From the Vault: Jupiter the Destroyer, Part 2

Jupiter the Destroyer. In the last episode, we ended up talking 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, 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 turntables and uh, and we had two different records and we kind of mixed and mashed them both. Uh. So we're we're kind of like your DJs. We 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 gonna 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 of the other, well it's still hang on because we're 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 in 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 I'm going to 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's

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 as the Grand tax scenario, and that's where in the early solar nebulas, 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 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 proposed that the primordial nebula driven process responsible for retention of Jupiter and Saturn at large orbital radii and sculpting Mars low mass, is

also responsible for clearing out the Solar systems innermost region. So, like we talked about last time, this would be wiping out these early forming super Earth's or mini 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. 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, shepherd ng and exciting their orbits, so basically just causing chaos 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. 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 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. Got a couple, you

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 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 Uranas 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 him into Tartarus. But Chronus previously the Titan had defeated Uranos or Uranus by castrating him and throwing his genitals into the ocean. Yeah, so like if you've been to thrown, 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 farther out into a greater orbital radius where you're you're very cold and very

lone lee. 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 now now talk about the idea of Jupiter's going eccentric, and uh, usually the

word eccentric, 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 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 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 Sun 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 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 sometimes like writes poems about astrophysics, and that's weird stuff on there. But there was this one 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 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. Uh 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 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. Then you might imagine Raymond talks about some stuff that we didn't really get into in the last episode. Like one of 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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 ours in 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 in dangerous ways. So large gas giants exert gravitational influence not only on comets, 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 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 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 sling shot 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 stretched out eccentric orbit. And as you might well imagine, 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 in the closest thing to a literal sense, right, They either get cast 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 planetestimals, 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. They tend to they tend to throughout the old order in 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 it was an alien probe,

and I don't think there's good evidence of that. But one of 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, you know, when when his hand flashes with power, as it says in the in has He, 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 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 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 on Well, 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 establish religion and deity. You know, it can also result in a fair amount

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 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 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 galaxy with gas planets have annihilated the rocky planets through

a process like this. And remember that it's much more likely for to happen early during formation, when when the disk 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 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 at one study by A. Lisa 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 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 the Solar System was young, and this would have helped planets like Earth come together faster than rocky planets in the 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, 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 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 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 lead to impacts later on down the line that a act Earth life. So Jupiter is once again

sort of protecting and attacking in tandem. Yeah. I guess the relationships between humans and gods that 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, justifies the ways of God demand uh to some extent than well, 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 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 and 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 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. Uh. And he probably took this sort of thing seriously, seeing as how he was also the god of oaths and treaties. It's kind of a rules 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. It's here in a tough spot, like if 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 Sun Cho Hong in scripture and interpretation from two thousand and eight, and Home points that imperial Roman propaganda expressly stated that the safety of the entire human race

lay in the hands of mighty Jupiter. And this is the point pressed by Cicero, among others. And I believe in the 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. 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, 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 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, uh, that 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, 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, you know, in the Christian tradition, you see, you see some of this right because on one hand, and 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 a tendency to want to say, focus on, say that the feminine aspects of Christ uh in you know, certainly in in visual representation, but also then embodying different ideas of what Christ was. And then that maybe 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 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, 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 too too religious innovation, and religious innovation

can lead 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 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 matter is among the existing religious authorities. That makes sense, Yeah, yeah, totally. Um so, so I know I was reading all this, 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 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 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, I look at the way that the Romans

essentially just adopted almost wholesale, originally the mythology of the Greeks. Yeah. So so given given this, 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 monotheis him, 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 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 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 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 that you want, you weren't to lay allowed to keep your old gods as well, right, Yeah, yeah, 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 to Jupiter. You're worshiping Jupiter, maybe in different aspects, but you're you're you're pretty much focusing 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, 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 a Sistero that I was quoting earlier, Um, he's he's mentioning adherence to Jupiter, but he's also in 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 something that keeps you from drifting back into another one. Sure. Like like if you 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, you're 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 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, et cetera.

Now I was I was looking around about at this about this question of of monotheism and polytheis him in the Roman Empire? And uh, there's an 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 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 monotheism, 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 a deeper dive in a later episode, because it's apparently it's not a

cut and dry issue. Rob. 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 Rainner Maria Rilka's Archaic Torso of Apollo into English. It's uh, I don't know if you've ever read this. 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, 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 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 polytheis did not individually become monotheist, but through philosophy and the comparing of religious ideas, 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 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 to sense of 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 stature, who we

mentioned earlier. That's that's who Cistero 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 it stays panic means like holds back panic, not like he keeps you panicked right right now. So so

that's obviously a big one. You know what, what one of the reasons to appeal 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, depicted it 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? What to crush the Titans see them driven before you hear their lamentations from Tartarus. Yeah, but of course the Jupiter I mean, presumably 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 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 a 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

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, local gated 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 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 the famous image, but Marduke is

often pictured in kind of a fighting stance from the side. Yeah, 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 of the of Romans combining ideas. Another deity from another land is taken in and becomes an aspect of Jupiter. Then you have a Jupiter ruminus. This is the breast feeder of all life. And then as we mentioned earlier,

Jupiter pluvious. This is this 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, but but the the 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 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 but the idea here is that is Jupiter is not only throwing thunderbolts. Uh. The Jovian 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, as Nola Taylor red 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 seventeen 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 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 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 planetismals, dislodging them from their

original orbits. Okay, 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 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 dogging it up. Uh, And so that the audience is of course pelting him with fruits and vegetables and he either catches one in 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 is 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 going to call it anyway. UM. I was reading some more about this. Um uh Isidoro had provided some quotes about this that were used in press really as and write ups, in particular one that was on Eureka

alort dot com. And this is what they said, quote in our own Solar system. The model shows that ice is from the outer Solar system snowed down on the Earth in three waves. 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 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 ran Us in 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 guide like Jupiter, one 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 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 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 mottle of the early Solar System is correct, this would again be crucial to us being here at all. Thank you,

thank you, thank you. Now I've got another thing that, again, a an astrophysical theory that, if correct, would be crucial for us being here at all. Uh. 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 was just out last month.

It was in February of this year by I'm here Sarage and Abraham Loeb or Avy. Loeb called the breakup of a long period comet as the origin of the dinosaur extinction. Uh. And so I was briefly reading a Harvard gazette right up of of this study. Not gonna go super in depth about it, but basically what the authors argue here 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 of these comets from the Ort Cloud, and this disturbance of its orbit sent it really close to the Sun where tidal forces then broke the commet apart. And this would increase the rate of comets that would

bombard the Earth. And these commets would include objects like the chicks Alube impact object, which hit the Earth about sixty six million 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 Lowe Ban Saraj here argue that it is the gravitation sational influence of Jupiter that increases these kinds of impacts through the mechanism I just described, And Sarage is quoted in this Harvard Gazette piece where he says, 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 goes 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 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. 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 tidal 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 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 then in things you're more likely to find closer 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 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, good with He could 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 restaurs. They're trying to guard their eggs, and he's like, well he was probably his thinking was, probably look these these these life forms. They're not worshiping me. Now, Honestly, I don't think they're going to 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 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 dinosaur ors to create like certain demi god dinosaurs that would have been just you know, extra

powerful amid their dinosaur brethren. What would the dinosaur mythology version of the minotaur be 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 born out of um 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 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, how would he appear? Would he appear as a as a great t rex or some sort of enorma I mean, he is a

god of the sky. Maybe he takes the form of a of of an enormous um of you know, flying reptile. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Jupiter is quetzalcoatlas. Oh yeah, that would be fitting, especially since you know humans found those bones and named it after a god. So what what better form for the sky god to take? We're all but I 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 in ancient Egyptian deities. But we should also mention that there are modern worshippers as well, not only of of of Greek deities in

ancient Egyptian deities, 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 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 an 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 to know you 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 um engages in a religious model that incorporates Egyptian deities. Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah, all right, Well, if you would like 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 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 Wednesday's we do the artifact episodes unless they've been preempted for some reason, and then on Friday's we do 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

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