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