have dire effects on the fate of creatures here
Speaker 1: on Earth. Of course, this is a long time tenant
Speaker 1: of many of the world's different traditions of astrology. But
Speaker 1: like if you read astrology today, Rob, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've had this experience, there's little sense in in
Speaker 1: astrology today that like the planets are literally doing physical
Speaker 1: things to you, like they're reaching down with I don't know,
Speaker 1: with like gravity or winds or something to have physical
Speaker 1: effects on your life. Rather, the mechanism that is believed
Speaker 1: to to link the movement of the planets or the
Speaker 1: constellations or whatever uh to your fate is is a
Speaker 1: more obscure one. It's a kind of like invisible almost
Speaker 1: kind of young gian um anti causal relationship. Would you
Speaker 1: would you agree? Yeah, yeah, I would think so. And
Speaker 1: I mean not that I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: in the astrology sections, right, but sometimes people have believed
Speaker 1: that the movement of the planets or the constellations have
Speaker 1: more direct physical effects on the Earth that can absolutely
Speaker 1: influence the fate of people or the fate of nations.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to talk about one example that we
Speaker 1: discussed way back when we did an episode on miasthma theory.
Speaker 1: And I remember the miasma theory was a it was
Speaker 1: a theory of disease that predated modern germ theory. It
Speaker 1: was the idea that disease was often was spread by
Speaker 1: like bad vapors or foul smelling odors, winds that went
Speaker 1: from you know, that that might come up from the
Speaker 1: earth or down from heaven and would bring the plague
Speaker 1: or would bring malaria or something like that. And so
Speaker 1: the example I wanted to look at was how in
Speaker 1: the year thirty this was during the Second Plague pandemic,
Speaker 1: when the Bubonic plague was sweeping through Europe. It was
Speaker 1: devastating towns and cities. Of course, people had no understanding
Speaker 1: of what was actually causing the disease. So King Philip
Speaker 1: the sixth of France called in scholars from the medical
Speaker 1: faculty of the University of Paris to see if they
Speaker 1: could figure out what was going on. And the scholars
Speaker 1: discussed things, they researched the matter, and they eventually came
Speaker 1: back with an answer. And there answer was this. On
Speaker 1: marchty five, 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 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 fate 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 of space just spread throughout here. Um. So if
Speaker 1: you 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, no, Um,
Speaker 1: I just I know, uh, some people are maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it's my mom. I can't remember my mom that might
Speaker 1: be less into the space episodes. Uh. I guess one
Speaker 1: of the things about space, in talking about it is
Speaker 1: I always feel that it is nice to have some
Speaker 1: sort of human element there, uh, to to sort of
Speaker 1: uh attach us to it. Now, A lot of times
Speaker 1: that human element is just imagining if we were 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: mytholotical idea of who Jupiter is, and then there is
Speaker 1: the planetary idea of what Jupiter the planet is, and
Speaker 1: I 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 Yapidus 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, Jew Pitter or Jove or Upiter 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 Upiter traces
Speaker 1: back to a Proto Indo European route. And 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 is a prehistoric lost language, so nobody speaks it today.
Speaker 1: In fact, nobody spoke it at any time that anybody
Speaker 1: was writing anything down. So this is a This is
Speaker 1: a prehistoric, pre written language that was the direct ancestor
Speaker 1: of a huge number of languages spoken throughout Europe and
Speaker 1: Asia today. It was probably originally spoken by people living
Speaker 1: somewhere around modern day Ukraine or southern Russia. But it
Speaker 1: is a lane which that has to be reconstructed by
Speaker 1: linguists by looking at all these different languages around the
Speaker 1: world and sort of tracing back their common roots in
Speaker 1: this Proto Indo European language, do you Spotter would have
Speaker 1: meant something like daylight sky father, and this would have
Speaker 1: been the sky god of the reconstructed Proto Indo European religion. Now,
Speaker 1: if you hear in that there, Juice Potter, you can
Speaker 1: hear where we get Jupiter from that. But you can
Speaker 1: also probably hear where the word Zeus can be derived
Speaker 1: from that, right, Juice. And so again there is a
Speaker 1: reconstructed form of this religion. We don't have any written
Speaker 1: records of this religion. It existed before writing, but scholars
Speaker 1: can conclude some things about it with pretty high confidence
Speaker 1: by looking at what common elements appear in very geographically
Speaker 1: separated religions that have a Proto Indo European linguistic root.
Speaker 1: And this deity, this deuced patter one uh, it seems
Speaker 1: to be very common to religions that are spread out
Speaker 1: all over the place. For example, this name formulation also
Speaker 1: appears in the Sanskrit rig Veda, where you get a
Speaker 1: god named like Diaos 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 slay Tiamat 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 Enuma
Speaker 1: a Lesh 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 pave 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, the
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 theomicy.
Speaker 1: There's also the Gigantomici, which occurred after the war against
Speaker 1: the gods. This is the war between the Olympian gods
Speaker 1: and the giants who are the offspring of Gaia and
Speaker 1: the blood of chronos Um. Now, of course, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of other religions that feature theomachies. Of course, there's
Speaker 1: a Norse uh god between the Aser and the van Ear.
Speaker 1: There's the Vedic wars of the Davas and the Astras.
Speaker 1: There's the Water War of Chinese mythology that that pitted
Speaker 1: the destructive water god Gong Gong against Zoo Wrong, the
Speaker 1: fire god. And then, of course, in Christian tradition we
Speaker 1: have this idea of a war in heaven uh and
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there there are numerous other examples we
Speaker 1: could point to. Yeah, it seems to be very common
Speaker 1: throughout the myths of the world to imagine that it's
Speaker 1: some ancient time there was a conflict between a pre
Speaker 1: existent class of of divine beings and then some like
Speaker 1: newer or younger class of divine beings. It doesn't always
Speaker 1: break down along generational lines like that, but it certainly does.
Speaker 1: In the Greek example. Yeah, we kind of get into
Speaker 1: this in our head, this idea of like, Okay, we
Speaker 1: have the King of the gods, and he shall reign
Speaker 1: forever and ever. But I feel like things feel a
Speaker 1: bit more tenuous with these earlier models, because it's like, well,
Speaker 1: this have been He's been ruling for a good three
Speaker 1: or four years. Now, there are some there's some other
Speaker 1: guys that came before him. I don't know what will
Speaker 1: come next. He has he doesn't get along with everybody.
Speaker 1: Heavy lies the crown. Yeah, I mean it makes sense
Speaker 1: too if you're basing your ideas of divine rule, uh
Speaker 1: in a mythological sense on the on the examples of
Speaker 1: rule that you see in the world around you. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just the nature of things. Yes, uh So, Now
Speaker 1: I want to move to reading a section from a
Speaker 1: an ancient text known as Hesiod's Theogomy. This is the
Speaker 1: the Genealogy of the Gods by the ancient Greek writer
Speaker 1: has He had to give some color to this story
Speaker 1: we're telling. But first I need to set the stage
Speaker 1: before I get to the part that we're going to read.
Speaker 1: So I'm necessarily doing a bunch of condensing here because
Speaker 1: there are a whole bunch of stories about like which
Speaker 1: divine beings emanated and gave birth to what. But the
Speaker 1: short version is there have already been a couple of
Speaker 1: generations of divine beings by the time we get the
Speaker 1: Olympian gods. Uh. The Earth deity Guia and the sky
Speaker 1: deity Oranas or Uranus Oranas together have a bunch of offspring.
Speaker 1: And these offspring include these beings called the Hecaton Curries
Speaker 1: or the hundred Handers. Uh. There were there were three
Speaker 1: of them, these three brothers, and they had some amazing
Speaker 1: body plans, you might say, Yeah, fifty heads, a hundred arms.
Speaker 1: It's great. I really enjoyed looking up, uh, mostly modern
Speaker 1: illustrations of what this could have looked like, because there's
Speaker 1: a there's a temptation to want to kind of draw
Speaker 1: a turbo goro. You know. Um, it's been it's just
Speaker 1: too many heads and too many arms. It just becomes
Speaker 1: this mass of limbs and heads. But I've seen some people,
Speaker 1: some artists push this more in the direction of kind
Speaker 1: of like an amorphous being, you know, like it's the
Speaker 1: thing or some sort of a show goth or something.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, just to kind of rat king god. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Guya and Uranas also gave birth to the Cyclopes, who
Speaker 1: you know, we know about those. And then finally they
Speaker 1: gave birth to a bunch of gods that were called
Speaker 1: the Titans, and two of these titans Chronus and Raya.
Speaker 1: They together then sire a new generation of gods with
Speaker 1: names that might be more familiar Poseidon, Hades, demiter Hera, Zeus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the members of the proper Greek pantheon of gods, right,
Speaker 1: But as we mentioned, Heavy lies the crown and Chronus.
Speaker 1: At this point, Cronus has assumed the throne of the
Speaker 1: of the heavens after castrating his father Uranas, so Chronus
Speaker 1: is in charge now. But Chronus is jealous and paranoid
Speaker 1: like like many kings of Greek myth are like a Chrysius,
Speaker 1: you know. In the Perseus narrative, he fears his own
Speaker 1: offspring um and be because he's been given an omen
Speaker 1: that one day he would be dethroned by his own offspring.
Speaker 1: So every time Reya gives birth to one of his offspring,
Speaker 1: Chronus would eat the newborn child. But then Zeus is born,
Speaker 1: and I guess Zeus is the youngest of the brood.
Speaker 1: Of the Olympian gods. And here Ya plays a trick
Speaker 1: on Chronus. She feeds him a rock. It's a very
Speaker 1: good trick. Instead, she she sends the real Zeus off
Speaker 1: to hide away in a cave and swaps out Zeus
Speaker 1: for a stone in a blanket and hands it over
Speaker 1: to Chronus, and Chronus just eats it up. And then
Speaker 1: Zeus is just training in a cave like a big
Speaker 1: training montage, getting ready for the rebellion against his father. Right,
Speaker 1: it's like Rocky four when he's out in the snow,
Speaker 1: you know, lifting the logs and everything getting ready. And
Speaker 1: so you have to imagine Chronus here is Ivan Draco
Speaker 1: and Zeus is Rocky and what's going to happen? Well,
Speaker 1: when Zeus has grown up, he somehow tricks Chronus into
Speaker 1: vomiting up all of Zeus's siblings, who are then able
Speaker 1: to join Zeus in making war on Chronus and the
Speaker 1: Order of the Titans. And they also enlist some of
Speaker 1: their allies, like some of the other primordial beings come
Speaker 1: to fight on the side of Zeus and the Olympians.
Speaker 1: The cyclopese Is and the hecaton Cries they had previously
Speaker 1: those last two classes of beings had previously been imprisoned
Speaker 1: in the underworld of Tartarus, and they're sort of set free,
Speaker 1: and they joined in the fight. Zeos says to them,
Speaker 1: put down your chainsaw and listen to me. It's time
Speaker 1: for you to join in the fight, and they do.
Speaker 1: Now Here, we're gearing up for battle. And Robert, are
Speaker 1: you ready for us to read some from the theogony?
Speaker 1: That wasn't from the theogony that you just quoted about
Speaker 1: the Shain's house. No, no, no, that that was from
Speaker 1: a weird al dared stupid right, well, then then carry on.
Speaker 1: This translation appears in Thomas G. Palma's Anthology of Classical
Speaker 1: myth Primary Sources in translation from Hackett Publishing, two thousand four.
Speaker 1: So the Olympian gods take their position. Quote they stood
Speaker 1: against the Titans on the line of battle, holding chunks
Speaker 1: of cliff in their rugged hands. Opposite them, the Titans
Speaker 1: tightened their ranks expectantly. Then both sides hands flashed with power,
Speaker 1: and the unfathomable sea shrieked eerily. The earth crashed and rumbled,
Speaker 1: the vast sky groaned and quavered, and massive Olympus shook
Speaker 1: from its roots under the immortals onslaught a deep trimmor
Speaker 1: of feet reached misty tartarus, and a high whistling noise
Speaker 1: of insuppressible tumult, with heavy missiles that groaned and wind
Speaker 1: in flight, and the sound of each side shouting rose
Speaker 1: to starry heaven as they collided with a magnificent battle cry.
Speaker 1: And now Zeus no longer held back his strength. His
Speaker 1: lung seethed with anger, and he revealed all his power.
Speaker 1: He charred from the sky, hurtling down from olympos in
Speaker 1: a fury of lightning, hurling thunderbolts one after another, right
Speaker 1: on target from his massive hand, a whirlwind of holy flame,
Speaker 1: and the earth that bears life roared as it burned,
Speaker 1: and the endless forest crackled in fire, and the continents melted,
Speaker 1: and the ocean streams boiled, and the barren sea. The
Speaker 1: blast of heat enveloped the Thornian Titans, and the flame
Speaker 1: reached the bright stratosphere, and the incandescent rays of the
Speaker 1: thunderbolts and lightning flashes blinded their eyes. Mighty as they were,
Speaker 1: heat so terrible, and engulfed deep chaos. The sight of
Speaker 1: it all and its sound to the ears was just
Speaker 1: as if broad Heaven had fallen on Earth. The noise
Speaker 1: of it crashing and of Earth being crushed would be
Speaker 1: like the noise that arose from the strife of the
Speaker 1: clashing gods. Winds hissed through the earth, starting off tremors
Speaker 1: and swept dust and thunder and flashing bolts of lightning
Speaker 1: the weapons of Zeus, along with the shouting and din
Speaker 1: into both sides, reverberation from the terrible strife hung in
Speaker 1: the air, and sheer power shone through it. I love it.
Speaker 1: One can imagine like led Zeppelin or Rage against the
Speaker 1: machine ring in the background. Yeah, or Chronus is like
Speaker 1: the witch king of Angmar and Uh. But anyway, as
Speaker 1: Zeus and the Olympians are, of course the victors in
Speaker 1: this war, the titanomic he breaks in their favor. The
Speaker 1: Titans are defeated, and they are chained up in Tartarus.
Speaker 1: So they're cold, sort of thrown down into this hell
Speaker 1: like underworld and and imprisoned there. And and there are
Speaker 1: a few other disparate fates, like some of these primordial
Speaker 1: being side with the Olympians. Uh Atlas is one of
Speaker 1: the Titans. In particular, he's punished by being made to
Speaker 1: hold up the heavens forever. But it'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: keep this in mind later on when we talk about
Speaker 1: some of the astrophysics today. Is that this idea that
Speaker 1: Zeus or his Roman counterpart Jupiter would have been these
Speaker 1: prolific destroyers that paved the way for the status quo
Speaker 1: of today, the you know, the way things have been
Speaker 1: ordained today by defeating this ancient class of gods that
Speaker 1: had existed since the beginning or shortly after it. And
Speaker 1: of course, and another funny thing about Zeus and Jupiter
Speaker 1: is that the slaying doesn't stop there. I mean, they
Speaker 1: are these these gods are prolific destroyers throughout all time
Speaker 1: of myth. Yeah, because you know they they won the
Speaker 1: crown through war, and then wars are required to maintain
Speaker 1: the order. And then also you just have individuals who
Speaker 1: step out of line. Uh. And you know, maybe in
Speaker 1: a way that is meaningful, but also sometimes the idea
Speaker 1: is just in a way where mortals are are not
Speaker 1: are not allowed to question the gods or or or
Speaker 1: in any ways like them. Than so I thought we
Speaker 1: might run through some of the the murders or I
Speaker 1: don't know, executions, I guess attributed to Jupiter and Zeus um.
Speaker 1: So first of all ones that seem to be more
Speaker 1: specifically aligned with the Roman Jupiter. There's the story of
Speaker 1: Tillis Hostilius, who was killed by lightning bolt for botching
Speaker 1: the reading of a sacred right. Um. So you know
Speaker 1: it makes sense. Rights are important to religion. All of
Speaker 1: this is it's it's it's part of the framework that's
Speaker 1: holding up the cosmic order of the universe. This guy
Speaker 1: is getting it wrong, so Zeus sends a lightning bolt
Speaker 1: down on him. Could you imagine if Seth could throw
Speaker 1: lightning at us every time we screwed up reading something? Oh,
Speaker 1: it would it would be it would be a blood path. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now we mentioned in Um the Titano mocky. Sorry. Now,
Speaker 1: during the Titanomicy, the war against the Titans, it's also
Speaker 1: said that Jupiter killed his father the Titan Saturn right,
Speaker 1: and Saturn is basically the equivalent of the Greek Titan
Speaker 1: Chronus right. You get into different versions of it, particularly,
Speaker 1: I think some of the Greek variations of it, it's
Speaker 1: it's less a clear picture of him having killed. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's the dividing up. I mean, it's It's kind of
Speaker 1: like when 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 essentially pretending to be Zus. That's
Speaker 1: a no no. Then there's another Titan here, the Titan Minnotius,
Speaker 1: who is also killed during the war against the Titans.
Speaker 1: And then when you get into the myth of like
Speaker 1: Hayn the like Haan was this individual. There's a whole
Speaker 1: cool story to this. I think we've we've touched on
Speaker 1: it before on the show. But essentially, uh, he was
Speaker 1: punished by being turned into a wolf, but he had
Speaker 1: a number of sons, and a lot of those. If
Speaker 1: you look at lists of people that were killed by Zeus,
Speaker 1: his son's make up a whole subsection of that list.
Speaker 1: And then there faith On, the son of Helios, who
Speaker 1: is essentially executed for bad driving. Uh but bad driving
Speaker 1: with the sun chariot. So you know, that's that's one thing.
Speaker 1: If if if you're just you know, misusing a normal chariot,
Speaker 1: but if it's the chariot of the Sun itself, well
Speaker 1: that's dangerous. And now you're toying with the gods. But
Speaker 1: of course, beyond specific murders or executions or killings however
Speaker 1: you want to establish them, Jupiter or Zeus, you know,
Speaker 1: he tended to punish gods, mortals, and titans with various imprisonments, transformations, tortures.
Speaker 1: He is the king of the gods, after all, and
Speaker 1: then he has to dish out this punishment to maintain
Speaker 1: cosmic balance. But but also due to sort of the
Speaker 1: outside nature of his own powers and his otherwise humanoid demeanor,
Speaker 1: you know, he is still essentially a king, and while
Speaker 1: a human king with human cravings and imperfections, certainly has
Speaker 1: an outsized ability to create chaos. Uh, it's even more
Speaker 1: so with the God of gods. So he's a being
Speaker 1: of intense gravity and mass, and those who involve themselves
Speaker 1: with him risk just being crushed by that mass. Right.
Speaker 1: And 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're gonna line them up, Jupiter is more massive
Speaker 1: than all the other planets of the Solar System combined.
Speaker 1: That is incredible, because there's some there's some other once, right,
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
Speaker 1: Jupiter is, and therefore how massive, how just gravitationally potent
Speaker 1: and powerful. You know, I bet you could fit more
Speaker 1: earths inside Jupiter Earth was cube shaped rather than round.
Speaker 1: You ever look at that like the packing efficiency of
Speaker 1: ball shapes 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? Seems like a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: well the baby gods, that's true, are smaller than Yeah.
Speaker 1: How big was that rock you think that Cronus had
Speaker 1: to eat like to trick him into thinking it was Zeus?
Speaker 1: I mean, are we are we talking just like a
Speaker 1: you know, hand sized rock? Or is this like a
Speaker 1: Mountain that he ate. I think it's like, well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's size the size of a baby guide.
Speaker 1: So then I guess the question is how big is
Speaker 1: a baby god? I don't know. Uh. There Uh so
Speaker 1: the difference between Earth and Jupiter is so great that
Speaker 1: it can even play into our sci fi models and
Speaker 1: uh and I think this is great because this is
Speaker 1: also I think helps make our point here. I was
Speaker 1: reading reading about this. This is some work from David
Speaker 1: Boulderstone from the University of Leicester. He asked a couple
Speaker 1: of questions regarding Jupiter and planet sizes and energy. Back
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, this would have been an article titled
Speaker 1: That's no Moon by Boulderstone at All, published in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Special Topics, University of Leicester, Department of Physics
Speaker 1: and Astronomy. Yeah, this is this journal is fun. It's
Speaker 1: an undergraduate journal, but it's for papers by physics students,
Speaker 1: like working out the math of weird problems involving superpowers
Speaker 1: and destroying planets. I think I recall one paper on
Speaker 1: there that was about whether you could drive a boat
Speaker 1: in Jupiter's atmosphere That was really funny. Uh. It's it's
Speaker 1: stuff like that, so you can find a lot of
Speaker 1: really fun topics. The topics are quite special in fact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as you can guess from the title, that's no Moon.
Speaker 1: This paper concerns the Death Star. So the main questions
Speaker 1: asked by this paper and you should look it up
Speaker 1: if you can find it for free online, if you
Speaker 1: if you're if you really want to geek out on
Speaker 1: your your star wars and uh science here first of
Speaker 1: all asked, is it possible for something the size of
Speaker 1: the Death Star so uh physical construction more or less
Speaker 1: the size of of Earth Moon, uh, to generate enough
Speaker 1: power to destroy a rocky planet like Earth. And in
Speaker 1: the secondary question, if so, would it be possible to
Speaker 1: generate enough power to destroy a gas giant the size
Speaker 1: of Jupiter. So a lot of this paper is about,
Speaker 1: you know, doing the math, can a number of necessary assumptions, uh,
Speaker 1: and without you know, geeking out too hard on questions
Speaker 1: about well, what does a chiber crystal really do to
Speaker 1: energy and so forth? But ultimately they decided that the
Speaker 1: Earth is well within the star, the Death Star's energy budget,
Speaker 1: so 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 just 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. H If
Speaker 1: it was Jupiter versus the Death Star, the death Star
Speaker 1: would not completely win. Uh. Late, the death Star is
Speaker 1: not powerful enough to destroy Jupiter. No, Jupiter absolutely is
Speaker 1: a local bully. Jupiter has a mass and a gravitational
Speaker 1: influence that is unrivaled in the Solar System, of course,
Speaker 1: apart from the Sun itself. This does make me think
Speaker 1: of Percy Shelley's verse play Prometheus Unbound, where the god
Speaker 1: Jupiter is the villain. He's this cruel, tyrant god who
Speaker 1: has to be destroyed in order to free the world
Speaker 1: from his grip. And he's destroyed with the help of
Speaker 1: this being of the void called the Demogorgon, which we
Speaker 1: explored in a was it was it last October that
Speaker 1: we did that episode, or maybe two octobers ago. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was two ago. Yeah, but yeah, there's one part
Speaker 1: where the spirit of the Earth itself is speaking of
Speaker 1: Jupiter in Prometheus Unbound, and it says, I dare not
Speaker 1: speak like life lest heavens fell king should hear and
Speaker 1: link me to some wheel of pain more torturing than
Speaker 1: the one where on role. So Earth is already on
Speaker 1: 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 parallels to the titanomicy. So first, I
Speaker 1: think we should look at some exoplanets, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's weird. I can still remember a time when the
Speaker 1: idea of planets orbiting other stars was mostly a matter
Speaker 1: of speculation, you know, with a few stray bits of
Speaker 1: evidence here and there. But within the past decade or so,
Speaker 1: exo planet research has just exploded, and I think this
Speaker 1: is largely due to a number of new telescopes coming
Speaker 1: online and new detection techniques. But I remember one of
Speaker 1: the big moments here in the history of exoplanet research
Speaker 1: was this dump of data on hundreds of new exoplanets
Speaker 1: from the Kepler Space Telescope. I think this was in
Speaker 1: Do you remember when this happened, Rob, Yeah, yeah, vaguely so. 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
Speaker 1: System we've got two kinds of planets pretty much. You
Speaker 1: have small rocky planets with a thin atmosphere or no atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and those are those are closer into the Sun. So
Speaker 1: you've got Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars rocky core, very little
Speaker 1: atmosphere relative to gas giants. And then further out you
Speaker 1: have these larger gas planets with some kind of solid
Speaker 1: or metal core surrounded by dense gases extending out for
Speaker 1: thousands of kilometers in radius. How do these different types
Speaker 1: of planets form. Well, the leading theory on the formation
Speaker 1: of the planets is that our Solar system began as
Speaker 1: a 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 pulled 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 the
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 inside this spinning disk start to be attracted to
Speaker 1: each other and to attract more gas and dust to
Speaker 1: themselves because of gravity, and they form these larger and
Speaker 1: 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 are 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 they 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 systems, 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 Siegel 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 spot 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 planet like Earth or a gas giant like Jupiter.
Speaker 1: There are gonna be a couple of things working against
Speaker 1: each other that helped determine what types of volatiles you
Speaker 1: can keep stuck to you. One is going to be
Speaker 1: your mass and thus your gravity that really helps keep
Speaker 1: the atmosphere stuck to you. But then another thing is
Speaker 1: going to be is going to be solar radiation, because
Speaker 1: the Sun is always going to be blasting you with
Speaker 1: solar winds and solar radiation that want to strip away
Speaker 1: 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 impossible for creatures like us
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if you are too low in
Speaker 1: mass and too close to the star, the star will
Speaker 1: blast away your atmosphere. But if you raise a planet's
Speaker 1: mass beyond a certain threshold, its gravity is going to
Speaker 1: get so strong, strong enough to withstand that solar assault
Speaker 1: and hold onto its volatiles like gases and water. And
Speaker 1: you get enough mass together in one place, and it
Speaker 1: will start suctioning up material from all around it. It
Speaker 1: will become this great accumulator. And of course, if it
Speaker 1: gets enough mass that atoms at its core start 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 that there are pretty much four types of
Speaker 1: planets 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,
Speaker 1: helium and other light gases. And so for this reason,
Speaker 1: if you hear references to the abundant super Earth's in
Speaker 1: the Milky Way, these are not good places for humans
Speaker 1: to colonize, probably not at least, and probably not great
Speaker 1: places to look for life that is a close analog
Speaker 1: to Earth life. Some people have seen calling them many
Speaker 1: Neptunes rather than Super Earth's. But this brings us back
Speaker 1: to an interesting question about our own solar system. Why
Speaker 1: does our Solar System look like it does. Why does
Speaker 1: it have a planet like Earth rather than a bunch
Speaker 1: of these infernal super earths like so many other stars
Speaker 1: in our galaxy? And there was a paper published in
Speaker 1: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in that offers
Speaker 1: one hypothesis to answer this, So why does our Solar
Speaker 1: system look the way it does? This paper is called
Speaker 1: Jupiter's Decisive Role in the Inner Solar System's Early evolutions
Speaker 1: is by Constantine Batigen and Greg Laughlin. Now, in addition
Speaker 1: to this paper, I was looking at a couple of
Speaker 1: write ups on it that quoted the authors, one inh
Speaker 1: NA Geo by Andrew Physicis and one in Scientific American
Speaker 1: by Lee Billings. And so the short version here is
Speaker 1: that the authors of this study in argue that in
Speaker 1: the newly forming Solar System, Jupiter briefly migrated inwards from
Speaker 1: the place where it first formed, and as it moved
Speaker 1: inward into the Inner Solar System, it caused a series
Speaker 1: of cascading effects that would have smashed other early forming
Speaker 1: super Earth's in its wake, and that the current inner
Speaker 1: planets like Earth are actually formed from the debris left
Speaker 1: over after this catastrophic series of collisions caused by Jupiter's
Speaker 1: inward migration, and this broader hypothesis about the ancient inner
Speaker 1: migration of Jupiter is sometimes called the Grand Tach hypothesis. Basically,
Speaker 1: it goes that lots of astronomers used to think that
Speaker 1: planetary orbits were as a rule, highly stable and nearly circular,
Speaker 1: unlikely 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 Tech hypothesis, I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from this article in Scientific American by Lee Billings called Jupiter,
Speaker 1: Destroyer of Worlds may have paved the way for Earth,
Speaker 1: where Billings describes the Grand Tach hypothesis by saying that
Speaker 1: it posits quote, in the first few million years of
Speaker 1: our Solar systems existence, Jupiter migrated into and then back
Speaker 1: out of the inner Solar System, following a course similar
Speaker 1: to a sailboats when it tacks around a buoy. Back then,
Speaker 1: Jupiter would have still been embedded in a gas rich disc.
Speaker 1: Much of that gas was spiraling down towards the Sun
Speaker 1: so much that the action would have sapped some of
Speaker 1: Jupiter's angular momentum too, causing the giant planet itself to
Speaker 1: spiral into the vicinity of where Mars is today. Jupiter
Speaker 1: would have kept falling in towards the Sun if not
Speaker 1: for being caught by the subsequent formation of Saturn, which
Speaker 1: began drifting in as well. As the two giant planets
Speaker 1: came closer together, they were caught in an orbital resonance.
Speaker 1: This resonance expelled all the gas between them, gradually reversing
Speaker 1: their death spirals and causing them to tack back out
Speaker 1: to the outer Solar System. So this Grand Tach hypothesis,
Speaker 1: if true, would explain several things. It would explain why
Speaker 1: Mars is so small when we might expect it to
Speaker 1: be larger, in the words of Billings. It would also
Speaker 1: explain the distribution of icy and rocky bodies in the
Speaker 1: asteroid belt and other strange features of the Solar System.
Speaker 1: But if the Grand Tach is correct, Jupiter's orbit would
Speaker 1: have strayed into the inner regions of the Solar System,
Speaker 1: and its gravitational influence would have caused the realignment of
Speaker 1: the orbits of existing early forming super Earth's sometimes causing
Speaker 1: their orbits to overlap one another, and sometimes they would
Speaker 1: actually have major collisions. You would really only need one
Speaker 1: such catastrophic collision in order to have a chain reaction
Speaker 1: that could annihilate these early forming inner planets. One one
Speaker 1: crash could lead to what the authors here called a
Speaker 1: collisional cascade. The studies author Greg Laughlin is quoted in
Speaker 1: the in these news articles by saying, quote, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing we worry about if satellites were to be
Speaker 1: destroyed in low Earth orbit, their fragments would start smashing
Speaker 1: into other satellites, and you'd risk a chain reaction of collisions.
Speaker 1: Our work indicates that Jupiter would have created just such
Speaker 1: a collisional cascade in the Inner Solar System. And to
Speaker 1: quote here from billings quote, the simulation suggested that Jupiter's
Speaker 1: inward spiral would send swarms of one hundred kilometer wide
Speaker 1: planetary building blocks cascading into the Inner Solar System. The
Speaker 1: giant planet's gravity would also sling those building blocks and
Speaker 1: the inner planets themselves into overlapping elliptical orbits, creating an
Speaker 1: interplanetary demolition derby of whirling, colliding, fragmenting worlds now this.
Speaker 1: I mean, this sounds like a titanomic y yeah to me.
Speaker 1: I mean this is a war of the gods in
Speaker 1: which maybe the gods themselves are not destroyed, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of destruction um going on between them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right. I mean that's why I was making this connection.
Speaker 1: And I do want to be very clear, Uh, we
Speaker 1: are suggesting a connection based on like metaphorical similarities, because
Speaker 1: there are actually people in the more Velakovsky vein who
Speaker 1: think that you could draw literal parallels between things described
Speaker 1: in myth and ancient movements of the planets, which I
Speaker 1: think is not probably not true. Like uh, Emmanuel Velakowski.
Speaker 1: One of the things he wrote was that, you know,
Speaker 1: like miracles described in the Bible, about like pillars of
Speaker 1: fire and stuff like that would have been caused by
Speaker 1: ancient planets moving around in their orbits and you know,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I mean, there's no evidence for this
Speaker 1: in the modern world, but fantastically weird hypotheses that some
Speaker 1: people still believe for some reason, not not actual scientists.
Speaker 1: All of this stuff we're talking about would have been
Speaker 1: before we even had the Earth as it exists today,
Speaker 1: So this would not have been things that people could
Speaker 1: have witnessed. But the metaphorical similarity to these uh you know, uh,
Speaker 1: theomicy myths is is fantastically cool. Yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: you can easily get into comparisons of like, what does
Speaker 1: it mean to have terrific power? You know, whether you're
Speaker 1: that that power is coming via the mass of some
Speaker 1: sort of a planet or it's coming through the you know,
Speaker 1: the power of a of a single warrior king in
Speaker 1: in history. And I like that it's it's creating this
Speaker 1: metaphorical residence that it's not just Jupiter destroying this early
Speaker 1: generation of of primordial beings like the Titans, but it's
Speaker 1: also creating the new divine order because, according to the
Speaker 1: authors here, a second generation of planets after this you know,
Speaker 1: destruction cascade within the inner Solar System caused by Jupiter.
Speaker 1: If this hypothesis is correct, a second generation of planets
Speaker 1: would inform out of the whirling field of debris that's
Speaker 1: left over. So the pulverized remnants of these ancient super
Speaker 1: earths would have a couple of fates, Like some of
Speaker 1: the debris would get dragged down into the Sun, and
Speaker 1: then some of the leftover chunks would become the bodies
Speaker 1: of planets like Earth and Venus. After Jupiter migrates back
Speaker 1: out away from the Sun again. Yeah, it's like in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the war, um, 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, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just imagine, like the six hour Snyder cut of
Speaker 1: this myth, like, can I can imagine this scene where yeah,
Speaker 1: they've been battling each other, but then, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Saturn reaches out to him and and and and saves
Speaker 1: him from from destruction or something. My son, I am sorry,
Speaker 1: I 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, creator,
Speaker 1: and destroyer all in one. So so come back next
Speaker 1: 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 episodes of 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: just ask that you rate, review, and subscribe. Huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
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Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
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