May 3, 2025 • 46 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe follow up their two-part series on the Egyptian god Osiris with a look at various scientific topics named after him, including NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, the Osiris genus of bees and more. (originally published 4/9/2024)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Joe McCormick, and it is Saturday, so
we are heading down into the vault for an older
episode of the show. This one originally published on April ninth,
twenty twenty four, and it's called In the Name of Osiris.
I think it was a follow up of our series
on Osiris.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
That's right. This one, I believe, mostly revolves around things
in the scientific realm that are just named after Osiris
but are still fun to talk about.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Last week
on the show, we did a two parter about the
ancient Egyptian underworld fertility god Osiris, and today's episode is
kind of a spin off of that. Well, I think
you're going to have more fun if you go into
this episode with some familiarity regarding the mythology in question.
(01:10):
So I would say, if you have a choice in
the matter, yeah, go back and listen to the two
previous episodes about Osiris the God and surrounding mythology. Go
ahead and listen to those, but it's also not completely necessary.
The basic gist here is okay, Osiris is a mythological
figure who continues to resonate with people around the world,
(01:31):
and even his name has this kind of regal mystery
to many of us. Just to say the name allowed Osiris,
you know, it kind of summons a certain amount of
mystery and I don't know, strangeness and power into the
room with you. And scientists are far from immune to
such charms. So we have various things in the scientific
and technological world that are named after him. In some
(01:54):
cases we're talking about highly tortured acronyms. Other times there
seems to be, you know, even less connection. So we're
not going to touch on everything in the scientific and
technological world that is named after Osiris. There are some
things we're not going to get into, like there is
an exoplanet that is nicknamed Osirius, not officially named Osiris.
But we are going to talk about two things in particular.
(02:17):
You know, it's an opportunity to chat about some very
deserving science in the name of Osiris, as you know,
as well as some scientific tidbits that we might not
otherwise have discussed.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Right, So, first up, I wanted to talk about a
couple of aspects of Osiris REX, which was the name
of an asteroid sample return mission operated by NASA, as
well as the original name of its associated spacecraft, but
it has since been resurrected with a new identity. It
(02:48):
has now been reborn as Osiris APEX. I'll explain that
in a minute.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Well, that sounds really cool too, and I mean, if
nothing else, this is just an awesome name for a
space mission.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, I'm trying to discern the mythological significance of going
from Rex to APEX. I guess that would be like
going from Osiris the King to Osiris the Peak.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's what Apex means. I think in either a case,
I mean it is fitting to name things in space
or sent into space after Osiris, given the ancient Egyptians
fascination with the stars.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Fair enough, So I'll start with just a very short
rough sketch of the mission history and then come back
and talk about a couple of aspects of it. So
Osiris REX launched in September twenty sixteen, and in twenty
eighteen successfully achieved a deep space rendezvous with its target,
an asteroid called one oh one nine five five Binu
(03:46):
b NNU. The spacecraft spent roughly two years after that
orbiting Binu, mapping its surface, doing analysis of the asteroid
from orbit, and trying to select an ideal landing zone,
which proved a bit more difficult than had originally been anticipated.
In October of twenty twenty, o Cyrus Rex managed to
(04:10):
touch down on the surface of Binu and collect a
sample of its regolith. The regolith is the rocky outer
soil covering the object. But it was not like a
full landing where it sat down and chilled for a while.
It was a touch and ghost sampling operation, so it
touched down, it sort of poked the asteroid with a
(04:31):
mechanism called its sampling arm, so it had kind of
a leg or a limb that came out below it
that poked down into the asteroid's regolith, did a blast
of nitrogen gas to try to stir up some of
the soil, captured a bunch of it, and then blasted
right back.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Off its kind of like a mosquito.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Didn't land for as long as a mosquito, though, it
was more like if a mosquito just had to kind
of like jab you and then retreat. Gotcha, like if
a mosquito would fly down, poke you hit your blood
vessels under the skin with a blast of nitrogen gas,
cause a little sort of explosion of blood, and then
just suck up a bunch of that as it is
(05:13):
bouncing back off of your skin. But anyway, the sampling
was successful. It got a significant amount of the material
from Binu, and then it lifted off and returned to Earth,
which and so the spacecraft didn't fully return to Earth,
but it had a capsule that was for the sample return,
(05:34):
which touched down on Earth. I think it landed in
Utah in September twenty twenty three, and the asteroid soil
sample was intact and it was ready to be studied.
So that is something we now have in the possession
of Earth scientists who have already gotten to work analyzing
it and doing science on the basis of it.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, it's a pretty impressive technological achievement, you know, not
even just all the details of just making sure everything
lines up just ride here.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
In many ways, I mean, there are a lot of
things that are hard about doing a mission like this,
So of course there is, just there are the navigational
challenges of trying to intersect with a small, fast moving
object in space, like an asteroid. There is once you
get there, the selection of the landing zone, this difficult
touch and go maneuver, to try to capture a piece
(06:26):
of the asteroid some soil from it without contaminating it,
to get that safely back to Earth on intact and uncontaminated.
And then also things people might not even think of.
For example, when the spacecraft and the probe were conducting
their operations on the asteroid surface, that's not something that
(06:46):
like a human pilot can operate in real time with
a joystick because it's so far away. There's a significant
travel time for information back and forth between mission control
here on Earth and the probe. So essentially these these
maneuvers had to be pre programmed so that the probe
could carry them out on its own, because there wouldn't
(07:09):
be enough real time exchange of information for like a
human pilot to see what's happening in the moment and adjust.
You have to like make sure you've programmed it correctly
in advance, and it can do what it needs to
do without you being able to intervene. But anyway, after
the successful conclusion of the Osiris Rex mission, the spacecraft
(07:30):
was given a new mission and a new name to
rendezvous with and study the asteroid nine nine nine four
two Apofice, and, in keeping with its new role, the
new name Osiris APEX. So, as you previewed a minute ago,
rob Osirius Rex is an acronym. It's one of these
kind of I always wonder how these things exactly come
(07:52):
together when, like, you know, you select all the things
and they're supposed to stand for what it actually does,
but then it makes a word that already exists, and
you're like, that didn't happen by accident? Who organizes the
acronym formation process?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I don't know. Yeah, it's like it's one of these
situations where you sort of you get in within spitting
distance of a really cool word, and then you start
turning the screws to get it a little closer, you know,
because you're not hitting Osiris rex, you know, first try
with no manipulation.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Certainly not so it's not without it being an Osiris miracle.
But okay, So it stands for origins, spectral interpretation, resource identification,
and security regalith Explorer, So those parts of the name
are basically a summary of what Osiris Rex was meant
(08:46):
to study or what types of questions it was meant
to help illuminate. So, for example, origins refers to the
fact that the target of the mission is what has
sometimes been called a time capsule. Asteroid. Binu was selected
because it is thought to be a pristine four point
(09:07):
five million year old, carbon rich asteroid that has been
preserved in essentially the same condition since the Solar System
was formed. So by looking at what it's made of,
we can learn more about the early days of the
Solar System and learn about the initial distribution of things
of various minerals and organic compounds and things like that.
(09:30):
It'll help teach us more about how the Solar System
was formed and give us points of comparison between it
and other objects in the Solar System that have been
changed more over time. And so the spectral interpretation part
this refers to the use of spectral analysis and astronomy
looking at patterns of light colors reflected off of an
object to determine its composition. The respectral analysis of Binu,
(09:54):
of course, and there is spectral analysis of asteroids, even
just from scopic observatories to try to determine their composition,
so it would help illuminate those questions as well. There
is a resource identification in the name that's understanding the
chemical and geological makeup of a carbon rich asteroid. The
(10:14):
security in the name is an interesting thing, you might think, Wait,
what is this referred to security? Well, that refers to
security for the whole of Earth, because it turns out,
of all the asteroids we know about today, Binu is
one of the most potentially dangerous to our planet. Binu
passes near to Earth about once every six years, and
(10:37):
scientists have calculated that in the year twenty one eighty two,
its path will bring it close enough that there is
about a one in twenty seven hundred chance of a
collision on that pass. So you can get some relief
from the relentless like asteroid bound for Earth headlines in
that when it comes to the larger known space objects
(11:00):
and the most troubling ones won't get close to us
for a long time, and even when they do, based
on what we know today, the chances of a direct
hit are like one in several thousand at worst. Now,
how bad would it be. If Binu did hit Earth,
it would be not as bad as some impacts in
Earth's history, but it would be quite bad. Benu is
(11:21):
about half a kilometer wide with a mass of about
sixty seven million metric tons, so it would probably not
be large enough to cause worldwide calamity. It wouldn't be
like the you know, the object associated with the death
of the non avian dinosaurs. It would not be like
the KPg extinction object, but it would It would be bad.
(11:41):
It would be extremely locally destructive depending on where and
how it hit. So part of the mission was also
focused on studying the forces acting on the trajectory of
asteroids so we can better predict their course over time,
because probably the thing we need to best understand in
(12:03):
order to defend Earth from dangerous near earth objects is
a very accurate prediction system for the future movements of
space objects. Right now, we can predict with pretty good accuracy,
but over time that accuracy degrades. Right, so the farther
out into the future you're looking, the harder it is
(12:25):
to predict how close something is going to be. And specifically,
the Osiris REX mission was looking at the influence of
something called the Yarkovsky effect, and to do a short
summary of that, when an asteroid is flying through space
and rotating. This is specifically for a rotating object, its
(12:45):
surface goes through patterns of heating and cooling depending on
which side is facing the Sun. So as one side
of the asteroid faces the Sun, it gets star baked
and it heats up, and then as the asteroid rotates,
the hot side turns away from the Sun and cools,
and that cooling means the asteroid is radiating infrared photons
(13:07):
into space. This radiation actually provides its own small amount
of thrust, so as it's radiating that heat off into space,
there's a bit of a push created there, and the
effect is fairly small, but for relatively small objects and
affecting the path over large periods of time, it can
(13:30):
make a big difference. This does affect the asteroid's path
through space, which makes it harder to predict the orbit
of a rotating asteroid farther into the future, and that's
something that we need to be able to do if
we want to identify threatening near earth objects and protect
Earth by potentially pushing them off course.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Right right, which to your point is essential with objects
that we already know are going to get maybe a
little too close for comfort. Anyway, we need a note
like to what degree these estimates can be off? You know, exactly,
how how much sway there is in the movement of
one of these asteroids in our predictions exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
And then finally, so that's the Osiris part of the name.
That finally there's the REX part that stands for Regolith Explorer,
and this is the sample return aspect of the mission.
So Osiris REX was the first successful US mission to
return a sample from an asteroid. That was not the
first such mission worldwide. Actually, the first successful asteroid sample
(14:30):
return was carried out by the Japanese Space Agency. That
was the Hyabusa probe, which got a sample of small
dust grains from an asteroid called twenty five one three
Itokawa and return to the material to Earth in twenty ten.
Though Osiris REX is not just a duplicate of that
mission because it targeted a different type of asteroid, and
(14:53):
also Binu was able to get a lot more just
mass of material returned to Earth for us to work on.
Now here's something about the naming of this asteroid that
is kind of backwards, of which is kind of the
opposite of what you might expect. The asteroid Binu got
its name by association with the Osiris REX mission, so
(15:14):
it was originally called nineteen ninety nine RQ thirty six,
but in advance of the mission in twenty thirteen, the
Planetary Society held a competition to name the asteroid, and
a kid from North Carolina who is nine years old
at the time named Mike Pusio came up with the
idea of naming it Binu, which was the name of
(15:37):
a pre existing deity from Egyptian mythology, an animal formed
god often depicted as a long legged bird, though there's
some dispute over which natural bird, if any, it's supposed
to correspond to. I'll talk about that a bit more
in a minute. But Pusio apparently picked the name for
the asteroid because of the Osiris RECX probes resemblance to
(16:01):
a long legged bird and rob if you look, I
attached an image of the spacecraft here for you to
have a gander at. I can see this here, so
the solar panel flaps are very much like wings.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, yeah, excellent. You know, I got to hand it
to this nine year old. This is a great space
nerd and a great mythology nerd, two great nerdoms for anyone,
especially this at this age.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Now we're getting a little off track of the mission here,
but I actually got interested in the concept of Binu itself,
and the context of this episode is the Egyptian mythology.
So I wanted to follow this tunnel under the pyramids
for a moment. So Binu, you can if you're looking
this up. It's sometimes as the god's name is spelled
Binu with two ends or Banu with one n so
(16:51):
b in U. Sometimes the asteroid is with two ends.
It is a figure associated with the creation of the
world and with the creator Sun God. And for what
I'm about to discuss. My main sources Geraldine Pinch's Handbook
of Egyptian Mythology. So, according to Pinch, in some Egyptian myths,
(17:12):
Binu is said to be the oldest creature living during
the creation of the world, when a hill of dry
land was first raised out of the darkness, out of
the waters of chaos, the Binu bird landed on this earth.
So it was the first living animal, and its cry
was the first sound. The moment of its cry marked
(17:35):
the first moment of time, and the cry of the
Binu bird will also sound again at the end of
the world to mark the time when all order will
again descend into chaos. The Binu bird seems to have
been related to, or possibly the inspiration for, the Greek
myth of the phoenix. In the Egyptian context, there was
(17:56):
a binu bird that was believed to dwell in Heliopolis,
and kings would pray to the bird for the renewal
of strength after they had been in power for thirty years.
And here I just want to read a section from
Pinch on the connection between the Binu bird and Osiris
as well as another major god from the pantheon. Quote,
(18:17):
both Ray and Osiris could be identified with the Binu bird,
an expression of the secret knowledge that these two gods
were one. As a manifestation of Osiris, the Binu bird
led the spirits of the dead through the dangers of
the underworld. Some spells in the Book of the Dead
aim to assist the dead to transform themselves into Binu
(18:40):
birds so that they can travel freely between worlds.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
All right, so a kind of psycho bomb.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Here, Yeah, I think it's interesting that you would get
both that so the binu could be a creature that's
sort of a guide because remember in you know, there
are different visions of the Egyptian and afterlife. But in
some views of this, you know, it's an adventure. It's
like a journey that you have to go through and
face obstacles along the way. And there is also there's
(19:10):
the famous judgment, the weighing of the heart against the
feather of mott. But there are also, you know, the
these trials you must go through, like facing facing dangers
throughout the landscape of the dead, and the Binu bird
here apparently apparently could be a guide in that process.
But you could also, if you knew the right spells,
just turn into a binu bird, which seems even better.
(19:33):
Now coming back to whether this bird has a counterpart
in nature, Early texts describing the binu bird seem to
be talking about a yellow wagtail, which is a small
bird that eats insects and tends to seek out wet,
open countries such as marshland. However, Pinch notes that in
later art the binu bird is depicted somewhat differently as
(19:55):
a huge heron, and this is why you'll see pictures
of a hair and often if you google Binu, this
is I think more New Kingdom art. And I found
a photo of some of this art for you to
look at here rob and the outline here Binu is
a heron that would have been taller than a human
with its neck outstretched, so a very big heron, and
(20:15):
extant herons can get quite large. The still living Goliath
heron or Ardia goliath can reach a height of about
five feet or roughly one hundred and fifty centimeters. But
apparently there was an extinct giant heron that grew even larger,
known today as the Binu heron or Ardia binuids, bones
(20:38):
of which have been found from the Arabian Peninsula dating
back to the third millennium BCE. So this is a
giant heron that would have been alive during human history
here and so this isn't known, but it has been
speculated that this bird could have inspired the iconography of
Binu and thus also perhaps the story of the Fetes.
(21:01):
Fascinating now, how much larger was this like a twenty
foot tall heron? No, it is bigger than any living heron,
but not by a huge amount. I think it would
have been roughly maybe six feet tall, still a big bird.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean it just there any kind of
heron species you encounter in the wild, it's it's kind
of a breathtaking and magical experience and imagining like the
largest of herons here, this extinct species. This would have
been quite an impressive side.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Now, before we move on from Osiris Rex, there is
one interesting thing I wanted to talk about from the
sampling portion of the mission. Apparently this asteroid had some
surprises waiting for us when we got there. So I
mentioned already that the sampling mechanism how work to get
some of the regulith from the surface of this asteroid.
(22:04):
It did not involve a permanent landing, so you didn't
have to worry about that. It was a touch and
go operation, so you would descend, you would poke the
surface with the sampling arm, issue a blast of nitrogen gas,
scoop up a bunch of what was stirred up, and
then blast off and retreat immediately. But despite this, once
(22:25):
we actually reached the asteroid, it proved a lot trickier
of an object to touch down on than was initially
expected because it had been thought that the surface of
Binu would be relatively smooth, or at least have large
smooth patches. I think the asteroid that had been targeted
by the Japanese Hyabusa probe had more kind of beachy areas,
(22:49):
you know, with like smooth, fine grained areas where you
know you could select a good landing zone. But for
some reason, Binu was when we got there, more of
a sort of a hell of bl It was a
very rocky, bouldery surface, more uneven than expected. So the
team had to very carefully map out the surface to
(23:09):
select an ideal landing spot, and there were not many.
They ended up selecting a place that was known as
the Nightingale Crater. But then there was another surprise waiting
when they actually went to initiate the touchdown and sample
retrieval moment. So the craft was descending and it poked
(23:30):
the asteroid, and then the sampling arm sank. It sank
into the surface. I've seen this described as like poking
into a swamp. Now, of course, it's not actually that
there was liquid water on the surface of Benu. Instead,
it's just that the soil covering its surface was a
(23:51):
lower density than expected, so the sampling arm just kind
of plunged in. I want to read a quote here
from a space Died Calm article by Teresa Pultova talking
about this moment.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
The descent was smooth, but when Osiris wrex's sample collection
device pressed into the asteroid surface, something unexpected happened. Contrary
to expectations, the surface behaved almost like a swamp. Within
a few seconds, the spacecraft sank nineteen inches or fifty
centimeters deep into Binu. As the sample collection had sucked
(24:26):
in the sample and the spacecraft's backaway thrusters fired, a
huge wall of debris rose from the crater, engulfing the
ascending spacecraft and Rob I've attached some pictures for you
to look at here because there's sort of like an
animation you can look up of this of the spacecraft's
(24:46):
camera had a camera facing directly down along the axis
of the sampling arm, so you're looking down as it's
descending towards the surface, and you can just see when
it touches suddenly it goes and then there's this explosion
and there's just stuff all over the place, and then
it zooms back out and you can see like before
(25:08):
and after images of the crater where it touched down,
where like major rocks and boulders are moved all over
the place. It just seems like this is you know,
it reminds you that asteroids, especially smaller asteroids like this,
are not necessarily not necessarily solid objects. That it might
(25:28):
be better to think of something like Binu not as
like a solid hunk of rock in space, but like
a big pile of rubble that's loosely bound together by gravity.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean even in our descriptions of
like the size of these things, we compare them to
things like skyscrapers, you know, or how big they are
in comparison to a car, So we tend to get
these kind of solid ideas in our mind. Yeah, towards
to your point, it's more like a big ball of
accumulated space rubble.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah. But despite the fact that it was a hell
of boulders and sort of a dry swamp of sadness,
the mission was a success. We got plenty of material
from the surface. I think the initial goal was to
get at least sixty grams and they got well over
That's plenty of material to study. And now the spacecraft
is being repurposed. It is slated to enter the orbit
(26:22):
of the asteroid Apofas in twenty twenty nine. Apophus, by
the way, another Egyptian mythology tie in.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, this is the great serpent, I believe right.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
It's a monster god figure associated with chaos and destruction,
kind of reptilian in nature.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, yeah, Pinch describes it. It's sometimes depicted more like
a crocodile, but more frequently as a great serpent, and
it is like it is one of, if not the
most important chaos monster of Egyptian mythology.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
But interesting thing to study because Apofus was previous thought
to be an asteroid that may in fact threaten Earth,
but because of the unpredictability of its orbit, when later
we got more precision about its trajectory, it was sort
of ruled out. So for a while people were thinking, oh,
this one might really be a candidate for danger, but
(27:19):
actually now it's it's nothing to worry about, but still
worth study.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah. Yeah. And the more we understand how these things
move and what impacts their course, the more we can
protect ourselves, and the more the more information we have
moving forward. Thus, again the security aspect of the Osiris
rex that we just described earlier. That's Osyrus Rex in
(27:43):
all caps except for the X, because again it is
a regular explorer at the end. All right, Well, from there,
the next logical place to go is of course to
talk about bees, perfect and in general. You know, this
is a fine area of connection for a nigition god
because the ancient Egyptians were particularly connected with the honey bee.
(28:06):
As biologist, author and former guests on the show Jeene
Kritsky points out in his excellent twenty fifteen book The
Tears of Ray, the honey bee was a pervasive cultural
motif in ancient Egypt, in large part because of their
perceived connection to the sun god Ray or Raw, whose
very tears were said to be honeybees. And on top
(28:28):
of this, honey and other bee products like wax were
prized and used for a variety of medicinal, culinary, religious,
and economic purposes. So again that's the god Ray or Ra.
And you know, as we already alluded to in this episode,
there are connections between Ray and Raw and of Cyrus.
But you may be wondering, okay, are there any specific
(28:50):
be connections to Cyrus. So I have Kritsky's book on
the shelf here, so I picked it up, and I
consulted it once more to see what he had to
say specific about Osiris. So I'm going to run through
just a few examples here. The book includes an image
from the Tomb of Usarat depicting the offering of honeycomb
(29:11):
to Osiris. So this is Theban Tomb t. T. Fifty
six in the Theban Necropolis near Luxor New Kingdom period.
I believe he also has an example He mentions the
tomb of Minmos, which includes the passage Osiris bee keeper
of Aman, bearer of incense, minmost justified, possessor of honor
(29:34):
before the Great God, and this is from the eighteenth
or nineteenth dynasty, I believe indirectly. The Salt eight twenty
five Papyrus includes a spell that involves using bees wax
figures to quote kill the name of Seth, in this
case used against Seth. But such figurines made out of wax,
(29:54):
which rarely survived, were seemingly burnt in spells against mundane
enemies as well. You could use them against great cosmic
entities like Seth, but you could also use them just
a guess, against your actual real world enemies. Okay and
Kritzky also includes some other mentions to support the idea
that honey or honeycomb. In particular, these were often used
(30:18):
in temple rituals concerning gods, including the god of Cyrus.
So are we going to talk about honey bees now? No,
We're in fact going to talk about a genus of
bee found only in Central and South America, so completely
removed from ancient Egyptian culture, but still named after Osiris.
(30:39):
So the genus Osiris is classified under the Osserini tribe,
which in turn is classified under the family Apidae, which
itself contains well over five thousand species of bees. So
I looked at a few different bee manuals on this.
Ultimately we're dealing with some bees here that are not
as well researched, and we'll get into some of the
research the reasons for that. But as Charles Duncan Mitchner,
(31:04):
this guy was one of the leading experts on bees
who have nineteen eighteen through twenty fifteen. He describes them
in The Bees of the World, Volume one from two
thousand as klecto parasites. They seem to have likely evolved
independently of nobindet klepto parasitic bees and this is based
(31:26):
on various features that they have that are also found
in non parasitic bees, which are absent in other examples
of klepto parasitic bees. He points out that Osiris bees
have relatively thin, but smooth and shiny skins, you know,
kind of like smooth, shiny exoskeletons, and no protective spines.
(31:46):
But they do have an enormous sting, and this will
We'll come back to some of the reasons for this
as we proceed here, but he writes that quote, parasites
commonly have stronger stings than their non parasitic relatives. There
are exceptions to that rule, but by and large you'll
find that they put far more evolutionary energy is put
(32:07):
into these kind of like offensive slash defensive weapons.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I already have some thoughts about why that might be,
but I bet you'll illuminate me.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
So the whole gist of klepto parasites, as we've discussed
on the show before, comes down to the laying of
one species eggs in the nest of another species. And
the classic of that example of this from the world
of birds is of course the cuckoo bird. And here
we're talking about so called cuckoo bees. This is more
specifically known as brood parasitism. Another source I was looking
(32:38):
at for this is a really nice write up on
the topic on the website Entomology Today by Meredith sweet Walker,
and it's interesting. As a former avian endocrinologist, she seems
especially well positioned to compare cuckoo birds to cuckoo bees.
She points out that cuckoo bees are actually more generally
(33:01):
as a social parasites as well, because they generally have
to infiltrate or in some cases anyway we'll get into
the details here. In many cases we're talking about bees
that have to infiltrate an entire use social hive structure
or nest structure in order to deposit their eggs. So
they can't simply like sneak in, dump their egg and
run and be like he he, Now you have to
raise my young. There's a lot more involved here.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Like they actually have to blend in with the hive.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Right, And I don't want to discredit the complexity of
cuckoo birds. As we've talked about on the show before,
there's kind of like a mafia esque situation involved there
as well, with additional so it's not just dump and
run with cuckoo birds either. But the world of bees
is different from the world of birds. So she points
out that in some species of bumblebee, we see and
(33:49):
we're talking about non parasitic bumble bees here, we do
see examples of nest usurpation, in which one queen bust
into the nest of another queen of her same spec
kills that queen and takes over the brood. So this
doesn't have to happen, It doesn't always happen, It only
occurs under certain ecological conditions. You could probably compare this
(34:12):
broadly to things like cannibalism, where you know, you have
species that are not obligate cannibals by any stretch, but
if conditions are right, they will engage in that behavior.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Right, Obligate cannibalism is impossible, yeah, but you can have
an adaptation that where a certain type of animal is
more inclined to resort to cannibalism if conditions are dire
right right.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
So here with brood parasitism, we do, on the other hand,
have true kleptoparasite bees that are obligate brood parasites. They
have evolved to depend on the practice absolutely otherwise they
can't reproduce at all, and obviously all of their efforts
have to be aimed on another bee species. So that's
(34:58):
sort of the origin story of how we can get
to this area where we have obligate brood parasitic bees.
So cuckoo bumblebees, she points out, can't produce their own workers.
They lack pollen baskets on their legs. This prevents them
from feeding their own offspring, and they also can't produce
enough wax to build their own nests. So without those adaptations,
(35:18):
you know, that kind of frees you up from like
a evolutionary energy standpoint, where do they focus that extra energy?
Will they focus it into the blunt offensive power needed
to conquer another brood? So we're talking busting in, overpowering
other workers, if workers are present, killing the rival queen,
(35:41):
and then taking over the nest. And what do you
need to carry this out? Well, in many cases you
need heavier armor to protect yourself, more powerful mandibles, and
key to what we just said earlier, an enhanced stinger.
But she stresses that target selection is also key here
because if they go after the if a cuckoo bumblebee
goes after a nest that's too large. The workers are
(36:04):
just going to overpower her and kill her in self defense.
And if the nest is too small, while she may
conquer it, then there won't have there won't be enough
of a work force to serve her need. So it's
it's kind of a delicate balance interesting, but ultimately the
battle and the regicide here is only the first phase,
because afterwards the conqueror has to be able to quickly
(36:27):
de escalate things and convince the colony that she's the
rightful queen and that work can continue mostly as before.
And I guess you can. You know, you can easily
answer morphize here and compare this to you know, examples
from like military history, like Okay, you're going to conquer
a kingdom, but now what are you going to rule it?
And what do you have to do in order to
(36:48):
pull that off?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, I guess there's some persuasion involved there.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Right, And so in the world of bees, scent is
absolutely key with the interloper, the invader, the kleptoparis, depending
largely on one of two strategies depending on species. So
one strategy is simply scent acquisition. So the cuckoo bees
bumblebees that use this method, they don't have much of
(37:12):
a scent on their own. They're kind of like scent neutral,
you know, stealth scent, I guess, And they just simply
acquire the scent of the nest they've invaded via contact
with workers and various nest materials.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Okay, so there's stuff lying around that smells, right, you
can just kind of like rub yourself on all that
and it'll be good enough.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Right. But the more advanced method here is actual scent mimicry.
And this is a case where the cuckoo bumblebees in
question actively mimic the chemical cues of the host species.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Wow, I wonder what is the mechanism for doing that,
being able to like sample a smell and then recreate
it yourself.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yeah, or you know, they have evolved over time to
prey on particular you know, a particular species or a
particular suite of species. I'm guessing here, So yeah, it's
it's interesting, like in one case, either just simply acquiring
the necessary sense to command the new environment, or you
have evolved over time to be able to mimic the
(38:11):
necessary chemical cues in either case, it is it's fascinating
manipulation of a use social environment.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Now, Walker strusts that there's much that's not known about
how these bees function. They're they're pretty understudied. For instance,
it's assumed that workers continue to raise the alien larvae
because at this point their resistance to outsiders in general
has been lowered. But we just don't know for sure.
And I feel like we might have touched on this
(38:52):
before regarding parasites in general. But she points out that
one of the reasons that brood parasites parasite bees are
under studied in general is that we easily fall into
making a kind of moral judgment about parasites, and so
you often see people who study bees tending to gravitate
towards non parasitic species, even thinking of them as quote
(39:13):
unquote true bees, you know, sort of siding with the complex,
uh sort of you know, use social civilization builders, and
you don't want to side with the the invaders, that
the thieves and the tyrants. Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, I'd go out on a limb and say, these
bees don't know any better.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah, there's I mean, really even I mean, that's the
thing about the about even a use social uh you
know bee hive situation. Uh, there's no good or evil there,
there is just there is just life. There is just
the uh uh, the will of the hive. But uh, anyway,
getting back to Osirius bees, and again with a huge
(39:52):
caveat that there's a lot we don't know, and that
in general parasitic bees are understudied and Osirius bees as well.
So Osirius bees are not bumblebees. So a lot of
what I just said is not going to actually apply
to what we're talking about here. So these bees are
more wasp like in appearance. I included a picture of
(40:13):
one individual for you to look at below here Joe,
But anyone else out there, you can easily do a
Google image serch and there various entomology profile pages with images.
They're they're generally pale, sometimes almost yellow or green, and
according to Sam Droge and Lawrence Packer in the book Bees,
(40:34):
an up close look at pollinators around the world, most
of the time when an entomologist names something after a
god from any mythology, they're basically just sort of showing
off their knowledge of mythology, you know, just saying like
you probably shouldn't read too much into the invocation of
any god, much less Osirus in this case, but they
do point out that the invocation of Osiris is perhaps
(40:58):
kind of on point here given the colorization, because again,
remember the green skin of Osiris, and with Osiris bees
the skin is also reportedly often kind of this pale
green or pale yellowish green color. I don't know that
that's particularly present in the image that I included here
for you, Joe, but still I will value the.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Connection here fair enough. I don't think I've ever seen
a green looking bee. I'd like to see that now.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
As we mentioned earlier, these Osiris bees also pack very
large stingers, so I think that the species number I've
seen for Osiris bees is something like thirty two, perhaps
more than that, but not by a tremendous amount, and
is mentioned already and is cited as well in Lawrence
Packer's Bees of the World. Yeah, they have these oversized stingers,
(41:45):
but they also don't have the extra armor associated with
various cuckoo bumble bees, so they're actually rather slim and smooth,
so they're not just complete tanks. We might think of
them a little differently, almost more like a sleek assassin
with an oversized weapon. Okay, And indeed, that's that's how
Packer kind of describes them. It's kind of an egg
(42:08):
assassin or queen assassin. So they have the greatly oversized
stinger that's curved, and even the abdomen harnessing the stinger
is elongated, so it gives them extra reach. So you
can kind of think of like a swordsman using a
rape year, you know, how they're able to lunge in
and close the distance a lot more effectively. And he
(42:30):
says that that quote there is evidence that the sting
is used to kill the host egg. And in the
book by Packer and Droge, they also point out that
the adaptation could be primarily for dealing with the main
nest document. They also stress, quote, almost nothing is known
about the makeup of these nest parasites. But it's my understanding,
based on the context of these descriptions and some details
(42:53):
about the bees that they seem to target, that these
are not large hives or nests that they're going after,
but rather they're going after solitary ground nesting.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Bees here, oh okay.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
And thus they don't apparently have to protect themselves from
a whole bunch of workers. It's not this full blown,
you know, battle tank invasion like we see in some
of these cuckoo bumblebees. Instead, it's like, get in there,
do what you got to do. Stab an egg that's
already there, kill the the the queen if she is
already there and she messes with you. But but that's
(43:28):
the extent.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Of it, the infiltrator model.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah. So again with this case, not a lot of
connective tissue between Osiris the god and the thing named
after Osiris. But you know, now that we've talked about
both Osiris Rex and Osiris Bees, I do see like
some sort of loose similarities here. Like we talked about
how the god Osiris is the opener of the way.
(43:55):
You know, he's the he goes somewhere in a sense
that has never been visited before. He makes it possible
for others to go there as well, you know, brings
knowledge or you know, it is one that journeys. And
certainly with Osiris Rex, this lines up with some of this.
You know, goes to a place that we have not
(44:17):
explored before, makes certain things possible in the future that
are even protective in nature. And I don't know. With
the Osiris bees. You know, it's a little more if
we're to again anthropomorphized recklessly, kind of sinister. But these
are bees that open away that venture somewhere else and
make life possible in a way that it wasn't possible
(44:39):
before there, at least for this for their species.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
I thought you were going to make the connection between
the Osiris bees and Osiris rex because of the stinger
and the sampling arm.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
There you go. I think there's a connection to be
made there, long stinger, long sampling arm. And we were
comparing mosquitos earlier. But you know, we get into some
of the particulars here, and we're often talking about repurposed
ovipositors and so forth. So yeah, I think that's valid
as well. All right, well, we're going to go ahead
(45:10):
and close the book here again. There you'll find some
other things named after Osiris. There are some exoplanets, some asteroids,
some individual craters that are named after Osiris. But I
feel like these were the most compelling examples to draw
on for this episode. But if you disagree, if you
have a particular favorite Osiris, or if you in your
(45:32):
line of work or some line of work you're familiar with,
there is another acronym involving or invoking of Cyrus or
any other interesting Egyptian mythological figure, write in we would
love to hear about it. Just a reminder that Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we
(45:53):
do listener mail, On Wednesdays we do a short form episode,
and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Joe McCormick, and it is Saturday, so
we are heading down into the vault for an older
episode of the show. This one originally published on April ninth,
twenty twenty four, and it's called In the Name of Osiris.
I think it was a follow up of our series
on Osiris.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
That's right. This one, I believe, mostly revolves around things
in the scientific realm that are just named after Osiris
but are still fun to talk about.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Last week
on the show, we did a two parter about the
ancient Egyptian underworld fertility god Osiris, and today's episode is
kind of a spin off of that. Well, I think
you're going to have more fun if you go into
this episode with some familiarity regarding the mythology in question.
(01:10):
So I would say, if you have a choice in
the matter, yeah, go back and listen to the two
previous episodes about Osiris the God and surrounding mythology. Go
ahead and listen to those, but it's also not completely necessary.
The basic gist here is okay, Osiris is a mythological
figure who continues to resonate with people around the world,
(01:31):
and even his name has this kind of regal mystery
to many of us. Just to say the name allowed Osiris,
you know, it kind of summons a certain amount of
mystery and I don't know, strangeness and power into the
room with you. And scientists are far from immune to
such charms. So we have various things in the scientific
and technological world that are named after him. In some
(01:54):
cases we're talking about highly tortured acronyms. Other times there
seems to be, you know, even less connection. So we're
not going to touch on everything in the scientific and
technological world that is named after Osiris. There are some
things we're not going to get into, like there is
an exoplanet that is nicknamed Osirius, not officially named Osiris.
But we are going to talk about two things in particular.
(02:17):
You know, it's an opportunity to chat about some very
deserving science in the name of Osiris, as you know,
as well as some scientific tidbits that we might not
otherwise have discussed.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Right, So, first up, I wanted to talk about a
couple of aspects of Osiris REX, which was the name
of an asteroid sample return mission operated by NASA, as
well as the original name of its associated spacecraft, but
it has since been resurrected with a new identity. It
(02:48):
has now been reborn as Osiris APEX. I'll explain that
in a minute.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Well, that sounds really cool too, and I mean, if
nothing else, this is just an awesome name for a
space mission.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, I'm trying to discern the mythological significance of going
from Rex to APEX. I guess that would be like
going from Osiris the King to Osiris the Peak.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's what Apex means. I think in either a case,
I mean it is fitting to name things in space
or sent into space after Osiris, given the ancient Egyptians
fascination with the stars.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Fair enough, So I'll start with just a very short
rough sketch of the mission history and then come back
and talk about a couple of aspects of it. So
Osiris REX launched in September twenty sixteen, and in twenty
eighteen successfully achieved a deep space rendezvous with its target,
an asteroid called one oh one nine five five Binu
(03:46):
b NNU. The spacecraft spent roughly two years after that
orbiting Binu, mapping its surface, doing analysis of the asteroid
from orbit, and trying to select an ideal landing zone,
which proved a bit more difficult than had originally been anticipated.
In October of twenty twenty, o Cyrus Rex managed to
(04:10):
touch down on the surface of Binu and collect a
sample of its regolith. The regolith is the rocky outer
soil covering the object. But it was not like a
full landing where it sat down and chilled for a while.
It was a touch and ghost sampling operation, so it
touched down, it sort of poked the asteroid with a
(04:31):
mechanism called its sampling arm, so it had kind of
a leg or a limb that came out below it
that poked down into the asteroid's regolith, did a blast
of nitrogen gas to try to stir up some of
the soil, captured a bunch of it, and then blasted
right back.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Off its kind of like a mosquito.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Didn't land for as long as a mosquito, though, it
was more like if a mosquito just had to kind
of like jab you and then retreat. Gotcha, like if
a mosquito would fly down, poke you hit your blood
vessels under the skin with a blast of nitrogen gas,
cause a little sort of explosion of blood, and then
just suck up a bunch of that as it is
(05:13):
bouncing back off of your skin. But anyway, the sampling
was successful. It got a significant amount of the material
from Binu, and then it lifted off and returned to Earth,
which and so the spacecraft didn't fully return to Earth,
but it had a capsule that was for the sample return,
(05:34):
which touched down on Earth. I think it landed in
Utah in September twenty twenty three, and the asteroid soil
sample was intact and it was ready to be studied.
So that is something we now have in the possession
of Earth scientists who have already gotten to work analyzing
it and doing science on the basis of it.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, it's a pretty impressive technological achievement, you know, not
even just all the details of just making sure everything
lines up just ride here.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
In many ways, I mean, there are a lot of
things that are hard about doing a mission like this,
So of course there is, just there are the navigational
challenges of trying to intersect with a small, fast moving
object in space, like an asteroid. There is once you
get there, the selection of the landing zone, this difficult
touch and go maneuver, to try to capture a piece
(06:26):
of the asteroid some soil from it without contaminating it,
to get that safely back to Earth on intact and uncontaminated.
And then also things people might not even think of.
For example, when the spacecraft and the probe were conducting
their operations on the asteroid surface, that's not something that
(06:46):
like a human pilot can operate in real time with
a joystick because it's so far away. There's a significant
travel time for information back and forth between mission control
here on Earth and the probe. So essentially these these
maneuvers had to be pre programmed so that the probe
could carry them out on its own, because there wouldn't
(07:09):
be enough real time exchange of information for like a
human pilot to see what's happening in the moment and adjust.
You have to like make sure you've programmed it correctly
in advance, and it can do what it needs to
do without you being able to intervene. But anyway, after
the successful conclusion of the Osiris Rex mission, the spacecraft
(07:30):
was given a new mission and a new name to
rendezvous with and study the asteroid nine nine nine four
two Apofice, and, in keeping with its new role, the
new name Osiris APEX. So, as you previewed a minute ago,
rob Osirius Rex is an acronym. It's one of these
kind of I always wonder how these things exactly come
(07:52):
together when, like, you know, you select all the things
and they're supposed to stand for what it actually does,
but then it makes a word that already exists, and
you're like, that didn't happen by accident? Who organizes the
acronym formation process?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I don't know. Yeah, it's like it's one of these
situations where you sort of you get in within spitting
distance of a really cool word, and then you start
turning the screws to get it a little closer, you know,
because you're not hitting Osiris rex, you know, first try
with no manipulation.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Certainly not so it's not without it being an Osiris miracle.
But okay, So it stands for origins, spectral interpretation, resource identification,
and security regalith Explorer, So those parts of the name
are basically a summary of what Osiris Rex was meant
(08:46):
to study or what types of questions it was meant
to help illuminate. So, for example, origins refers to the
fact that the target of the mission is what has
sometimes been called a time capsule. Asteroid. Binu was selected
because it is thought to be a pristine four point
(09:07):
five million year old, carbon rich asteroid that has been
preserved in essentially the same condition since the Solar System
was formed. So by looking at what it's made of,
we can learn more about the early days of the
Solar System and learn about the initial distribution of things
of various minerals and organic compounds and things like that.
(09:30):
It'll help teach us more about how the Solar System
was formed and give us points of comparison between it
and other objects in the Solar System that have been
changed more over time. And so the spectral interpretation part
this refers to the use of spectral analysis and astronomy
looking at patterns of light colors reflected off of an
object to determine its composition. The respectral analysis of Binu,
(09:54):
of course, and there is spectral analysis of asteroids, even
just from scopic observatories to try to determine their composition,
so it would help illuminate those questions as well. There
is a resource identification in the name that's understanding the
chemical and geological makeup of a carbon rich asteroid. The
(10:14):
security in the name is an interesting thing, you might think, Wait,
what is this referred to security? Well, that refers to
security for the whole of Earth, because it turns out,
of all the asteroids we know about today, Binu is
one of the most potentially dangerous to our planet. Binu
passes near to Earth about once every six years, and
(10:37):
scientists have calculated that in the year twenty one eighty two,
its path will bring it close enough that there is
about a one in twenty seven hundred chance of a
collision on that pass. So you can get some relief
from the relentless like asteroid bound for Earth headlines in
that when it comes to the larger known space objects
(11:00):
and the most troubling ones won't get close to us
for a long time, and even when they do, based
on what we know today, the chances of a direct
hit are like one in several thousand at worst. Now,
how bad would it be. If Binu did hit Earth,
it would be not as bad as some impacts in
Earth's history, but it would be quite bad. Benu is
(11:21):
about half a kilometer wide with a mass of about
sixty seven million metric tons, so it would probably not
be large enough to cause worldwide calamity. It wouldn't be
like the you know, the object associated with the death
of the non avian dinosaurs. It would not be like
the KPg extinction object, but it would It would be bad.
(11:41):
It would be extremely locally destructive depending on where and
how it hit. So part of the mission was also
focused on studying the forces acting on the trajectory of
asteroids so we can better predict their course over time,
because probably the thing we need to best understand in
(12:03):
order to defend Earth from dangerous near earth objects is
a very accurate prediction system for the future movements of
space objects. Right now, we can predict with pretty good accuracy,
but over time that accuracy degrades. Right, so the farther
out into the future you're looking, the harder it is
(12:25):
to predict how close something is going to be. And specifically,
the Osiris REX mission was looking at the influence of
something called the Yarkovsky effect, and to do a short
summary of that, when an asteroid is flying through space
and rotating. This is specifically for a rotating object, its
(12:45):
surface goes through patterns of heating and cooling depending on
which side is facing the Sun. So as one side
of the asteroid faces the Sun, it gets star baked
and it heats up, and then as the asteroid rotates,
the hot side turns away from the Sun and cools,
and that cooling means the asteroid is radiating infrared photons
(13:07):
into space. This radiation actually provides its own small amount
of thrust, so as it's radiating that heat off into space,
there's a bit of a push created there, and the
effect is fairly small, but for relatively small objects and
affecting the path over large periods of time, it can
(13:30):
make a big difference. This does affect the asteroid's path
through space, which makes it harder to predict the orbit
of a rotating asteroid farther into the future, and that's
something that we need to be able to do if
we want to identify threatening near earth objects and protect
Earth by potentially pushing them off course.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Right right, which to your point is essential with objects
that we already know are going to get maybe a
little too close for comfort. Anyway, we need a note
like to what degree these estimates can be off? You know, exactly,
how how much sway there is in the movement of
one of these asteroids in our predictions exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
And then finally, so that's the Osiris part of the name.
That finally there's the REX part that stands for Regolith Explorer,
and this is the sample return aspect of the mission.
So Osiris REX was the first successful US mission to
return a sample from an asteroid. That was not the
first such mission worldwide. Actually, the first successful asteroid sample
(14:30):
return was carried out by the Japanese Space Agency. That
was the Hyabusa probe, which got a sample of small
dust grains from an asteroid called twenty five one three
Itokawa and return to the material to Earth in twenty ten.
Though Osiris REX is not just a duplicate of that
mission because it targeted a different type of asteroid, and
(14:53):
also Binu was able to get a lot more just
mass of material returned to Earth for us to work on.
Now here's something about the naming of this asteroid that
is kind of backwards, of which is kind of the
opposite of what you might expect. The asteroid Binu got
its name by association with the Osiris REX mission, so
(15:14):
it was originally called nineteen ninety nine RQ thirty six,
but in advance of the mission in twenty thirteen, the
Planetary Society held a competition to name the asteroid, and
a kid from North Carolina who is nine years old
at the time named Mike Pusio came up with the
idea of naming it Binu, which was the name of
(15:37):
a pre existing deity from Egyptian mythology, an animal formed
god often depicted as a long legged bird, though there's
some dispute over which natural bird, if any, it's supposed
to correspond to. I'll talk about that a bit more
in a minute. But Pusio apparently picked the name for
the asteroid because of the Osiris RECX probes resemblance to
(16:01):
a long legged bird and rob if you look, I
attached an image of the spacecraft here for you to
have a gander at. I can see this here, so
the solar panel flaps are very much like wings.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, yeah, excellent. You know, I got to hand it
to this nine year old. This is a great space
nerd and a great mythology nerd, two great nerdoms for anyone,
especially this at this age.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Now we're getting a little off track of the mission here,
but I actually got interested in the concept of Binu itself,
and the context of this episode is the Egyptian mythology.
So I wanted to follow this tunnel under the pyramids
for a moment. So Binu, you can if you're looking
this up. It's sometimes as the god's name is spelled
Binu with two ends or Banu with one n so
(16:51):
b in U. Sometimes the asteroid is with two ends.
It is a figure associated with the creation of the
world and with the creator Sun God. And for what
I'm about to discuss. My main sources Geraldine Pinch's Handbook
of Egyptian Mythology. So, according to Pinch, in some Egyptian myths,
(17:12):
Binu is said to be the oldest creature living during
the creation of the world, when a hill of dry
land was first raised out of the darkness, out of
the waters of chaos, the Binu bird landed on this earth.
So it was the first living animal, and its cry
was the first sound. The moment of its cry marked
(17:35):
the first moment of time, and the cry of the
Binu bird will also sound again at the end of
the world to mark the time when all order will
again descend into chaos. The Binu bird seems to have
been related to, or possibly the inspiration for, the Greek
myth of the phoenix. In the Egyptian context, there was
(17:56):
a binu bird that was believed to dwell in Heliopolis,
and kings would pray to the bird for the renewal
of strength after they had been in power for thirty years.
And here I just want to read a section from
Pinch on the connection between the Binu bird and Osiris
as well as another major god from the pantheon. Quote,
(18:17):
both Ray and Osiris could be identified with the Binu bird,
an expression of the secret knowledge that these two gods
were one. As a manifestation of Osiris, the Binu bird
led the spirits of the dead through the dangers of
the underworld. Some spells in the Book of the Dead
aim to assist the dead to transform themselves into Binu
(18:40):
birds so that they can travel freely between worlds.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
All right, so a kind of psycho bomb.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Here, Yeah, I think it's interesting that you would get
both that so the binu could be a creature that's
sort of a guide because remember in you know, there
are different visions of the Egyptian and afterlife. But in
some views of this, you know, it's an adventure. It's
like a journey that you have to go through and
face obstacles along the way. And there is also there's
(19:10):
the famous judgment, the weighing of the heart against the
feather of mott. But there are also, you know, the
these trials you must go through, like facing facing dangers
throughout the landscape of the dead, and the Binu bird
here apparently apparently could be a guide in that process.
But you could also, if you knew the right spells,
just turn into a binu bird, which seems even better.
(19:33):
Now coming back to whether this bird has a counterpart
in nature, Early texts describing the binu bird seem to
be talking about a yellow wagtail, which is a small
bird that eats insects and tends to seek out wet,
open countries such as marshland. However, Pinch notes that in
later art the binu bird is depicted somewhat differently as
(19:55):
a huge heron, and this is why you'll see pictures
of a hair and often if you google Binu, this
is I think more New Kingdom art. And I found
a photo of some of this art for you to
look at here rob and the outline here Binu is
a heron that would have been taller than a human
with its neck outstretched, so a very big heron, and
(20:15):
extant herons can get quite large. The still living Goliath
heron or Ardia goliath can reach a height of about
five feet or roughly one hundred and fifty centimeters. But
apparently there was an extinct giant heron that grew even larger,
known today as the Binu heron or Ardia binuids, bones
(20:38):
of which have been found from the Arabian Peninsula dating
back to the third millennium BCE. So this is a
giant heron that would have been alive during human history
here and so this isn't known, but it has been
speculated that this bird could have inspired the iconography of
Binu and thus also perhaps the story of the Fetes.
(21:01):
Fascinating now, how much larger was this like a twenty
foot tall heron? No, it is bigger than any living heron,
but not by a huge amount. I think it would
have been roughly maybe six feet tall, still a big bird.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean it just there any kind of
heron species you encounter in the wild, it's it's kind
of a breathtaking and magical experience and imagining like the
largest of herons here, this extinct species. This would have
been quite an impressive side.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Now, before we move on from Osiris Rex, there is
one interesting thing I wanted to talk about from the
sampling portion of the mission. Apparently this asteroid had some
surprises waiting for us when we got there. So I
mentioned already that the sampling mechanism how work to get
some of the regulith from the surface of this asteroid.
(22:04):
It did not involve a permanent landing, so you didn't
have to worry about that. It was a touch and
go operation, so you would descend, you would poke the
surface with the sampling arm, issue a blast of nitrogen gas,
scoop up a bunch of what was stirred up, and
then blast off and retreat immediately. But despite this, once
(22:25):
we actually reached the asteroid, it proved a lot trickier
of an object to touch down on than was initially
expected because it had been thought that the surface of
Binu would be relatively smooth, or at least have large
smooth patches. I think the asteroid that had been targeted
by the Japanese Hyabusa probe had more kind of beachy areas,
(22:49):
you know, with like smooth, fine grained areas where you
know you could select a good landing zone. But for
some reason, Binu was when we got there, more of
a sort of a hell of bl It was a
very rocky, bouldery surface, more uneven than expected. So the
team had to very carefully map out the surface to
(23:09):
select an ideal landing spot, and there were not many.
They ended up selecting a place that was known as
the Nightingale Crater. But then there was another surprise waiting
when they actually went to initiate the touchdown and sample
retrieval moment. So the craft was descending and it poked
(23:30):
the asteroid, and then the sampling arm sank. It sank
into the surface. I've seen this described as like poking
into a swamp. Now, of course, it's not actually that
there was liquid water on the surface of Benu. Instead,
it's just that the soil covering its surface was a
(23:51):
lower density than expected, so the sampling arm just kind
of plunged in. I want to read a quote here
from a space Died Calm article by Teresa Pultova talking
about this moment.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
The descent was smooth, but when Osiris wrex's sample collection
device pressed into the asteroid surface, something unexpected happened. Contrary
to expectations, the surface behaved almost like a swamp. Within
a few seconds, the spacecraft sank nineteen inches or fifty
centimeters deep into Binu. As the sample collection had sucked
(24:26):
in the sample and the spacecraft's backaway thrusters fired, a
huge wall of debris rose from the crater, engulfing the
ascending spacecraft and Rob I've attached some pictures for you
to look at here because there's sort of like an
animation you can look up of this of the spacecraft's
(24:46):
camera had a camera facing directly down along the axis
of the sampling arm, so you're looking down as it's
descending towards the surface, and you can just see when
it touches suddenly it goes and then there's this explosion
and there's just stuff all over the place, and then
it zooms back out and you can see like before
(25:08):
and after images of the crater where it touched down,
where like major rocks and boulders are moved all over
the place. It just seems like this is you know,
it reminds you that asteroids, especially smaller asteroids like this,
are not necessarily not necessarily solid objects. That it might
(25:28):
be better to think of something like Binu not as
like a solid hunk of rock in space, but like
a big pile of rubble that's loosely bound together by gravity.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean even in our descriptions of
like the size of these things, we compare them to
things like skyscrapers, you know, or how big they are
in comparison to a car, So we tend to get
these kind of solid ideas in our mind. Yeah, towards
to your point, it's more like a big ball of
accumulated space rubble.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah. But despite the fact that it was a hell
of boulders and sort of a dry swamp of sadness,
the mission was a success. We got plenty of material
from the surface. I think the initial goal was to
get at least sixty grams and they got well over
That's plenty of material to study. And now the spacecraft
is being repurposed. It is slated to enter the orbit
(26:22):
of the asteroid Apofas in twenty twenty nine. Apophus, by
the way, another Egyptian mythology tie in.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, this is the great serpent, I believe right.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
It's a monster god figure associated with chaos and destruction,
kind of reptilian in nature.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, yeah, Pinch describes it. It's sometimes depicted more like
a crocodile, but more frequently as a great serpent, and
it is like it is one of, if not the
most important chaos monster of Egyptian mythology.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
But interesting thing to study because Apofus was previous thought
to be an asteroid that may in fact threaten Earth,
but because of the unpredictability of its orbit, when later
we got more precision about its trajectory, it was sort
of ruled out. So for a while people were thinking, oh,
this one might really be a candidate for danger, but
(27:19):
actually now it's it's nothing to worry about, but still
worth study.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah. Yeah. And the more we understand how these things
move and what impacts their course, the more we can
protect ourselves, and the more the more information we have
moving forward. Thus, again the security aspect of the Osiris
rex that we just described earlier. That's Osyrus Rex in
(27:43):
all caps except for the X, because again it is
a regular explorer at the end. All right, Well, from there,
the next logical place to go is of course to
talk about bees, perfect and in general. You know, this
is a fine area of connection for a nigition god
because the ancient Egyptians were particularly connected with the honey bee.
(28:06):
As biologist, author and former guests on the show Jeene
Kritsky points out in his excellent twenty fifteen book The
Tears of Ray, the honey bee was a pervasive cultural
motif in ancient Egypt, in large part because of their
perceived connection to the sun god Ray or Raw, whose
very tears were said to be honeybees. And on top
(28:28):
of this, honey and other bee products like wax were
prized and used for a variety of medicinal, culinary, religious,
and economic purposes. So again that's the god Ray or Ra.
And you know, as we already alluded to in this episode,
there are connections between Ray and Raw and of Cyrus.
But you may be wondering, okay, are there any specific
(28:50):
be connections to Cyrus. So I have Kritsky's book on
the shelf here, so I picked it up, and I
consulted it once more to see what he had to
say specific about Osiris. So I'm going to run through
just a few examples here. The book includes an image
from the Tomb of Usarat depicting the offering of honeycomb
(29:11):
to Osiris. So this is Theban Tomb t. T. Fifty
six in the Theban Necropolis near Luxor New Kingdom period.
I believe he also has an example He mentions the
tomb of Minmos, which includes the passage Osiris bee keeper
of Aman, bearer of incense, minmost justified, possessor of honor
(29:34):
before the Great God, and this is from the eighteenth
or nineteenth dynasty, I believe indirectly. The Salt eight twenty
five Papyrus includes a spell that involves using bees wax
figures to quote kill the name of Seth, in this
case used against Seth. But such figurines made out of wax,
(29:54):
which rarely survived, were seemingly burnt in spells against mundane
enemies as well. You could use them against great cosmic
entities like Seth, but you could also use them just
a guess, against your actual real world enemies. Okay and
Kritzky also includes some other mentions to support the idea
that honey or honeycomb. In particular, these were often used
(30:18):
in temple rituals concerning gods, including the god of Cyrus.
So are we going to talk about honey bees now? No,
We're in fact going to talk about a genus of
bee found only in Central and South America, so completely
removed from ancient Egyptian culture, but still named after Osiris.
(30:39):
So the genus Osiris is classified under the Osserini tribe,
which in turn is classified under the family Apidae, which
itself contains well over five thousand species of bees. So
I looked at a few different bee manuals on this.
Ultimately we're dealing with some bees here that are not
as well researched, and we'll get into some of the
research the reasons for that. But as Charles Duncan Mitchner,
(31:04):
this guy was one of the leading experts on bees
who have nineteen eighteen through twenty fifteen. He describes them
in The Bees of the World, Volume one from two
thousand as klecto parasites. They seem to have likely evolved
independently of nobindet klepto parasitic bees and this is based
(31:26):
on various features that they have that are also found
in non parasitic bees, which are absent in other examples
of klepto parasitic bees. He points out that Osiris bees
have relatively thin, but smooth and shiny skins, you know,
kind of like smooth, shiny exoskeletons, and no protective spines.
(31:46):
But they do have an enormous sting, and this will
We'll come back to some of the reasons for this
as we proceed here, but he writes that quote, parasites
commonly have stronger stings than their non parasitic relatives. There
are exceptions to that rule, but by and large you'll
find that they put far more evolutionary energy is put
(32:07):
into these kind of like offensive slash defensive weapons.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I already have some thoughts about why that might be,
but I bet you'll illuminate me.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
So the whole gist of klepto parasites, as we've discussed
on the show before, comes down to the laying of
one species eggs in the nest of another species. And
the classic of that example of this from the world
of birds is of course the cuckoo bird. And here
we're talking about so called cuckoo bees. This is more
specifically known as brood parasitism. Another source I was looking
(32:38):
at for this is a really nice write up on
the topic on the website Entomology Today by Meredith sweet Walker,
and it's interesting. As a former avian endocrinologist, she seems
especially well positioned to compare cuckoo birds to cuckoo bees.
She points out that cuckoo bees are actually more generally
(33:01):
as a social parasites as well, because they generally have
to infiltrate or in some cases anyway we'll get into
the details here. In many cases we're talking about bees
that have to infiltrate an entire use social hive structure
or nest structure in order to deposit their eggs. So
they can't simply like sneak in, dump their egg and
run and be like he he, Now you have to
raise my young. There's a lot more involved here.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Like they actually have to blend in with the hive.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Right, And I don't want to discredit the complexity of
cuckoo birds. As we've talked about on the show before,
there's kind of like a mafia esque situation involved there
as well, with additional so it's not just dump and
run with cuckoo birds either. But the world of bees
is different from the world of birds. So she points
out that in some species of bumblebee, we see and
(33:49):
we're talking about non parasitic bumble bees here, we do
see examples of nest usurpation, in which one queen bust
into the nest of another queen of her same spec
kills that queen and takes over the brood. So this
doesn't have to happen, It doesn't always happen, It only
occurs under certain ecological conditions. You could probably compare this
(34:12):
broadly to things like cannibalism, where you know, you have
species that are not obligate cannibals by any stretch, but
if conditions are right, they will engage in that behavior.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Right, Obligate cannibalism is impossible, yeah, but you can have
an adaptation that where a certain type of animal is
more inclined to resort to cannibalism if conditions are dire
right right.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
So here with brood parasitism, we do, on the other hand,
have true kleptoparasite bees that are obligate brood parasites. They
have evolved to depend on the practice absolutely otherwise they
can't reproduce at all, and obviously all of their efforts
have to be aimed on another bee species. So that's
(34:58):
sort of the origin story of how we can get
to this area where we have obligate brood parasitic bees.
So cuckoo bumblebees, she points out, can't produce their own workers.
They lack pollen baskets on their legs. This prevents them
from feeding their own offspring, and they also can't produce
enough wax to build their own nests. So without those adaptations,
(35:18):
you know, that kind of frees you up from like
a evolutionary energy standpoint, where do they focus that extra energy?
Will they focus it into the blunt offensive power needed
to conquer another brood? So we're talking busting in, overpowering
other workers, if workers are present, killing the rival queen,
(35:41):
and then taking over the nest. And what do you
need to carry this out? Well, in many cases you
need heavier armor to protect yourself, more powerful mandibles, and
key to what we just said earlier, an enhanced stinger.
But she stresses that target selection is also key here
because if they go after the if a cuckoo bumblebee
goes after a nest that's too large. The workers are
(36:04):
just going to overpower her and kill her in self defense.
And if the nest is too small, while she may
conquer it, then there won't have there won't be enough
of a work force to serve her need. So it's
it's kind of a delicate balance interesting, but ultimately the
battle and the regicide here is only the first phase,
because afterwards the conqueror has to be able to quickly
(36:27):
de escalate things and convince the colony that she's the
rightful queen and that work can continue mostly as before.
And I guess you can. You know, you can easily
answer morphize here and compare this to you know, examples
from like military history, like Okay, you're going to conquer
a kingdom, but now what are you going to rule it?
And what do you have to do in order to
(36:48):
pull that off?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, I guess there's some persuasion involved there.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Right, And so in the world of bees, scent is
absolutely key with the interloper, the invader, the kleptoparis, depending
largely on one of two strategies depending on species. So
one strategy is simply scent acquisition. So the cuckoo bees
bumblebees that use this method, they don't have much of
(37:12):
a scent on their own. They're kind of like scent neutral,
you know, stealth scent, I guess, And they just simply
acquire the scent of the nest they've invaded via contact
with workers and various nest materials.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Okay, so there's stuff lying around that smells, right, you
can just kind of like rub yourself on all that
and it'll be good enough.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Right. But the more advanced method here is actual scent mimicry.
And this is a case where the cuckoo bumblebees in
question actively mimic the chemical cues of the host species.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Wow, I wonder what is the mechanism for doing that,
being able to like sample a smell and then recreate
it yourself.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yeah, or you know, they have evolved over time to
prey on particular you know, a particular species or a
particular suite of species. I'm guessing here, So yeah, it's
it's interesting, like in one case, either just simply acquiring
the necessary sense to command the new environment, or you
have evolved over time to be able to mimic the
(38:11):
necessary chemical cues in either case, it is it's fascinating
manipulation of a use social environment.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Now, Walker strusts that there's much that's not known about
how these bees function. They're they're pretty understudied. For instance,
it's assumed that workers continue to raise the alien larvae
because at this point their resistance to outsiders in general
has been lowered. But we just don't know for sure.
And I feel like we might have touched on this
(38:52):
before regarding parasites in general. But she points out that
one of the reasons that brood parasites parasite bees are
under studied in general is that we easily fall into
making a kind of moral judgment about parasites, and so
you often see people who study bees tending to gravitate
towards non parasitic species, even thinking of them as quote
(39:13):
unquote true bees, you know, sort of siding with the complex,
uh sort of you know, use social civilization builders, and
you don't want to side with the the invaders, that
the thieves and the tyrants. Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, I'd go out on a limb and say, these
bees don't know any better.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah, there's I mean, really even I mean, that's the
thing about the about even a use social uh you
know bee hive situation. Uh, there's no good or evil there,
there is just there is just life. There is just
the uh uh, the will of the hive. But uh, anyway,
getting back to Osirius bees, and again with a huge
(39:52):
caveat that there's a lot we don't know, and that
in general parasitic bees are understudied and Osirius bees as well.
So Osirius bees are not bumblebees. So a lot of
what I just said is not going to actually apply
to what we're talking about here. So these bees are
more wasp like in appearance. I included a picture of
(40:13):
one individual for you to look at below here Joe,
But anyone else out there, you can easily do a
Google image serch and there various entomology profile pages with images.
They're they're generally pale, sometimes almost yellow or green, and
according to Sam Droge and Lawrence Packer in the book Bees,
(40:34):
an up close look at pollinators around the world, most
of the time when an entomologist names something after a
god from any mythology, they're basically just sort of showing
off their knowledge of mythology, you know, just saying like
you probably shouldn't read too much into the invocation of
any god, much less Osirus in this case, but they
do point out that the invocation of Osiris is perhaps
(40:58):
kind of on point here given the colorization, because again,
remember the green skin of Osiris, and with Osiris bees
the skin is also reportedly often kind of this pale
green or pale yellowish green color. I don't know that
that's particularly present in the image that I included here
for you, Joe, but still I will value the.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Connection here fair enough. I don't think I've ever seen
a green looking bee. I'd like to see that now.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
As we mentioned earlier, these Osiris bees also pack very
large stingers, so I think that the species number I've
seen for Osiris bees is something like thirty two, perhaps
more than that, but not by a tremendous amount, and
is mentioned already and is cited as well in Lawrence
Packer's Bees of the World. Yeah, they have these oversized stingers,
(41:45):
but they also don't have the extra armor associated with
various cuckoo bumble bees, so they're actually rather slim and smooth,
so they're not just complete tanks. We might think of
them a little differently, almost more like a sleek assassin
with an oversized weapon. Okay, And indeed, that's that's how
Packer kind of describes them. It's kind of an egg
(42:08):
assassin or queen assassin. So they have the greatly oversized
stinger that's curved, and even the abdomen harnessing the stinger
is elongated, so it gives them extra reach. So you
can kind of think of like a swordsman using a
rape year, you know, how they're able to lunge in
and close the distance a lot more effectively. And he
(42:30):
says that that quote there is evidence that the sting
is used to kill the host egg. And in the
book by Packer and Droge, they also point out that
the adaptation could be primarily for dealing with the main
nest document. They also stress, quote, almost nothing is known
about the makeup of these nest parasites. But it's my understanding,
based on the context of these descriptions and some details
(42:53):
about the bees that they seem to target, that these
are not large hives or nests that they're going after,
but rather they're going after solitary ground nesting.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Bees here, oh okay.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
And thus they don't apparently have to protect themselves from
a whole bunch of workers. It's not this full blown,
you know, battle tank invasion like we see in some
of these cuckoo bumblebees. Instead, it's like, get in there,
do what you got to do. Stab an egg that's
already there, kill the the the queen if she is
already there and she messes with you. But but that's
(43:28):
the extent.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Of it, the infiltrator model.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah. So again with this case, not a lot of
connective tissue between Osiris the god and the thing named
after Osiris. But you know, now that we've talked about
both Osiris Rex and Osiris Bees, I do see like
some sort of loose similarities here. Like we talked about
how the god Osiris is the opener of the way.
(43:55):
You know, he's the he goes somewhere in a sense
that has never been visited before. He makes it possible
for others to go there as well, you know, brings
knowledge or you know, it is one that journeys. And
certainly with Osiris Rex, this lines up with some of this.
You know, goes to a place that we have not
(44:17):
explored before, makes certain things possible in the future that
are even protective in nature. And I don't know. With
the Osiris bees. You know, it's a little more if
we're to again anthropomorphized recklessly, kind of sinister. But these
are bees that open away that venture somewhere else and
make life possible in a way that it wasn't possible
(44:39):
before there, at least for this for their species.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
I thought you were going to make the connection between
the Osiris bees and Osiris rex because of the stinger
and the sampling arm.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
There you go. I think there's a connection to be
made there, long stinger, long sampling arm. And we were
comparing mosquitos earlier. But you know, we get into some
of the particulars here, and we're often talking about repurposed
ovipositors and so forth. So yeah, I think that's valid
as well. All right, well, we're going to go ahead
(45:10):
and close the book here again. There you'll find some
other things named after Osiris. There are some exoplanets, some asteroids,
some individual craters that are named after Osiris. But I
feel like these were the most compelling examples to draw
on for this episode. But if you disagree, if you
have a particular favorite Osiris, or if you in your
(45:32):
line of work or some line of work you're familiar with,
there is another acronym involving or invoking of Cyrus or
any other interesting Egyptian mythological figure, write in we would
love to hear about it. Just a reminder that Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we
(45:53):
do listener mail, On Wednesdays we do a short form episode,
and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
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Speaker 3 (46:24):
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