March 25, 2021 • 50 mins
Did the planet Jupiter, like a reckless god, wreak havoc on a young solar system? Join Robert and Joe and they consider the red planet’s destructive powers on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back with part two of our discussion of Jupiter
the Destroyer. In the last episode, we ended up talking
(00:24):
about some of the myths of Zeus and Jupiter, Zeus's
war against the Titans, and how that related to some
ideas in astrophysics about how an early forming Jupiter in
the solar nebula of our of our young Solar system
may have played a very important role in the destruction
of early forming super Earth's in the inner Solar System,
(00:45):
leading to or clearing the way for the eventual creation
of rocky planets like the Earth we live on today.
So that last episode was kind of it was kind
of a mash up. We had we had some planetary science,
we had some mythology. It's like we had two turntable
and uh, and we had two different records and we
kind of mixed and nashed them both. Uh. So we're
(01:07):
we're kind of like your DJs. We're well, we we're
your hosts, except no substitutes. Uh. And we're gonna have
more of the same in this episode. We're gonna have
plenty of planetary science, but we're also going to have mythology. So, uh,
if you love both, stay tuned, because you're gonna get
everything you love. If you lean more towards one direction
or the other, well it's still hang on because we're
(01:28):
gonna take you on a ride. But if you're only
interested in when we talk about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre
movies and stick around anyway because who knows what will
come up, well that that movie also is astronomical and
its own wise, that's true. So maybe I thought we
should start just by doing a brief refresher on one
of the studies we talked about in the last episode
because it kind of ties into some of the stuff
(01:48):
I'm gonna talk about right after. Um So, one of
the studies we looked at last time was published in
in p N A. S. And it was by Constantine
Batigan and Greg Laughlin, and it's called Jupiter Decisive Role
in the Inner Solar System's Early evolution. And the rough
outline is that the authors here argue that they put
together a simulation that assumes a version of what's known
(02:10):
as the grand Attack scenario, and that's where in the
early solar nebula. So when the Solar System is first forming,
it's this big disc of gas and dust all swirling
around this newly forming Sun. When that's going on, a
young Jupiter migrated from somewhere around five astronomical units out
(02:30):
in radius from the Sun into about one point five
astronomical units and then reversed course and went back out
to a larger orbital radius when it was pulled outward
by the gravitational influence of Saturn. And the authors here
right quote, we propose that the primordial nebula driven process
responsible for retention of Jupiter and Saturn at large orbital
(02:52):
radii and sculpting Mars low mass, is also responsible for
clearing out the Solar system's innermost region. So, like we
talked about last time, this would be wiping out these
early forming super Earth's or miny neptunes that were forming
near the Sun and thus making room and freeing up
some materials for rocky planets like Earth and Venus to form.
(03:15):
And if you remember the details we talked about last time,
this would have happened according to these authors here via
a what they call a collisional cascade. So Jupiter's inward
migration would hurl all of these planetesimals into um what
they call mean motion resonances low order mean motion residences,
shepherding and exciting their orbits, so basically just causing chaos
(03:39):
in the inner Solar System where things would smash into
each other and then ultimately spiral into the Sun and
be vaporized down there in the bottom of the Solar System.
And then finally they write, in this scenario, the Solar
systems terrestrial planets formed from the gas starved mass depleted
debris that remained after the primary period of dynamical evolution.
(04:00):
So under this scenario, it is the gravitational influence from
a coalescing Saturn that finally pulls Jupiter back out of
the fray back into the outer Solar System. But I
wanted to think about another way that gas giants like
Jupiter and Saturn, or like if you imagine another Solar
system somewhere else in the galaxy, multiple jupiters can interact
(04:23):
with one another in catastrophic ways that have major influence
on the other planets in that star system. Because going
to the mythological analogy. One Zeus or one Jupiter is
bad enough. You've got a couple. You're really running into trouble. Wow,
they're not going to tolerate each other. That's right, though.
It is funny that literally in our Solar system, if
(04:44):
you look at the mythological counterparts of the three the
first three outer planets you get to after the asteroid belt,
you've got Jupiter, you got Saturn, and then you got
Ranas and there if you look at their mythological counterparts,
each one ascending out there is the father of the
other who was defeated by the Sun. So Jupiter or
Zeus defeated Chronus, which is Saturn, and dethroned him, throw
(05:08):
him into Tartarus. But Chronus previously the Titan had defeated
Oranas or Uranus by castrating him and throwing his genitals
into the ocean. Yeah. So like if you've been to throne,
you get pushed further out of the solar hierarchy. Yeah,
I guess so. Now, now that's an interesting question, which
is more like Tartarus being cast into the Sun like
these early super earths may have been, or being cast
(05:30):
farther out into a greater orbital radius where you're you're
very cold and very lonely. I guess I go with
the cold and lonely uh interpretation more again, just in
terms of thinking about what mythological punishments would be, like,
I tend to imagine, uh, the prison of the Titans
as being cold and lonesome. But anyway, I wanted to, uh,
(05:53):
now now talk about the idea of Jupiter's going eccentric
and UH usually the word centric, how do we use that?
We use the word eccentric to mean weird, but in
kind of a harmless way, like it's the nice version
of weird, or the or the at least the rich
version of weird, right right, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
(06:14):
know exactly what you mean by that. But now in
this case, this would be uh eccentric in a way
that is, that is not at all harmless and potentially
could be world ending. Uh. So I wanted to look
at a blog post by an American astrophysicist living in
France named Sean Raymond, who I wanted to bring this
up because I think reading his blog on his website
(06:36):
was one of the reasons I ended up wanting to
do this pair of episodes about Jupiter. I was originally
reading his website because he was one of the authors
of a study about moons of moons that I talked
about for an episode of The Artifact, where I was
saying like, like, how many levels of orbits can you
go down? You know, the the so the our our
(06:57):
son orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and
then the Earth orbits the Sun, and then the moon
orbits the Earth. But could the moon have its own moon?
And it turns out the answer is yes, there's nothing
in physics that prevents moons from having moons. But of course,
every every step you go down that ladder of orbits
within orbits, the maximum size of the orbiting object gets
(07:18):
smaller and smaller, and if you include really small stuff,
I think moons of moons can have moons. But anyway,
through that, I ended up reading some posts on this
guy's website. So he's a professor of astrophysics at the
University of Bordeaux in France, and his blog is fun
he he he sometimes like writes poems about astrophysics, and
that's weird stuff on there. But there was this one
(07:41):
post that I thought was really interesting and got me
thinking about this topic. And reading other stuff about it,
and it was a post called how planets die when
good Jupiters go bad, And the gist of this post
here is about how planets like Jupiter have the potential
to destroy the Solar systems that they dwell within and
(08:01):
in other planetary systems around other stars in the galaxy.
There is evidence that gas giants like Jupiter have indeed
already destroyed other planets in in their solar systems. Now,
of course, as we talked about in the last episode,
Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar system. It's
more than three hundred times more massive than Earth. What
was it was like three hundred and seventeen times as
(08:22):
massive as Earth or something, I mean, just huge. And
of course the Sun is the largest gravitational influence in
our Solar system, but Jupiter is second in that regard,
and Jupiter has more effects on what happens to the
rest of the objects in the Solar System than you
might imagine. Raymond talks about some stuff that we didn't
really get into in the last episode, Like one of
(08:43):
the things he mentions is that Jupiter probably would have
blocked large icy bodies from the outer Solar System from
invading the inner Solar System when the Solar System was
first forming. It would have cleared this large gap in
the solar nebula disc that was forming around the early
Sun UH, and with its gravity it would prevent large
(09:04):
icy objects from migrating inwards. Of course, we already talked
about that Batigan and Laughlin idea that if it's correct,
during Jupiter's grand tach or the movement in and then
out again, UH, it would have had these catastrophic implications
for early forming super Earth's or many Neptunes close to
the Sun through this collisional cascade UH and would have
(09:26):
allowed small rocky planets like Earth to take shape in
the aftermath. But Jupiter also we should remember, and this
is one thing we're gonna look at in several different
ways today. Jupiter plays a major role in influencing what
kinds of space objects crash into Earth and at what
rate and at what velocity, Because to read from Raymond
(09:49):
here quote, Jupiter's gravity determines how comets enter the Inner
Solar System and how long they spend near the planets
with the potential to crash into Earth before launching them
into interstellar space. And this has implications both ways. So
it means that Jupiter can act as a kind of destroyer,
(10:09):
flinging objects in our direction in a dangerous way, but
Jupiter can also act as a kind of protector, shepherding
objects away from Earth and keeping us safe. And so
Jupiter's effect on the movements of space objects in the
inner Solar System, like asteroids and especially comets, I think
will have powerful effects on things like the water contents
(10:29):
of Earth and the biological development of Earth, which will
come back to as we go on. But coming back
to the idea of eccentric jupiters now, I mentioned in
the last episode that sometimes when we look out at
other stars in our galaxy, we can see that they
have large exoplanets, large gas giants in very eccentric orbits.
(10:50):
The orbits of most of the planets in our Solar
system are nearly circular. They're not perfectly circular, but they're
pretty close. I mean, you know, roughly circular. If you
look at the orbit of some comets, though it is
a completely different story. There are comets that orbit the
Sun in these incredibly squashed, squeezed out oval trajectories. Uh,
(11:12):
and these orbits that deviate from near circularity are called eccentric,
and of course the more squashed out they get, the
more highly eccentric they are. So if you're trying to
picture it, you can think of a more eccentric orbit
is like a rubber band being stretched out instead of
allowed to just like sit slack in a circle. And
in fact, exoplanet research reveals that around other stars in
(11:36):
the galaxy there are gas giants like Jupiter that have
orbits more like these comets. So imagine a Jupiter or
a Saturn with a highly eccentric orbit more like a
stretched out rubber band. These types of planets exist, and
the question is, well, how does that happen? Well, Raymond
discusses one way when gas giants act upon one another
(11:59):
in dangerous ways. So large gas giants exert gravitational influence
not only on commets, not only on the moons that
orbit them, but also on one another. You know, if
you have like two jupiters orbiting a star, they will
have influence on the paths that they each take. Uh.
Remember thinking again about the way that a Saturn may
(12:21):
have pulled Jupiter back out of the inner Solar system.
According to the Grand tach hypothesis. So, if you have
two gas giants that are affecting one another gravitationally, it
can throw their orbits off course. And sometimes these gravitational
interactions can even put them into orbital patterns uh, such
(12:41):
that one gas giant gets gravitationally ejected out of the
Solar System by the gravitational influence of the other like
it does sort of a gravity slingshot, like we might
do with a with one of our space probes, but
on a planet, and just like throws it way out
of there, and then the other one remains. But in
this stretch out eccentric orbit. And as you might well imagine,
(13:03):
these gravitational disturbances in the orbits of gas giants can
have horrible effects on the planets nearby. So if there
are earthlike inner planets, in one of these scenarios, they
tend to get cast into the pit of Tartarus UH.
And this could actually this could be either of the
Tartarus scenarios we were talking about earlier. In the closest
thing to a literal sense, right, they either get cast
(13:25):
way out into nowhere into space, or they get thrown
into the Sun or destroyed by collisions, possibly with gas
giants themselves, or with other rocky planets or planetesimals, and
then those the debris from those collisions can spiral into
the Sun or they get ejected and then just plunge
forever into the void. Yeah, it's the thing about the amokies,
(13:46):
they tend to they tend to throughout the old order
in a place it was something new. You know. This
reminds me of one of the possible explanations for Umu Mua,
that object, interstellar object that we did a couple of
episodes about that. Some people, I think, probably very prematurely,
we're trying to say was an alien probe, but I
don't think there's good evidence of that. But one of
(14:07):
the ideas about what this object probably is because it
had strange characteristics, like it's kind of elongated and seemed
to be moving in a kind of tumbling motion. One
of the ideas is that it is part of an
object that was destroyed or rejected from its host star
system by a gravitational disturbance like this. Now, most of
the time, when a Jupiter turns murderous, when when Jupiter,
(14:31):
you know, when when his hand flashes with power, as
it says in the in hesi. It's the agony um
when a gas giant goes rogue and destroys the other planets.
Most of the time it happens early in the formation
of the Solar System, shortly after most of the material
and the nebula disc is dissipated and absorbed by newly
forming planets. And the reasoning here is that without the
(14:53):
stabilizing presence of this cloud like disk, a jupiter like
planet can start going off the rails very quickly. But
sometimes a gas giant can turn into the destroyer. Its
hand can flash with power later in its lifespan, for example,
if its orbit is disturbed by external influence. An example
(15:13):
here could be another star passes too close to the
Solar System and this, uh, this causes gravitational disturbances, throws
the orbit of the jupiter like planet off course, and
then the same thing happens. It just it starts this
cascading series of effects on the orbits of other planets.
And you know, many of these inner rocky planets are
just destroyed. They're they're sent down into the Sun. Well,
(15:36):
you know, if we're to to to draw in comparison
to maybe not literal the literal mythology, but just sort
of the nature of mythologies and belief I'm reminded of
what happens when a foreign um religion or foreign deity
uh comes too close to an established religion and deity.
You know, it can also result in a fair amount
(15:57):
of disorder uh and a realigning of the order of things. Yes,
the realignment of a pantheon in the presence of a
syncretism right when we emerge to religions together. If you
merge to two stars gravity is too close to one another,
this can definitely realign things and possibly result in a monotheism. Yeah,
more on that in a bit. So, Yeah, I do
(16:20):
want to be clear, we're not saying there's any reason
to think that this is likely to happen to our
solar system anytime soon like that that that's not the
implication here, But it is scary to imagine that it
does sometimes happen around other stars, and at least is
possible in theory that you know, you can have this
influence from some kind of external object, another star passes
too close or something. This can nudge the orbit of
(16:42):
a previously pretty stable Jupiter like planet, leading to a
cascade of effects like we just talked about, and then
the Earth like planets have an appointment with the wicker Man.
And uh. One interesting thing that Raymond mentions in this
blog post is he does some rough calculations and guesses
that about half of the stars in the Milky Way
(17:02):
galaxy with gas planets have annihilated the rocky planets through
a process like this. And I remember that it's much
more likely for to happen early during formation, when when
the disk is is first sorting itself out, but it can,
in some rare cases happen later. And I guess this
all comes down to the fact that we have a
(17:23):
Jupiter and we still exist. So it looks like in
in some sense, we're one of the lucky ones. But
it's also true that the influence of Jupiter or gas
giants in general, especially Jupiter in our case, doesn't stop there.
I mean, the influence on Jupiter on the history of
the planet Earth appears to be pervasive. I was looking
(17:45):
at one study by Alisa V. Quintana, Thomas Barclay, William J. Baruki,
Jason f Row, and Johnny Chambers from the Astrophysical Journal
called the Frequency of Giant Impacts on earthlike worlds, and
I was reading some write ups of this, and basically
these researchers did some simulations of what happens in different
(18:06):
types of Solar system configurations where you have a Jupiter present,
or where you don't have a Jupiter present, where you
have multiple jupiters, and their simulations revealed that in general,
gas giants like Jupiter have complicated effects on rocky inner
planets like Earth. So young Jupiter, they think probably flung
material into the cores of newly forming rocky planets when
(18:28):
the Solar System was young, and this would have helped
planets like Earth come together faster than rocky planets in
a Solar system without a nearby gas giant, but at
the same time, by hoarding materials to themselves, gas giants
limit the number of rocky planets that form around a star.
So if you have a star without a planet like Jupiter,
(18:49):
it can have way more rocky planets out there um
And then if you don't have any nearby gas giants,
young rocky planets are subjected to a much longer period
it of early bombardment, where they're just constantly being hit
with impacts from space by smaller objects from the solar
nebula cloud, and a planet like Jupiter makes that cloud
(19:11):
disappear faster and thus makes the early bombardment period last
a shorter span of time. But then again, you can
also look at ways that a planet like Jupiter ends
up accelerating larger objects like comets into the Inner Solar
System and controlling how long they stay there in the
Inner Solar System. Uh. And of course those things can
(19:32):
lead to impacts later on down the line that affect
Earth life. So Jupiter is once again sort of protecting
and attacking in tandem. Yeah. I guess the relationships between
humans and God's they tend to be a little bit unhealthy.
But then again, I mean there there are reasons. I
guess what we've gone through here kind of uh, you know,
(19:53):
justifies the ways of God demand uh to some extent,
thank or Rob. I don't know about you, but I
am ready to mount an apologia for Jupiter pluvious. Yeah,
let's do it. Let's let's talk Jupiter the God a
bit more. Um. Again, I think this comparison between the
(20:15):
planet Jupiter and the god Jupiter is is increasingly apt
the more you look at it. Uh. And in this episode.
We're talking a good deal. I mean, we're still talking
about Jupiter the destroyer and Jupiter um of of passionate
lashing out against a humanity, but but also Jupiter the protector,
Jupiter the Lord of Earth, because he enforces his order
(20:37):
upon it and he is in many ways its protector,
and he was also expressly stated to be the protector
of the Roman state. The White Ox was his favorite
sacrifice and it could afford an entire year's protection, uh
from the Lord of the gods. And he probably took
this sort of thing seriously, seeing as how he was
(20:57):
also the god of oaths and treaties, kind of a
rules guy. Yeah, yeah, so you know, he's lawful. Whatever
else he is, he's he's lawful. Uh So, I was, well,
maybe he's the emblem of lawfulness to others. I don't know,
does he have to follow the laws himself? Well, I mean,
he's he's in are in a tough spot, like if
(21:18):
you can't, who are you going to report him to? Write? Uh?
I was reading The Imperial Ideology of Rome and the
Principalities and Powers in Romans eight thirty one through thirty
nine by Sung Cho Hong in Scripture and Interpretation from
two thousand and eight, and Home points out that imperial
Roman propaganda expressly stated that the safety of the entire
(21:40):
human race lay in the hands of mighty Jupiter. And
this is a point pressed by Cicero, among others. And
I believe in particularly in on the ends of Good
and Evil. I want to read a quote here from it, uh,
and this is not I want to stress that Cicero
goes into a lot more detail about all this, and
he's he's crafting a much greater point uh than this.
(22:01):
This is just a fragment. But he does a right
or he does say quote when we call Jupiter all
powerful and all good, and likewise, when we speak of
him as the salutary God, the hospitable God, or as state,
or we mean it to be understood that the safety
of men is under his protection. This reminds me of
like when when presidents of the United States will say, like,
(22:24):
the president's first responsibility is to keep America safe. This
seems like a very close analogy. It's just like, first
of all, I am I am the daddy, and it
is it is all protection from me. Yeah, So this
seems to be again Cicero's saying all other things in
this work, uh, I mean additional things. But this seems
to be like a major talking point for just Roman
(22:45):
propaganda in general. But so there's the thing that's kind
of interesting about Jupiter that I think we would recognize
as commons say, in like Indian religion, the gods can
have multiple manifestations or faces. Yes to the Romans didn't
exactly have one Jupiter. They had multiple aspects of Jupiter.
Now sometimes these are referred to more as uh as epithets,
(23:09):
you know, just a just different descriptions of of Jupiter.
But ultimately, I think the line between the two, you know,
you can see where it enters a gray area, like
if you're just describing different properties of the same being,
you know, it's it's only a short hop and a
jump to having different, uh different you know, beings entirely.
(23:30):
You know, in the Christian tradition, you see, you see
some of this right because on one hand, you it's
what you can talk about like God the Father, and
you can talk about like different divisions of the same being.
But on the other hand, you see throughout you know,
Christian history a tendency to want to say focus on
said that the feminine aspects of Christ uh in you know,
(23:52):
certainly in in visual representation, but also then embodying different
ideas of what Christ was, and then that may be
um stamped down out of fear of heresy, the idea
that if people keep going in this direction, it will
butt off into an alternative Jesus. So you can you
can tell how how the sort of thing can lead
(24:13):
to the division um even at the same time, it's
kind of like saying, okay, we have all these instead
of having just a dozen gods, we could have maybe
have um we could you know, still have other gods,
but we could also have just like a dozen different
versions or different um incarnations of the same being. And
that's kind of what you see with Jupiter here. Yeah,
(24:33):
the Romans had an idea of what we now call superstition.
You know that comes from a Roman idea meaning basically
being too religious. Because picking up off what you were
just saying, there is a pattern I think throughout the
religions of the world where when people get incredibly invested
in their religion, like very passionate about it, they are
prone more often to to religious innovation. And religious innovation
(24:59):
can lea to you know, you start really focusing on
maybe one aspect of an existing God or something, maybe
that becomes a new God, and then you've got a
new cult, and that that new cult could maybe undermine
things that came before. Now, there was in the Roman Empire,
while the Romans were incredibly tyrannical, there was a kind
of weird religious pluralism there where there there could you know,
you could have a lot of different kinds of religious
(25:21):
beliefs in the Roman Empire and it would be mostly
okay as long as you weren't causing trouble. But there's
always I think a certain fear of religious innovation stemming
from too much interpretive interest in the nature of God's
in religious matters among the existing religious authorities. That makes sense, Yeah, yeah, totally.
Um so, so I know I was reading all this,
(25:43):
it didn't It did raise an interesting question for me, Like,
given all these different aspects of Jupiter, and I'll get
into what they are here in a minute. Uh, you know,
the fact that Jupiter had his own priests and that
Romans tended towards syncretism, which we already mentioned. This is
the combining of different theological ideas like, instead of hearing
about a new God, uh, for instance, in a territory
(26:05):
that you have absorbed into your empire, instead of saying, okay,
that God's out. Wait whatever you're doing to that God,
forget it, instead saying, well, actually that God is part
of our pantheon, or that God is actually Jupiter, that
sort of thing. Well, I mean God, look at the
way that the Romans essentially just adopted almost wholesale, originally
the mythology of the Greeks. Yeah. So so, given given this,
(26:26):
and given that the situation with the different aspects of Jupiter, um,
I was wanting do do we see in this at
least a movement toward monotheism because that, of course is
one of the things about the Roman Empire is that
it eventually it becomes a Christian empire. There's this movement
towards monotheistic Christian belief. Well, I don't know if this
(26:47):
helps with the point you're developing, but the but the
secular biblical historian Bart Irman, who's a previous guest on
the show, He was on the show last year. He's
got a book about why Christianity eventually overtook the Roman Empire,
and uh, and his theory on that, which seems very
reasonable to me, is that the main thing going for
Christianity is that, unlike all of the other religions in
(27:08):
the Roman Empire at the time, or most of the
other religions in the Roman Empire at the time, Christianity
was evangelical and it was exclusive, so they were trying
to convert people to it. And unlike the existing Roman religions,
you couldn't add other gods into Christianity, or you weren't
supposed to. I mean, some people probably did, but mostly
Christians were preaching that no, once you're a Christian, you
(27:31):
can only believe in Jesus and you have to forget
all these other gods. And over time those dynamics led
to effects where Christianity would just grow and grow and
it would push out because every new Christian wasn't just
like a pagan adopting one additional god. But now like
they weren't a pagan anymore, they want you weren't to
lay allowed to keep your old gods as well, right, yeah, yeah,
(27:51):
Because I think even though if we're looking at this,
we're thinking, okay, you're you're going to the temple, that's
just a Jupiter. You're worshiping Jupiter, maybe in different aspects,
but you're you're you're pretty much folk sing on him.
Even if you did not worship any of the other
gods in the Roman pantheon, that wouldn't be monotheism. That
would be what is called hino theism, which is the
adherence to one particular god out of many. So saying like, yeah,
(28:12):
all these other gods they're they're fine, they exist, but
this is my guy, this is my gal. Yeah, and
that that was common in the Roman Empire, that you
believe in the other gods, and you would maybe respect
the other gods, but you might have like a personal
favorite god who you were really devoted to. Yeah. Like
even in that work on Cistero that I was quoting earlier, Um,
he's he's mentioning adherence to Jupiter. But he's also in
(28:33):
the same work mentioning adherence to smaller household gods. So yeah,
you can you can see that if if suddenly you're like, no,
you can't keep your household gods, you have to pretty
much abandon the old way, uh and and and take
to this new one. Uh. You know, you have to
cut off the other gods from your life. I could
see that being maybe it's something that keeps you from
drifting back into another one. Sure, Like like if you
(28:54):
if you have to get this new video game and
you have to throw out all your other video games, well,
if you get bored with the new one, not going
to go back to the old ones because they're not
in the house anymore. Okay, so you only got one game.
Now you get bored with it. What you start doing
is looking for glitches in the game to exploit and
start trying to break the physics, which you could look
at it for in religious point of view. You start
maybe innovating how the religion works, thinking about maybe I've
(29:17):
received a new vision that tells me that the priests
don't have it exactly right. This is the version. Yeah, yeah,
new new fan theories about exactly what what Mario means
to the franchise, etcetera. Now I was I was looking
around about at this about this question of of monotheism
and polytheism in the Roman Empire, and uh, there's an
(29:38):
interesting sounding book. I don't know if you're familiar with
this author, but it came. It was by Stephen Mitchell,
who I think has done a lot of work in
religion and involved in some translations of various works such
as the the Guita. But he has this book called
One God, Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire, and it
discusses the complexity of the shift from polytheism to Monothey
(30:00):
is hum but also it deals with this idea of
quote pagan monotheism, and apparently historians have some historians have
considered the various Roman cults to be something we might
interpret as monotheistic structures. Um, so this kind of thing
might be worth it a deeper dive in a later episode,
because it's apparently it's not a cut and dry issue. Rob.
(30:21):
I was just trying to look up and figure out.
I'm not quite sure the answer. If this is the
same Stephen Mitchell who did one of my favorite poetry translations,
a translation of Rainer Maria Rilka's archaic Torso of Apollo
into English. It's uh, I don't know if you've ever
read this, but his translation is the version that ends
an English thing for here there is no place that
does not see you. You must change your life. Oh wow, No,
(30:44):
I don't think I've read that, but but it it
might bob be him. It looks like he's He was
involved in a number of translations and adaptations, including like
the Guida, but also like the Iliad. Uh, you know
various some some Chinese works in their um you know,
the Epic of Gilgamesh. So there's a lot of stuff. Well,
I'm not sure if it's the same Stephen Mitchell, but
if so, that that's a good translation of that poem
(31:05):
Archaic Torso of Apollo you can look up um. So.
I didn't have time to to really dig into this
one God book, but I just want to read a
quick quote that I found in it from author Stephen
Mitchell on this topic. Quote, Pagan polytheist did not individually
become monotheist, but through philosophy and the comparing of religious ideas,
(31:25):
by adopting and inventing new cults and learning how to
individualize and express religious experience, they transformed ancient religion into
a terrain of human experience where much, including monotheism, was possible. Oh,
that's interesting looking at the possibility that a trend towards
monotheism could actually emerge from the kind of commerce of
(31:46):
religious ideas that you would have in a very uh pluralistic,
multicultural empire. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it kind of
gets back to the point where you were you're mentioning earlier.
So let's get into some of these aspects of Jupiter,
these different Jupiter sub brands, if you will, that were
available under the Roman Empire. Uh so um. In addition
(32:08):
to the sources I mentioned already, I was also looking
at aspects of Jupiter on coins of the Roman Mint
by Philip V. Hill from this is from nineteen sixty.
But this one, this particular article is one that dealt
more exclusively with aspects of Jupiter has represented on coins, um,
which is also pretty interesting. So let's start with Jupiter Stator,
(32:30):
who we mentioned earlier. That's that's who Cisero is referring to.
And this is he who stays panic in battle. Uh.
This is uh, this is Jupiter depicted with a scepter
and a thunderbolt, and this is the Jupiter that gives
you courage, that gives you resolved to not be crushed
by fear. Okay, So stays panic means like holds back panic,
(32:51):
not like it keeps you panicked right right now, m so,
so that's obviously a big one. You know what what
One of the reasons to a fuel to a god
is like for strength, right, Like give me that strength,
give me the resolve to to not run away, especially
if you're dealing with a warring empire. Likewise, along those lines,
another big one was Jupiter Victor, the giver of victory,
(33:14):
depicted as seated and holding a statue all victory and
a scepter or spear. This was especially prominent on coins,
and then it might be invoked. This version of Jupiter
might be invoked either celebrate an actual victory that occurred
or in anticipation of an upcoming victory. So this is
Jupiter the conqueror Jupiter what is best in life? Right? Yes?
(33:38):
What to crush the Titans see them driven before you
hear their lamentations from Tartarus. Yeah, but of course the Jupiter,
I mean, presumably a god also has to govern, and
certainly the Roman Empire would have realized that as well.
It's one thing to conquer, but then you need to
hold your territory. And that's where the next aspect comes
in Jupiter conservator. Uh, this is a Jupiter that holds
(34:01):
a thunderbolt, but he's holding it above the image of
the Roman emperor, so he's kind of a preserver of rule.
That's kind of a halo concept. I think, you know,
it's like saying, like the will of Jupiter resonates through
the emperor, and he was the one who rules over
these lands. Now, one of the big ones is Jupiter
(34:21):
Optimus Maximus or Jupiter Optimus maximus capital Linus, and this
is the most powerful aspect of Jupiter, all powerful as such,
the Temple of Jupiter optimist Maximus was the most important
temple in ancient Rome, located on Capitol Line Hill. Now,
some other versions you had Jupiter full gore. This is
the lightning Jupiter, but not passively, so like Jupiter often
(34:43):
has lightning. But this is like Jupiter with the aggressive stance,
like he's going to smite you, gonna hurl the thunderbolt.
For some reason, when you said that, I pictured not Jupiter,
but I guess uh an analog to Jupiter Marduke holding
holding this. Yeah, that's a famous image, but Marduke is
often picture in kind of a fighting stance from the side. Yeah,
(35:04):
there's one that was referred to as a Jupiter Dolicinus,
and this was the focus of a Roman mystery cult
originally a local hit tight, hurry, and god of fertility
and thunder. So here we see an example of of
the of Romans combining ideas. Another deity from another land
is taken in and becomes an aspect of Jupiter. Then
(35:26):
you have a Jupiter ruminus. This is the breast feeder
of all life. And then as we mentioned earlier, Jupiter Pluvius,
this is the cinder of rain. In times of drought,
special sacrifices were made in the name of Jupiter Pluvius
and these were called aquilsum. Uh. So this is where
we're getting back to consideration of not only the mythic Jupiter,
(35:49):
but but the but Jupiter the planet as well. Uh.
The idea of Jupiter as as he who delivers the rain,
he who delivers the water. Yeah. And so we already
talked about some ways that Jupiter has has influenced what
kind of stuff smashed into the the forming and then
the early Earth to determine its composition, what size it
(36:12):
would grow to, and what was on its surface, and
what kind of volatiles it had in terms of an
atmosphere and possibly surface water. Yes. Uh, And so in
this I mean we're still talking about the planet Jupiter
pelting the rocky planets with stuff, you know, like it's
still ultimately a violent relationship. But U. But the idea
(36:35):
here is that is Jupiter is not only throwing thunderbolts. Uh.
The Jovial bombardments might have included water or would be water,
specifically hydrogen rich material. And this wind's up locked into
Earth's crust and mantle and emerges later to bond with
oxygen to become water. Uh. So one of the sources
we're looking at with this is a Nola Taylor red
(36:55):
article for smithsonian dot com from back in focusing on
the work of French astronomer Shawn Raymond, who we've already
talked about, uh, whose models predict this possible gas giant
thrown delivery of water rich material to the inner planets.
Also key is the work of andre Isadoro, who, along
with Raymond, published a paper on this in two seventeen
(37:16):
titled Origin of Water in the Inner Solar System. Okay,
so what do they argue? Okay? So the idea here
is that four point five billion years ago, the massive
center of the and in this I'm gonna touch on
some stuff we've already gone through, but then the massive
center of the cloud of gas and cosmic dust begins
to form into a central star, our Sun. But the
(37:37):
remaining cloud remained and its contents would in time form
into the planets. But the water rich region of the
disc would have been located several astronomical units away from
the Sun. The temperature in the inner region was too high,
so that water then ultimately has to move back to
the inner planets to become a part of them so
(37:58):
that we can have water on Earth. So this would
have occurred um between during a five to ten million
year period between the Sun's formation and the dissipation of
the gas disc. During this time, the gas giants formed
and quote Jupiter's rapid growth gravitationally disturbed thousands of water
rich planetism as, dislodging them from their original orbits. Okay,
(38:21):
so we see yet again, Jupiter as it's coming together,
begins to throw its weight around it exerts gravitational influence
and in this case would have started pulling in these uh,
these planetesimals, these these objects, you know, objects that might
be I don't know, asteroid sized or larger that have
some kind of water hydrogen content on them and then
(38:44):
slamming them into the inner solar system. Right. It's it's
basically you know what it reminds me of is I
don't know if you've seen these sort of vaudevillian skits
where like you have your your your bad comic, you're
sort of Fozzy Bear type and he's on stage, he's bombing.
I mean, he's just really dog in it up. Uh
And so that the audience is of course pelting him
with fruits and vegetables and he either catches one in
(39:08):
his mouth and begins to eat it or catches something
like catches the carrot and starts eating it. So like
they're they're pelting and they're engaging in violence, but they're
throwing nutrients at him. And he was like, yes, I
am hungry, I shall eat That is that's kind of
the relationship going on here. Um well, the Fozzy Bear effect,
I'm gonna call it anyway. Um I was reading some
(39:28):
more about this, um uh Isadoro had provided some quotes
about this that were used in press release and write ups.
In particular one that was on Eureka or dot com
and this is what they said, quote in our own
solar system, the model shows that ices from the outer
Solar System snowed down on the Earth in three waves.
(39:49):
The first came as Jupiter swelled up, the second was
triggered during Saturn's formation, and the third would have occurred
when Uranus and Neptune migrated inward before being blocked by
the other two and sent back to the outskirts of
the Solar System. Ah, and that ties into something that
I was talking about earlier when I was mentioning that
blog post by Sean Raymond, one of the authors here
(40:10):
that the early forming Jupiter, and I'm not sure if
he's saying also maybe Saturn too, but at least definitely
Jupiter and perhaps also Saturn would have prevented these icy
bodies you're in a Neptune from migrating inward towards the
inner Solar System and messing with the planets that were
forming down in closer to the Sun. Yeah. I mean, ultimately,
if you have an all powerful god like Jupiter, one
(40:31):
of the things that that they're supposed to do is
keep keep his dreaded father and grandfather from taking over
creation again, right, I mean, that's why we're putting up
with all of this right right now. One other neat
thing about this that the authors point out is that,
you know, it might not just be a quirk of
our own Solar system. It might not just be the peculiar,
(40:51):
peculiar story of of life on Earth and life in
this system. This could be going on anywhere that you
have both giant planets and terrestrial planets. Um. So this
is the sort of thing that if this is true,
this would be another thing to look for in our
exoplanet surveys. Look for situations where you have like the
(41:13):
right proportions and right arrangements of gas giants and rocky
inner planets where this same bombardment of water could happen. Yeah,
this is really interesting and uh. And of course in
the specific case of Earth, it of course goes without
saying that we couldn't have life on Earth without surface
you know, plenty of surface water on Earth. So so
this is something that, uh, if if this model of
(41:35):
the early Solar System is correct, this would again be
crucial to us being here at all. Yeah. Thank now
I've got another thing that, again an astrophysical theory that,
if correct, would be crucial for us being here at all. Uh.
(41:56):
And this would have more to do with the history
of life on Earth. Once you've already got the rocky
planet Earth, and you've already got Earth life, what happens
to shape the course of evolution on the surface of
this planet. Well, there is a new paper published in
uh Nature Scientific Reports in one so I think it
(42:17):
was just out last month. It was in February of
this year by i'm here Sarage and Abraham Loeb or
avy loebe called the breakup of a long period comment
as the origin of the dinosaur extinction. Uh. And so
I was briefly reading a Harvard gazette right up of
of this study. I'm not going to go super in
depth about it, but basically what the authors argue here
(42:38):
is that Jupiter's gravitational field influenced objects, a comment probably
originating from the Ort Cloud. So that's way out there
past the Kuiper Belt. You know, this huge sphere of
icy objects, way way out in the distance, beyond the
orbit of Neptune, beyond the orbit of Pluto, beyond the
Kuiper Belt. Even that Jupiter disturbed the orbit of one
(43:01):
of these comets from the Order Cloud, and this disturbance
of its orbit sent it really close to the Sun
where tidal forces then broke the comet apart, and this
would increase the rate of comets that would bombard the Earth.
And these comets would include objects like the chicks Alube
impact object, which hit the Earth about sixty six million
(43:23):
years ago, and according to the leading theory today, is
probably the main thing responsible for the extinction of the
non avian dinosaurs. And so Loween Saraje here argue that
it is the gravitational influence of Jupiter that increases these
kinds of impacts through the mechanism I just described, And
Saraje is quoted in this Harvard Gazette piece where he says,
(43:45):
quote basically, Jupiter acts as a kind of pinball machine.
Jupiter kicks these incoming long period comets into orbits that
bring them very close to the Sun. When you have
these sun grazers, it's not so much the melting that
go is on, which is a pretty small fraction relative
to the total mass, but the comet is so close
to the Sun that the part of it that's closer
(44:07):
to the Sun feels a stronger gravitational pull than the
part that is farther from the Sun, causing a tidal force.
You get what's called a tidal disruption event, and so
these large comets that come really close to the Sun
break up into smaller comets and basically on their way out,
there's a statistical chance that these smaller comets hit the Earth.
(44:28):
So huge icy objects from out in the Orc Cloud
getting diverted by the gravitational influence of Jupiter so that
they pass really close to the Sun. They sort of
shatter as they do so because the title forces from
the Sun are so strong, and then they turn into
a kind of buckshot blast of huge icy objects in
the inner Solar System that can hit Earth and potentially
(44:49):
cause mass extinctions. And I think one of the arguments
that they also bring up is that the is that
it looks like the carbonaceous content of the object that
caused the KPg extinction is more similar to stuff you're
you're likely to find in these deep space or cloud
objects than in things you're more likely to find closer
(45:09):
to the Inner Solar System, like in the asteroid belt.
So again, this is another argument that is based on
simulations and statistical analysis, But if this is correct, it
is yet another one of the many ways that Jupiter
would be responsible for the fact that we exist at all.
While it was you know, calamitous for the non avian dinosaurs,
it paved the way for the age of mammals. I
(45:33):
like that if if this worked true, this is true,
we we might need a new aspect for the god Jupiter,
maybe Jupiter or extinct or god of extinctions, you know, yeah,
very good with cold. Be shown holding a lizard in
one hand and a thunderbolt in the other, like he's
about to like smash it in his palm. His hand
flashes with power, but it's against a bunch of had ressours.
(45:54):
They're trying to guard their eggs, and he's like, well
he was Probably his thinking was probably I look, these
these these life forms. They're not worshiping me now. Honestly,
I don't think they're gonna be worshiping worshiping me anytime soon.
Unless I really shake things up. I'm just gonna smite
a lot of them, right. You know what I really like.
I really like the look of that rat like creature
(46:16):
down there, and it's gonna be twinkle in its I
think some some good things could happen if I give
the rats a chance. Though it does make me wonder,
you know, did I wonder if Jupiter slash Zeus got
up to you know, his normal tricks. Did he go
down and take the form of different uh dinosaurs and
mate with the dinosaurs to create like certain demi god
(46:37):
dinosaurs that would have been just you know, extra powerful
amid their dinosaur brethren. What would the dinosaur mythology version
of the minotaur be. It would be like a Tyrannosaurus
rex with the head of a triceratops, I guess. But
but then again, I don't know. I feel like like
the minotaur is one of those beasts that's kind of
(46:58):
born out of feuding with the gods and disobeying the gods.
I don't know. I guess the dinosaurs just by refusing
to worship are just not being capable of it. You know.
The gods could have taken that the wrong way and
dished out some punishment. But um, I don't know. Like this,
I think this would be a rich area for I
don't know, an action figure line or maybe a comic
(47:20):
book like the The The Age of of Gods and Dinosaurs. Um,
what would that have been like? Also? I mean, if
if humans weren't even in the game yet, I guess. Uh.
Any form that the Jupiter took would be that of
a dinosaur. So like, would how would he appear? Would
he appear as a as a great t rex or
(47:40):
some sort of enormal I mean he is a god
of the sky. Maybe he takes the form of of
of an enormous um of you know, flying reptile. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Jupiter is quetzel coatlas. Oh yeah, that would be fitting,
especially since you know the humans found those bones and
named it after a god. So what what better form
for the sky guide to take? We're all, but I
(48:02):
think we gotta call it there. But this has been
a lot of fun. Yeah, this has I love getting
the switch back and forth between the planetary and the mythological.
I should mention, however, we mostly speak of the Roman
gods as figures of the past, just as we do
with Greek deities and ancient Egyptian deities. But we should
also mention that there are modern worshippers as well, not
only of of of Greek deities and ancient Egyptian deities,
(48:23):
but also of of Roman Jupiter um. You know, after all,
just as modern humans reach for new models, entirely new
models of religion, uh, you know, drawing things even out
of popular culture like Star Wars or The Dude. We
also reach for the old ones and reconstructions of the
old ones. Thus we do see Roman polytheistic reconstructionism uh
(48:44):
in several different groups and forms. So um uh just
always worth worth mentioning. I don't think we we blasphemed
too much in this regarding Jupiter, but uh, and a right,
if anyone out there who's actively involved in a religion
or some sort of spiritual movement that that that reveres Jupiter,
I would I'd love to hear from you. I'd love
(49:05):
to know how do you think of Jupiter? How does
how does this material sit with you? Um? So yeah,
I always find that kind of thing interesting. We have
in the past heard from at least one listener who
engages in a religious model that incorporates Egyptian deities. Oh yeah,
that's true. Yeah, all right, Well, if you would like
(49:26):
to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
you know where to find them. Find them in the
Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Uh. That is
where core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind published
on Tuesdays and Thursday. That's the main show that's the
main event, but then we also have listener mail on Monday's.
On Wednesdays we do the Artifact episodes unless they've been
preempted for some reason, and then on Friday's we do
(49:49):
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and discuss some weird movies, and then we run a
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(50:09):
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favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back with part two of our discussion of Jupiter
the Destroyer. In the last episode, we ended up talking
(00:24):
about some of the myths of Zeus and Jupiter, Zeus's
war against the Titans, and how that related to some
ideas in astrophysics about how an early forming Jupiter in
the solar nebula of our of our young Solar system
may have played a very important role in the destruction
of early forming super Earth's in the inner Solar System,
(00:45):
leading to or clearing the way for the eventual creation
of rocky planets like the Earth we live on today.
So that last episode was kind of it was kind
of a mash up. We had we had some planetary science,
we had some mythology. It's like we had two turntable
and uh, and we had two different records and we
kind of mixed and nashed them both. Uh. So we're
(01:07):
we're kind of like your DJs. We're well, we we're
your hosts, except no substitutes. Uh. And we're gonna have
more of the same in this episode. We're gonna have
plenty of planetary science, but we're also going to have mythology. So, uh,
if you love both, stay tuned, because you're gonna get
everything you love. If you lean more towards one direction
or the other, well it's still hang on because we're
(01:28):
gonna take you on a ride. But if you're only
interested in when we talk about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre
movies and stick around anyway because who knows what will
come up, well that that movie also is astronomical and
its own wise, that's true. So maybe I thought we
should start just by doing a brief refresher on one
of the studies we talked about in the last episode
because it kind of ties into some of the stuff
(01:48):
I'm gonna talk about right after. Um So, one of
the studies we looked at last time was published in
in p N A. S. And it was by Constantine
Batigan and Greg Laughlin, and it's called Jupiter Decisive Role
in the Inner Solar System's Early evolution. And the rough
outline is that the authors here argue that they put
together a simulation that assumes a version of what's known
(02:10):
as the grand Attack scenario, and that's where in the
early solar nebula. So when the Solar System is first forming,
it's this big disc of gas and dust all swirling
around this newly forming Sun. When that's going on, a
young Jupiter migrated from somewhere around five astronomical units out
(02:30):
in radius from the Sun into about one point five
astronomical units and then reversed course and went back out
to a larger orbital radius when it was pulled outward
by the gravitational influence of Saturn. And the authors here
right quote, we propose that the primordial nebula driven process
responsible for retention of Jupiter and Saturn at large orbital
(02:52):
radii and sculpting Mars low mass, is also responsible for
clearing out the Solar system's innermost region. So, like we
talked about last time, this would be wiping out these
early forming super Earth's or miny neptunes that were forming
near the Sun and thus making room and freeing up
some materials for rocky planets like Earth and Venus to form.
(03:15):
And if you remember the details we talked about last time,
this would have happened according to these authors here via
a what they call a collisional cascade. So Jupiter's inward
migration would hurl all of these planetesimals into um what
they call mean motion resonances low order mean motion residences,
shepherding and exciting their orbits, so basically just causing chaos
(03:39):
in the inner Solar System where things would smash into
each other and then ultimately spiral into the Sun and
be vaporized down there in the bottom of the Solar System.
And then finally they write, in this scenario, the Solar
systems terrestrial planets formed from the gas starved mass depleted
debris that remained after the primary period of dynamical evolution.
(04:00):
So under this scenario, it is the gravitational influence from
a coalescing Saturn that finally pulls Jupiter back out of
the fray back into the outer Solar System. But I
wanted to think about another way that gas giants like
Jupiter and Saturn, or like if you imagine another Solar
system somewhere else in the galaxy, multiple jupiters can interact
(04:23):
with one another in catastrophic ways that have major influence
on the other planets in that star system. Because going
to the mythological analogy. One Zeus or one Jupiter is
bad enough. You've got a couple. You're really running into trouble. Wow,
they're not going to tolerate each other. That's right, though.
It is funny that literally in our Solar system, if
(04:44):
you look at the mythological counterparts of the three the
first three outer planets you get to after the asteroid belt,
you've got Jupiter, you got Saturn, and then you got
Ranas and there if you look at their mythological counterparts,
each one ascending out there is the father of the
other who was defeated by the Sun. So Jupiter or
Zeus defeated Chronus, which is Saturn, and dethroned him, throw
(05:08):
him into Tartarus. But Chronus previously the Titan had defeated
Oranas or Uranus by castrating him and throwing his genitals
into the ocean. Yeah. So like if you've been to throne,
you get pushed further out of the solar hierarchy. Yeah,
I guess so. Now, now that's an interesting question, which
is more like Tartarus being cast into the Sun like
these early super earths may have been, or being cast
(05:30):
farther out into a greater orbital radius where you're you're
very cold and very lonely. I guess I go with
the cold and lonely uh interpretation more again, just in
terms of thinking about what mythological punishments would be, like,
I tend to imagine, uh, the prison of the Titans
as being cold and lonesome. But anyway, I wanted to, uh,
(05:53):
now now talk about the idea of Jupiter's going eccentric
and UH usually the word centric, how do we use that?
We use the word eccentric to mean weird, but in
kind of a harmless way, like it's the nice version
of weird, or the or the at least the rich
version of weird, right right, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
(06:14):
know exactly what you mean by that. But now in
this case, this would be uh eccentric in a way
that is, that is not at all harmless and potentially
could be world ending. Uh. So I wanted to look
at a blog post by an American astrophysicist living in
France named Sean Raymond, who I wanted to bring this
up because I think reading his blog on his website
(06:36):
was one of the reasons I ended up wanting to
do this pair of episodes about Jupiter. I was originally
reading his website because he was one of the authors
of a study about moons of moons that I talked
about for an episode of The Artifact, where I was
saying like, like, how many levels of orbits can you
go down? You know, the the so the our our
(06:57):
son orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and
then the Earth orbits the Sun, and then the moon
orbits the Earth. But could the moon have its own moon?
And it turns out the answer is yes, there's nothing
in physics that prevents moons from having moons. But of course,
every every step you go down that ladder of orbits
within orbits, the maximum size of the orbiting object gets
(07:18):
smaller and smaller, and if you include really small stuff,
I think moons of moons can have moons. But anyway,
through that, I ended up reading some posts on this
guy's website. So he's a professor of astrophysics at the
University of Bordeaux in France, and his blog is fun
he he he sometimes like writes poems about astrophysics, and
that's weird stuff on there. But there was this one
(07:41):
post that I thought was really interesting and got me
thinking about this topic. And reading other stuff about it,
and it was a post called how planets die when
good Jupiters go bad, And the gist of this post
here is about how planets like Jupiter have the potential
to destroy the Solar systems that they dwell within and
(08:01):
in other planetary systems around other stars in the galaxy.
There is evidence that gas giants like Jupiter have indeed
already destroyed other planets in in their solar systems. Now,
of course, as we talked about in the last episode,
Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar system. It's
more than three hundred times more massive than Earth. What
was it was like three hundred and seventeen times as
(08:22):
massive as Earth or something, I mean, just huge. And
of course the Sun is the largest gravitational influence in
our Solar system, but Jupiter is second in that regard,
and Jupiter has more effects on what happens to the
rest of the objects in the Solar System than you
might imagine. Raymond talks about some stuff that we didn't
really get into in the last episode, Like one of
(08:43):
the things he mentions is that Jupiter probably would have
blocked large icy bodies from the outer Solar System from
invading the inner Solar System when the Solar System was
first forming. It would have cleared this large gap in
the solar nebula disc that was forming around the early
Sun UH, and with its gravity it would prevent large
(09:04):
icy objects from migrating inwards. Of course, we already talked
about that Batigan and Laughlin idea that if it's correct,
during Jupiter's grand tach or the movement in and then
out again, UH, it would have had these catastrophic implications
for early forming super Earth's or many Neptunes close to
the Sun through this collisional cascade UH and would have
(09:26):
allowed small rocky planets like Earth to take shape in
the aftermath. But Jupiter also we should remember, and this
is one thing we're gonna look at in several different
ways today. Jupiter plays a major role in influencing what
kinds of space objects crash into Earth and at what
rate and at what velocity, Because to read from Raymond
(09:49):
here quote, Jupiter's gravity determines how comets enter the Inner
Solar System and how long they spend near the planets
with the potential to crash into Earth before launching them
into interstellar space. And this has implications both ways. So
it means that Jupiter can act as a kind of destroyer,
(10:09):
flinging objects in our direction in a dangerous way, but
Jupiter can also act as a kind of protector, shepherding
objects away from Earth and keeping us safe. And so
Jupiter's effect on the movements of space objects in the
inner Solar System, like asteroids and especially comets, I think
will have powerful effects on things like the water contents
(10:29):
of Earth and the biological development of Earth, which will
come back to as we go on. But coming back
to the idea of eccentric jupiters now, I mentioned in
the last episode that sometimes when we look out at
other stars in our galaxy, we can see that they
have large exoplanets, large gas giants in very eccentric orbits.
(10:50):
The orbits of most of the planets in our Solar
system are nearly circular. They're not perfectly circular, but they're
pretty close. I mean, you know, roughly circular. If you
look at the orbit of some comets, though it is
a completely different story. There are comets that orbit the
Sun in these incredibly squashed, squeezed out oval trajectories. Uh,
(11:12):
and these orbits that deviate from near circularity are called eccentric,
and of course the more squashed out they get, the
more highly eccentric they are. So if you're trying to
picture it, you can think of a more eccentric orbit
is like a rubber band being stretched out instead of
allowed to just like sit slack in a circle. And
in fact, exoplanet research reveals that around other stars in
(11:36):
the galaxy there are gas giants like Jupiter that have
orbits more like these comets. So imagine a Jupiter or
a Saturn with a highly eccentric orbit more like a
stretched out rubber band. These types of planets exist, and
the question is, well, how does that happen? Well, Raymond
discusses one way when gas giants act upon one another
(11:59):
in dangerous ways. So large gas giants exert gravitational influence
not only on commets, not only on the moons that
orbit them, but also on one another. You know, if
you have like two jupiters orbiting a star, they will
have influence on the paths that they each take. Uh.
Remember thinking again about the way that a Saturn may
(12:21):
have pulled Jupiter back out of the inner Solar system.
According to the Grand tach hypothesis. So, if you have
two gas giants that are affecting one another gravitationally, it
can throw their orbits off course. And sometimes these gravitational
interactions can even put them into orbital patterns uh, such
(12:41):
that one gas giant gets gravitationally ejected out of the
Solar System by the gravitational influence of the other like
it does sort of a gravity slingshot, like we might
do with a with one of our space probes, but
on a planet, and just like throws it way out
of there, and then the other one remains. But in
this stretch out eccentric orbit. And as you might well imagine,
(13:03):
these gravitational disturbances in the orbits of gas giants can
have horrible effects on the planets nearby. So if there
are earthlike inner planets, in one of these scenarios, they
tend to get cast into the pit of Tartarus UH.
And this could actually this could be either of the
Tartarus scenarios we were talking about earlier. In the closest
thing to a literal sense, right, they either get cast
(13:25):
way out into nowhere into space, or they get thrown
into the Sun or destroyed by collisions, possibly with gas
giants themselves, or with other rocky planets or planetesimals, and
then those the debris from those collisions can spiral into
the Sun or they get ejected and then just plunge
forever into the void. Yeah, it's the thing about the amokies,
(13:46):
they tend to they tend to throughout the old order
in a place it was something new. You know. This
reminds me of one of the possible explanations for Umu Mua,
that object, interstellar object that we did a couple of
episodes about that. Some people, I think, probably very prematurely,
we're trying to say was an alien probe, but I
don't think there's good evidence of that. But one of
(14:07):
the ideas about what this object probably is because it
had strange characteristics, like it's kind of elongated and seemed
to be moving in a kind of tumbling motion. One
of the ideas is that it is part of an
object that was destroyed or rejected from its host star
system by a gravitational disturbance like this. Now, most of
the time, when a Jupiter turns murderous, when when Jupiter,
(14:31):
you know, when when his hand flashes with power, as
it says in the in hesi. It's the agony um
when a gas giant goes rogue and destroys the other planets.
Most of the time it happens early in the formation
of the Solar System, shortly after most of the material
and the nebula disc is dissipated and absorbed by newly
forming planets. And the reasoning here is that without the
(14:53):
stabilizing presence of this cloud like disk, a jupiter like
planet can start going off the rails very quickly. But
sometimes a gas giant can turn into the destroyer. Its
hand can flash with power later in its lifespan, for example,
if its orbit is disturbed by external influence. An example
(15:13):
here could be another star passes too close to the
Solar System and this, uh, this causes gravitational disturbances, throws
the orbit of the jupiter like planet off course, and
then the same thing happens. It just it starts this
cascading series of effects on the orbits of other planets.
And you know, many of these inner rocky planets are
just destroyed. They're they're sent down into the Sun. Well,
(15:36):
you know, if we're to to to draw in comparison
to maybe not literal the literal mythology, but just sort
of the nature of mythologies and belief I'm reminded of
what happens when a foreign um religion or foreign deity
uh comes too close to an established religion and deity.
You know, it can also result in a fair amount
(15:57):
of disorder uh and a realigning of the order of things. Yes,
the realignment of a pantheon in the presence of a
syncretism right when we emerge to religions together. If you
merge to two stars gravity is too close to one another,
this can definitely realign things and possibly result in a monotheism. Yeah,
more on that in a bit. So, Yeah, I do
(16:20):
want to be clear, we're not saying there's any reason
to think that this is likely to happen to our
solar system anytime soon like that that that's not the
implication here, But it is scary to imagine that it
does sometimes happen around other stars, and at least is
possible in theory that you know, you can have this
influence from some kind of external object, another star passes
too close or something. This can nudge the orbit of
(16:42):
a previously pretty stable Jupiter like planet, leading to a
cascade of effects like we just talked about, and then
the Earth like planets have an appointment with the wicker Man.
And uh. One interesting thing that Raymond mentions in this
blog post is he does some rough calculations and guesses
that about half of the stars in the Milky Way
(17:02):
galaxy with gas planets have annihilated the rocky planets through
a process like this. And I remember that it's much
more likely for to happen early during formation, when when
the disk is is first sorting itself out, but it can,
in some rare cases happen later. And I guess this
all comes down to the fact that we have a
(17:23):
Jupiter and we still exist. So it looks like in
in some sense, we're one of the lucky ones. But
it's also true that the influence of Jupiter or gas
giants in general, especially Jupiter in our case, doesn't stop there.
I mean, the influence on Jupiter on the history of
the planet Earth appears to be pervasive. I was looking
(17:45):
at one study by Alisa V. Quintana, Thomas Barclay, William J. Baruki,
Jason f Row, and Johnny Chambers from the Astrophysical Journal
called the Frequency of Giant Impacts on earthlike worlds, and
I was reading some write ups of this, and basically
these researchers did some simulations of what happens in different
(18:06):
types of Solar system configurations where you have a Jupiter present,
or where you don't have a Jupiter present, where you
have multiple jupiters, and their simulations revealed that in general,
gas giants like Jupiter have complicated effects on rocky inner
planets like Earth. So young Jupiter, they think probably flung
material into the cores of newly forming rocky planets when
(18:28):
the Solar System was young, and this would have helped
planets like Earth come together faster than rocky planets in
a Solar system without a nearby gas giant, but at
the same time, by hoarding materials to themselves, gas giants
limit the number of rocky planets that form around a star.
So if you have a star without a planet like Jupiter,
(18:49):
it can have way more rocky planets out there um
And then if you don't have any nearby gas giants,
young rocky planets are subjected to a much longer period
it of early bombardment, where they're just constantly being hit
with impacts from space by smaller objects from the solar
nebula cloud, and a planet like Jupiter makes that cloud
(19:11):
disappear faster and thus makes the early bombardment period last
a shorter span of time. But then again, you can
also look at ways that a planet like Jupiter ends
up accelerating larger objects like comets into the Inner Solar
System and controlling how long they stay there in the
Inner Solar System. Uh. And of course those things can
(19:32):
lead to impacts later on down the line that affect
Earth life. So Jupiter is once again sort of protecting
and attacking in tandem. Yeah. I guess the relationships between
humans and God's they tend to be a little bit unhealthy.
But then again, I mean there there are reasons. I
guess what we've gone through here kind of uh, you know,
(19:53):
justifies the ways of God demand uh to some extent,
thank or Rob. I don't know about you, but I
am ready to mount an apologia for Jupiter pluvious. Yeah,
let's do it. Let's let's talk Jupiter the God a
bit more. Um. Again, I think this comparison between the
(20:15):
planet Jupiter and the god Jupiter is is increasingly apt
the more you look at it. Uh. And in this episode.
We're talking a good deal. I mean, we're still talking
about Jupiter the destroyer and Jupiter um of of passionate
lashing out against a humanity, but but also Jupiter the protector,
Jupiter the Lord of Earth, because he enforces his order
(20:37):
upon it and he is in many ways its protector,
and he was also expressly stated to be the protector
of the Roman state. The White Ox was his favorite
sacrifice and it could afford an entire year's protection, uh
from the Lord of the gods. And he probably took
this sort of thing seriously, seeing as how he was
(20:57):
also the god of oaths and treaties, kind of a
rules guy. Yeah, yeah, so you know, he's lawful. Whatever
else he is, he's he's lawful. Uh So, I was, well,
maybe he's the emblem of lawfulness to others. I don't know,
does he have to follow the laws himself? Well, I mean,
he's he's in are in a tough spot, like if
(21:18):
you can't, who are you going to report him to? Write? Uh?
I was reading The Imperial Ideology of Rome and the
Principalities and Powers in Romans eight thirty one through thirty
nine by Sung Cho Hong in Scripture and Interpretation from
two thousand and eight, and Home points out that imperial
Roman propaganda expressly stated that the safety of the entire
(21:40):
human race lay in the hands of mighty Jupiter. And
this is a point pressed by Cicero, among others. And
I believe in particularly in on the ends of Good
and Evil. I want to read a quote here from it, uh,
and this is not I want to stress that Cicero
goes into a lot more detail about all this, and
he's he's crafting a much greater point uh than this.
(22:01):
This is just a fragment. But he does a right
or he does say quote when we call Jupiter all
powerful and all good, and likewise, when we speak of
him as the salutary God, the hospitable God, or as state,
or we mean it to be understood that the safety
of men is under his protection. This reminds me of
like when when presidents of the United States will say, like,
(22:24):
the president's first responsibility is to keep America safe. This
seems like a very close analogy. It's just like, first
of all, I am I am the daddy, and it
is it is all protection from me. Yeah, So this
seems to be again Cicero's saying all other things in
this work, uh, I mean additional things. But this seems
to be like a major talking point for just Roman
(22:45):
propaganda in general. But so there's the thing that's kind
of interesting about Jupiter that I think we would recognize
as commons say, in like Indian religion, the gods can
have multiple manifestations or faces. Yes to the Romans didn't
exactly have one Jupiter. They had multiple aspects of Jupiter.
Now sometimes these are referred to more as uh as epithets,
(23:09):
you know, just a just different descriptions of of Jupiter.
But ultimately, I think the line between the two, you know,
you can see where it enters a gray area, like
if you're just describing different properties of the same being,
you know, it's it's only a short hop and a
jump to having different, uh different you know, beings entirely.
(23:30):
You know, in the Christian tradition, you see, you see
some of this right because on one hand, you it's
what you can talk about like God the Father, and
you can talk about like different divisions of the same being.
But on the other hand, you see throughout you know,
Christian history a tendency to want to say focus on
said that the feminine aspects of Christ uh in you know,
(23:52):
certainly in in visual representation, but also then embodying different
ideas of what Christ was, and then that may be
um stamped down out of fear of heresy, the idea
that if people keep going in this direction, it will
butt off into an alternative Jesus. So you can you
can tell how how the sort of thing can lead
(24:13):
to the division um even at the same time, it's
kind of like saying, okay, we have all these instead
of having just a dozen gods, we could have maybe
have um we could you know, still have other gods,
but we could also have just like a dozen different
versions or different um incarnations of the same being. And
that's kind of what you see with Jupiter here. Yeah,
(24:33):
the Romans had an idea of what we now call superstition.
You know that comes from a Roman idea meaning basically
being too religious. Because picking up off what you were
just saying, there is a pattern I think throughout the
religions of the world where when people get incredibly invested
in their religion, like very passionate about it, they are
prone more often to to religious innovation. And religious innovation
(24:59):
can lea to you know, you start really focusing on
maybe one aspect of an existing God or something, maybe
that becomes a new God, and then you've got a
new cult, and that that new cult could maybe undermine
things that came before. Now, there was in the Roman Empire,
while the Romans were incredibly tyrannical, there was a kind
of weird religious pluralism there where there there could you know,
you could have a lot of different kinds of religious
(25:21):
beliefs in the Roman Empire and it would be mostly
okay as long as you weren't causing trouble. But there's
always I think a certain fear of religious innovation stemming
from too much interpretive interest in the nature of God's
in religious matters among the existing religious authorities. That makes sense, Yeah, yeah, totally.
Um so, so I know I was reading all this,
(25:43):
it didn't It did raise an interesting question for me, Like,
given all these different aspects of Jupiter, and I'll get
into what they are here in a minute. Uh, you know,
the fact that Jupiter had his own priests and that
Romans tended towards syncretism, which we already mentioned. This is
the combining of different theological ideas like, instead of hearing
about a new God, uh, for instance, in a territory
(26:05):
that you have absorbed into your empire, instead of saying, okay,
that God's out. Wait whatever you're doing to that God,
forget it, instead saying, well, actually that God is part
of our pantheon, or that God is actually Jupiter, that
sort of thing. Well, I mean God, look at the
way that the Romans essentially just adopted almost wholesale, originally
the mythology of the Greeks. Yeah. So so, given given this,
(26:26):
and given that the situation with the different aspects of Jupiter, um,
I was wanting do do we see in this at
least a movement toward monotheism because that, of course is
one of the things about the Roman Empire is that
it eventually it becomes a Christian empire. There's this movement
towards monotheistic Christian belief. Well, I don't know if this
(26:47):
helps with the point you're developing, but the but the
secular biblical historian Bart Irman, who's a previous guest on
the show, He was on the show last year. He's
got a book about why Christianity eventually overtook the Roman Empire,
and uh, and his theory on that, which seems very
reasonable to me, is that the main thing going for
Christianity is that, unlike all of the other religions in
(27:08):
the Roman Empire at the time, or most of the
other religions in the Roman Empire at the time, Christianity
was evangelical and it was exclusive, so they were trying
to convert people to it. And unlike the existing Roman religions,
you couldn't add other gods into Christianity, or you weren't
supposed to. I mean, some people probably did, but mostly
Christians were preaching that no, once you're a Christian, you
(27:31):
can only believe in Jesus and you have to forget
all these other gods. And over time those dynamics led
to effects where Christianity would just grow and grow and
it would push out because every new Christian wasn't just
like a pagan adopting one additional god. But now like
they weren't a pagan anymore, they want you weren't to
lay allowed to keep your old gods as well, right, yeah, yeah,
(27:51):
Because I think even though if we're looking at this,
we're thinking, okay, you're you're going to the temple, that's
just a Jupiter. You're worshiping Jupiter, maybe in different aspects,
but you're you're you're pretty much folk sing on him.
Even if you did not worship any of the other
gods in the Roman pantheon, that wouldn't be monotheism. That
would be what is called hino theism, which is the
adherence to one particular god out of many. So saying like, yeah,
(28:12):
all these other gods they're they're fine, they exist, but
this is my guy, this is my gal. Yeah, and
that that was common in the Roman Empire, that you
believe in the other gods, and you would maybe respect
the other gods, but you might have like a personal
favorite god who you were really devoted to. Yeah. Like
even in that work on Cistero that I was quoting earlier, Um,
he's he's mentioning adherence to Jupiter. But he's also in
(28:33):
the same work mentioning adherence to smaller household gods. So yeah,
you can you can see that if if suddenly you're like, no,
you can't keep your household gods, you have to pretty
much abandon the old way, uh and and and take
to this new one. Uh. You know, you have to
cut off the other gods from your life. I could
see that being maybe it's something that keeps you from
drifting back into another one. Sure, Like like if you
(28:54):
if you have to get this new video game and
you have to throw out all your other video games, well,
if you get bored with the new one, not going
to go back to the old ones because they're not
in the house anymore. Okay, so you only got one game.
Now you get bored with it. What you start doing
is looking for glitches in the game to exploit and
start trying to break the physics, which you could look
at it for in religious point of view. You start
maybe innovating how the religion works, thinking about maybe I've
(29:17):
received a new vision that tells me that the priests
don't have it exactly right. This is the version. Yeah, yeah,
new new fan theories about exactly what what Mario means
to the franchise, etcetera. Now I was I was looking
around about at this about this question of of monotheism
and polytheism in the Roman Empire, and uh, there's an
(29:38):
interesting sounding book. I don't know if you're familiar with
this author, but it came. It was by Stephen Mitchell,
who I think has done a lot of work in
religion and involved in some translations of various works such
as the the Guita. But he has this book called
One God, Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire, and it
discusses the complexity of the shift from polytheism to Monothey
(30:00):
is hum but also it deals with this idea of
quote pagan monotheism, and apparently historians have some historians have
considered the various Roman cults to be something we might
interpret as monotheistic structures. Um, so this kind of thing
might be worth it a deeper dive in a later episode,
because it's apparently it's not a cut and dry issue. Rob.
(30:21):
I was just trying to look up and figure out.
I'm not quite sure the answer. If this is the
same Stephen Mitchell who did one of my favorite poetry translations,
a translation of Rainer Maria Rilka's archaic Torso of Apollo
into English. It's uh, I don't know if you've ever
read this, but his translation is the version that ends
an English thing for here there is no place that
does not see you. You must change your life. Oh wow, No,
(30:44):
I don't think I've read that, but but it it
might bob be him. It looks like he's He was
involved in a number of translations and adaptations, including like
the Guida, but also like the Iliad. Uh, you know
various some some Chinese works in their um you know,
the Epic of Gilgamesh. So there's a lot of stuff. Well,
I'm not sure if it's the same Stephen Mitchell, but
if so, that that's a good translation of that poem
(31:05):
Archaic Torso of Apollo you can look up um. So.
I didn't have time to to really dig into this
one God book, but I just want to read a
quick quote that I found in it from author Stephen
Mitchell on this topic. Quote, Pagan polytheist did not individually
become monotheist, but through philosophy and the comparing of religious ideas,
(31:25):
by adopting and inventing new cults and learning how to
individualize and express religious experience, they transformed ancient religion into
a terrain of human experience where much, including monotheism, was possible. Oh,
that's interesting looking at the possibility that a trend towards
monotheism could actually emerge from the kind of commerce of
(31:46):
religious ideas that you would have in a very uh pluralistic,
multicultural empire. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it kind of
gets back to the point where you were you're mentioning earlier.
So let's get into some of these aspects of Jupiter,
these different Jupiter sub brands, if you will, that were
available under the Roman Empire. Uh so um. In addition
(32:08):
to the sources I mentioned already, I was also looking
at aspects of Jupiter on coins of the Roman Mint
by Philip V. Hill from this is from nineteen sixty.
But this one, this particular article is one that dealt
more exclusively with aspects of Jupiter has represented on coins, um,
which is also pretty interesting. So let's start with Jupiter Stator,
(32:30):
who we mentioned earlier. That's that's who Cisero is referring to.
And this is he who stays panic in battle. Uh.
This is uh, this is Jupiter depicted with a scepter
and a thunderbolt, and this is the Jupiter that gives
you courage, that gives you resolved to not be crushed
by fear. Okay, So stays panic means like holds back panic,
(32:51):
not like it keeps you panicked right right now, m so,
so that's obviously a big one. You know what what
One of the reasons to a fuel to a god
is like for strength, right, Like give me that strength,
give me the resolve to to not run away, especially
if you're dealing with a warring empire. Likewise, along those lines,
another big one was Jupiter Victor, the giver of victory,
(33:14):
depicted as seated and holding a statue all victory and
a scepter or spear. This was especially prominent on coins,
and then it might be invoked. This version of Jupiter
might be invoked either celebrate an actual victory that occurred
or in anticipation of an upcoming victory. So this is
Jupiter the conqueror Jupiter what is best in life? Right? Yes?
(33:38):
What to crush the Titans see them driven before you
hear their lamentations from Tartarus. Yeah, but of course the Jupiter,
I mean, presumably a god also has to govern, and
certainly the Roman Empire would have realized that as well.
It's one thing to conquer, but then you need to
hold your territory. And that's where the next aspect comes
in Jupiter conservator. Uh, this is a Jupiter that holds
(34:01):
a thunderbolt, but he's holding it above the image of
the Roman emperor, so he's kind of a preserver of rule.
That's kind of a halo concept. I think, you know,
it's like saying, like the will of Jupiter resonates through
the emperor, and he was the one who rules over
these lands. Now, one of the big ones is Jupiter
(34:21):
Optimus Maximus or Jupiter Optimus maximus capital Linus, and this
is the most powerful aspect of Jupiter, all powerful as such,
the Temple of Jupiter optimist Maximus was the most important
temple in ancient Rome, located on Capitol Line Hill. Now,
some other versions you had Jupiter full gore. This is
the lightning Jupiter, but not passively, so like Jupiter often
(34:43):
has lightning. But this is like Jupiter with the aggressive stance,
like he's going to smite you, gonna hurl the thunderbolt.
For some reason, when you said that, I pictured not Jupiter,
but I guess uh an analog to Jupiter Marduke holding
holding this. Yeah, that's a famous image, but Marduke is
often picture in kind of a fighting stance from the side. Yeah,
(35:04):
there's one that was referred to as a Jupiter Dolicinus,
and this was the focus of a Roman mystery cult
originally a local hit tight, hurry, and god of fertility
and thunder. So here we see an example of of
the of Romans combining ideas. Another deity from another land
is taken in and becomes an aspect of Jupiter. Then
(35:26):
you have a Jupiter ruminus. This is the breast feeder
of all life. And then as we mentioned earlier, Jupiter Pluvius,
this is the cinder of rain. In times of drought,
special sacrifices were made in the name of Jupiter Pluvius
and these were called aquilsum. Uh. So this is where
we're getting back to consideration of not only the mythic Jupiter,
(35:49):
but but the but Jupiter the planet as well. Uh.
The idea of Jupiter as as he who delivers the rain,
he who delivers the water. Yeah. And so we already
talked about some ways that Jupiter has has influenced what
kind of stuff smashed into the the forming and then
the early Earth to determine its composition, what size it
(36:12):
would grow to, and what was on its surface, and
what kind of volatiles it had in terms of an
atmosphere and possibly surface water. Yes. Uh, And so in
this I mean we're still talking about the planet Jupiter
pelting the rocky planets with stuff, you know, like it's
still ultimately a violent relationship. But U. But the idea
(36:35):
here is that is Jupiter is not only throwing thunderbolts. Uh.
The Jovial bombardments might have included water or would be water,
specifically hydrogen rich material. And this wind's up locked into
Earth's crust and mantle and emerges later to bond with
oxygen to become water. Uh. So one of the sources
we're looking at with this is a Nola Taylor red
(36:55):
article for smithsonian dot com from back in focusing on
the work of French astronomer Shawn Raymond, who we've already
talked about, uh, whose models predict this possible gas giant
thrown delivery of water rich material to the inner planets.
Also key is the work of andre Isadoro, who, along
with Raymond, published a paper on this in two seventeen
(37:16):
titled Origin of Water in the Inner Solar System. Okay,
so what do they argue? Okay? So the idea here
is that four point five billion years ago, the massive
center of the and in this I'm gonna touch on
some stuff we've already gone through, but then the massive
center of the cloud of gas and cosmic dust begins
to form into a central star, our Sun. But the
(37:37):
remaining cloud remained and its contents would in time form
into the planets. But the water rich region of the
disc would have been located several astronomical units away from
the Sun. The temperature in the inner region was too high,
so that water then ultimately has to move back to
the inner planets to become a part of them so
(37:58):
that we can have water on Earth. So this would
have occurred um between during a five to ten million
year period between the Sun's formation and the dissipation of
the gas disc. During this time, the gas giants formed
and quote Jupiter's rapid growth gravitationally disturbed thousands of water
rich planetism as, dislodging them from their original orbits. Okay,
(38:21):
so we see yet again, Jupiter as it's coming together,
begins to throw its weight around it exerts gravitational influence
and in this case would have started pulling in these uh,
these planetesimals, these these objects, you know, objects that might
be I don't know, asteroid sized or larger that have
some kind of water hydrogen content on them and then
(38:44):
slamming them into the inner solar system. Right. It's it's
basically you know what it reminds me of is I
don't know if you've seen these sort of vaudevillian skits
where like you have your your your bad comic, you're
sort of Fozzy Bear type and he's on stage, he's bombing.
I mean, he's just really dog in it up. Uh
And so that the audience is of course pelting him
with fruits and vegetables and he either catches one in
(39:08):
his mouth and begins to eat it or catches something
like catches the carrot and starts eating it. So like
they're they're pelting and they're engaging in violence, but they're
throwing nutrients at him. And he was like, yes, I
am hungry, I shall eat That is that's kind of
the relationship going on here. Um well, the Fozzy Bear effect,
I'm gonna call it anyway. Um I was reading some
(39:28):
more about this, um uh Isadoro had provided some quotes
about this that were used in press release and write ups.
In particular one that was on Eureka or dot com
and this is what they said, quote in our own
solar system, the model shows that ices from the outer
Solar System snowed down on the Earth in three waves.
(39:49):
The first came as Jupiter swelled up, the second was
triggered during Saturn's formation, and the third would have occurred
when Uranus and Neptune migrated inward before being blocked by
the other two and sent back to the outskirts of
the Solar System. Ah, and that ties into something that
I was talking about earlier when I was mentioning that
blog post by Sean Raymond, one of the authors here
(40:10):
that the early forming Jupiter, and I'm not sure if
he's saying also maybe Saturn too, but at least definitely
Jupiter and perhaps also Saturn would have prevented these icy
bodies you're in a Neptune from migrating inward towards the
inner Solar System and messing with the planets that were
forming down in closer to the Sun. Yeah. I mean, ultimately,
if you have an all powerful god like Jupiter, one
(40:31):
of the things that that they're supposed to do is
keep keep his dreaded father and grandfather from taking over
creation again, right, I mean, that's why we're putting up
with all of this right right now. One other neat
thing about this that the authors point out is that,
you know, it might not just be a quirk of
our own Solar system. It might not just be the peculiar,
(40:51):
peculiar story of of life on Earth and life in
this system. This could be going on anywhere that you
have both giant planets and terrestrial planets. Um. So this
is the sort of thing that if this is true,
this would be another thing to look for in our
exoplanet surveys. Look for situations where you have like the
(41:13):
right proportions and right arrangements of gas giants and rocky
inner planets where this same bombardment of water could happen. Yeah,
this is really interesting and uh. And of course in
the specific case of Earth, it of course goes without
saying that we couldn't have life on Earth without surface
you know, plenty of surface water on Earth. So so
this is something that, uh, if if this model of
(41:35):
the early Solar System is correct, this would again be
crucial to us being here at all. Yeah. Thank now
I've got another thing that, again an astrophysical theory that,
if correct, would be crucial for us being here at all. Uh.
(41:56):
And this would have more to do with the history
of life on Earth. Once you've already got the rocky
planet Earth, and you've already got Earth life, what happens
to shape the course of evolution on the surface of
this planet. Well, there is a new paper published in
uh Nature Scientific Reports in one so I think it
(42:17):
was just out last month. It was in February of
this year by i'm here Sarage and Abraham Loeb or
avy loebe called the breakup of a long period comment
as the origin of the dinosaur extinction. Uh. And so
I was briefly reading a Harvard gazette right up of
of this study. I'm not going to go super in
depth about it, but basically what the authors argue here
(42:38):
is that Jupiter's gravitational field influenced objects, a comment probably
originating from the Ort Cloud. So that's way out there
past the Kuiper Belt. You know, this huge sphere of
icy objects, way way out in the distance, beyond the
orbit of Neptune, beyond the orbit of Pluto, beyond the
Kuiper Belt. Even that Jupiter disturbed the orbit of one
(43:01):
of these comets from the Order Cloud, and this disturbance
of its orbit sent it really close to the Sun
where tidal forces then broke the comet apart, and this
would increase the rate of comets that would bombard the Earth.
And these comets would include objects like the chicks Alube
impact object, which hit the Earth about sixty six million
(43:23):
years ago, and according to the leading theory today, is
probably the main thing responsible for the extinction of the
non avian dinosaurs. And so Loween Saraje here argue that
it is the gravitational influence of Jupiter that increases these
kinds of impacts through the mechanism I just described, And
Saraje is quoted in this Harvard Gazette piece where he says,
(43:45):
quote basically, Jupiter acts as a kind of pinball machine.
Jupiter kicks these incoming long period comets into orbits that
bring them very close to the Sun. When you have
these sun grazers, it's not so much the melting that
go is on, which is a pretty small fraction relative
to the total mass, but the comet is so close
to the Sun that the part of it that's closer
(44:07):
to the Sun feels a stronger gravitational pull than the
part that is farther from the Sun, causing a tidal force.
You get what's called a tidal disruption event, and so
these large comets that come really close to the Sun
break up into smaller comets and basically on their way out,
there's a statistical chance that these smaller comets hit the Earth.
(44:28):
So huge icy objects from out in the Orc Cloud
getting diverted by the gravitational influence of Jupiter so that
they pass really close to the Sun. They sort of
shatter as they do so because the title forces from
the Sun are so strong, and then they turn into
a kind of buckshot blast of huge icy objects in
the inner Solar System that can hit Earth and potentially
(44:49):
cause mass extinctions. And I think one of the arguments
that they also bring up is that the is that
it looks like the carbonaceous content of the object that
caused the KPg extinction is more similar to stuff you're
you're likely to find in these deep space or cloud
objects than in things you're more likely to find closer
(45:09):
to the Inner Solar System, like in the asteroid belt.
So again, this is another argument that is based on
simulations and statistical analysis, But if this is correct, it
is yet another one of the many ways that Jupiter
would be responsible for the fact that we exist at all.
While it was you know, calamitous for the non avian dinosaurs,
it paved the way for the age of mammals. I
(45:33):
like that if if this worked true, this is true,
we we might need a new aspect for the god Jupiter,
maybe Jupiter or extinct or god of extinctions, you know, yeah,
very good with cold. Be shown holding a lizard in
one hand and a thunderbolt in the other, like he's
about to like smash it in his palm. His hand
flashes with power, but it's against a bunch of had ressours.
(45:54):
They're trying to guard their eggs, and he's like, well
he was Probably his thinking was probably I look, these
these these life forms. They're not worshiping me now. Honestly,
I don't think they're gonna be worshiping worshiping me anytime soon.
Unless I really shake things up. I'm just gonna smite
a lot of them, right. You know what I really like.
I really like the look of that rat like creature
(46:16):
down there, and it's gonna be twinkle in its I
think some some good things could happen if I give
the rats a chance. Though it does make me wonder,
you know, did I wonder if Jupiter slash Zeus got
up to you know, his normal tricks. Did he go
down and take the form of different uh dinosaurs and
mate with the dinosaurs to create like certain demi god
(46:37):
dinosaurs that would have been just you know, extra powerful
amid their dinosaur brethren. What would the dinosaur mythology version
of the minotaur be. It would be like a Tyrannosaurus
rex with the head of a triceratops, I guess. But
but then again, I don't know. I feel like like
the minotaur is one of those beasts that's kind of
(46:58):
born out of feuding with the gods and disobeying the gods.
I don't know. I guess the dinosaurs just by refusing
to worship are just not being capable of it. You know.
The gods could have taken that the wrong way and
dished out some punishment. But um, I don't know. Like this,
I think this would be a rich area for I
don't know, an action figure line or maybe a comic
(47:20):
book like the The The Age of of Gods and Dinosaurs. Um,
what would that have been like? Also? I mean, if
if humans weren't even in the game yet, I guess. Uh.
Any form that the Jupiter took would be that of
a dinosaur. So like, would how would he appear? Would
he appear as a as a great t rex or
(47:40):
some sort of enormal I mean he is a god
of the sky. Maybe he takes the form of of
of an enormous um of you know, flying reptile. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Jupiter is quetzel coatlas. Oh yeah, that would be fitting,
especially since you know the humans found those bones and
named it after a god. So what what better form
for the sky guide to take? We're all, but I
(48:02):
think we gotta call it there. But this has been
a lot of fun. Yeah, this has I love getting
the switch back and forth between the planetary and the mythological.
I should mention, however, we mostly speak of the Roman
gods as figures of the past, just as we do
with Greek deities and ancient Egyptian deities. But we should
also mention that there are modern worshippers as well, not
only of of of Greek deities and ancient Egyptian deities,
(48:23):
but also of of Roman Jupiter um. You know, after all,
just as modern humans reach for new models, entirely new
models of religion, uh, you know, drawing things even out
of popular culture like Star Wars or The Dude. We
also reach for the old ones and reconstructions of the
old ones. Thus we do see Roman polytheistic reconstructionism uh
(48:44):
in several different groups and forms. So um uh just
always worth worth mentioning. I don't think we we blasphemed
too much in this regarding Jupiter, but uh, and a right,
if anyone out there who's actively involved in a religion
or some sort of spiritual movement that that that reveres Jupiter,
I would I'd love to hear from you. I'd love
(49:05):
to know how do you think of Jupiter? How does
how does this material sit with you? Um? So yeah,
I always find that kind of thing interesting. We have
in the past heard from at least one listener who
engages in a religious model that incorporates Egyptian deities. Oh yeah,
that's true. Yeah, all right, Well, if you would like
(49:26):
to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
you know where to find them. Find them in the
Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Uh. That is
where core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind published
on Tuesdays and Thursday. That's the main show that's the
main event, but then we also have listener mail on Monday's.
On Wednesdays we do the Artifact episodes unless they've been
preempted for some reason, and then on Friday's we do
(49:49):
Weird House Cinema. That's our time to just cut loose
and discuss some weird movies, and then we run a
little rerun over the weekend in the form of a
vault episode. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
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(50:09):
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