Mythologies of the Solar System: Part Three

The names of the moons, planets and of course the Sun itself are not just household names un-associated with anything but these celestial bodies, but bodies usually named after selected characters from ancient Greek and Roman mythology. There are tales to be told about them; some fleshing out to do. These are just a few of the highlights.

The planets of the solar system are named after gods and goddesses and are known by their Roman, not Greek names. Here I’ll put the Greek equivalents in brackets afterwards. The satellites of these planets for the most part tend to be the Greek names associated in one form or another with the parent body or the god/goddess in question. Moons (and major asteroids) are identified with an asterisk.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

MYTHOLOGY AND THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM

SATURN (Cronus) was one of those first generation Titans, offspring of Gaia and her son Uranus. He mated with Rhea, and produced from that union the original half-dozen gods and goddesses that would eventually become the Olympians. But the transition from Saturn’s offspring to become the rulers of Mount Olympus was an epic that could just about out-epic anything Hollywood has ever done. Saturn is known for two things in particular – castrating his daddy and snacking on his kids - Yum, yum. 

*Dione is a very obscure goddess who may have been a Titan or a Nereid or an Oceanid. Her name seems to be a feminine form of Zeus, and that brings in the alternative version of the origin of Aphrodite – a traditional birth via the union of randy Zeus and Dione (whoever she was). At least she’s now immortalized as a satellite of Saturn.

*Enceladus was one of the Gigantes. The Gigantes were offspring of Gaia, fertilized by the blood/semen of her son and lover Uranus who was ultimately castrated by Cronus (a son of Gaia and Uranus back when he had his private parts intact). In the Gigantomachia (the battle between the Olympian gods and the giants), Athena deposited Enceladus under Mount Etna and the fire and brimstone breath of Enceladus accounts for that volcano’s well, fire and brimstone. This is another abode thought as a possible site where alien life forms might one day be discovered.

*Hyperion was a Titan god, born of Gaia (Gaea) and her son, Uranus. He would become an early god of the Sun.

*Iapetus was another Titan god, born of Gaia (Gaea) and her son, Uranus. He would become the father of Prometheus, who ultimately is remembered for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to mankind.

*Janus was the Roman god of beginnings, doorways, entrances, gateways, etc. and is depicted with two faces, one each facing forward (to the future) and the other backward (to the past). January, the beginning, is named after him.

*Mimas, like Enceladus, was one of the Gigantes of Greek mythologies. Like the other giant sons of Gaia and Uranus, Mimas had serpents for legs and was born fully armored. Mimas was slain by Hephaestus during the war against the Olympians by a volley of molten iron.

*Phoebe was a Titan goddess, born of Gaia (Gaea) and her son, Uranus. Phoebe is identified as an early moon goddess. In another context, the goddess Artemis sometimes was associated with an alias of Phoebe. Finally, Helen of Troy had a half-sister Phoebe.

*Rhea was another Titan goddess, born of Gaia (Gaea) and her son, Uranus. She married Cronus (Saturn) and from that union was born what ultimately became the original half-dozen Olympian gods and goddesses. Cronus, out to eliminate potential future rivals, swallowed the first five of these kids, but Rhea tricked him when it came to the sixth and last, Zeus. She spirited Zeus away to Crete to be raised, and tricked Cronus into swallowing a stone disguised as the baby Zeus.

*Tethys was yet another Titan goddess, born of Gaia (Gaea) and her son, Uranus who would become the most ancient goddess of the sea.

*Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, a moon of interest to astrobiologists, and the only natural satellite to have an extensive atmosphere. In fact, Titan is larger than the planet Mercury and way lager than our own satellite, Luna. The mythology connection is that the original dozen Titans (some of which are named satellites of Saturn) were one of a set of offspring between Gaia and Uranus. Among the second generation of Titans are several household names like Atlas and Prometheus. They were overthrown in the Titanomachy (The War of the Titans) by Zeus and his fellow Olympians. 

URANUS (alternative spelling Ouranos) was the original sky god, the son, via parthenogenesis, of Gaea (Gaia) who shacked up with mum to produce all manner of deities, including monstrous ones. He’s known for having his privates sliced off by one of their Titan offspring, Saturn (Cronus). Saturn in turn got done like a dinner by one of his offspring, Jupiter (Zeus) but that’s another story.

*Ariel, Miranda, Oberon, Titania and Umbriel, the five major moons of Uranus, were named or chosen from the names of characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope and thus, unfortunately, have near bugger-all to do with traditional Greek and Roman mythology. Bummer, as that spoils some potentially good stories relating back to and involving the parent god, Uranus.  

NEPTUNE (Poseidon) was the god of the sea, one of the original half-dozen Olympian gods and goddesses, brother to Zeus, Hades, Hera, Hestia and Demeter. All of Neptune’s known 13 satellites are named for Green and Roman water deities or groups of minor water gods. The major two are Nereid and Triton.

*Nereid – the Nereids (plural) were nymphs of the sea, the 50 daughters of the Mediterranean Sea god Nereus. Among the famous of the Nereids – goddess all – were Thetis (mother of Achilles), Galatea and Amphitrite (who married Poseidon). 

*Triton was another sea god, a son of Poseidon and the Nereid goddess Amphitrite, a nymph of the sea who became Queen of the Sea when she wed Poseidon. The typical depiction of Triton is that of a merman – human head and torso; one or two fishy (or maybe dolphin) tails. He too has a trident and a conch shell which when blown can calm the stormy waves. Like father, like son, Triton also had a bit of an eye for the ladies, especially beach-babes. Triton favors in a positive light for assisting Jason and the Argonauts in their saga. 

PLUTO (Hades) was god of the underworld. In the Greek version, Hades (the god) administered Hades (the underworld), so the name of the ruler and the place ruled were one and the same. Within recent times, Pluto was officially downgraded from planet to dwarf planet status, which made a lot of traditionalists very unhappy.

*Charon was the son of Erebus (the god of underground darkness) and Nyx (goddess of night), who played the role of the ferryman who rowed the newly deceased across the River Styx to Hades, the underworld. As a reward, or a fare, he got a coin in payment – no coin, no crossing. The parentage and place of employment are ideal for a satellite so far out from the Sun.

*Hydra (discovered in 2005) was named after that famed beastie slain by Hercules as one of his dozen labors in Greco-Roman mythology. Hydra was one of numerous monstrous offspring from Typhon and Echidna, themselves monsters. 

*Nix (a deliberate alternative spelling of Nyx) was a Greek goddess of night, one of the original deities conceived from the original state of the universe, Chaos. Nyx was the mother of Charon. Like Hydra, Nix the satellite was discovered in 2005.

ERIS is another dwarf planet, a trans-Neptunian object even larger that Pluto discovered in 2005. In fact it’s the most massive of all dwarf ‘planets’ in our solar system, even though it’s three times farther removed from the Sun than Pluto. Eris is a Greek goddess, the personification of strife and discord.

*Dysnomia in mythology is the daughter of the goddess Eris.   

NEMESIS (Fortuna was the Roman counterpart) was the asexual product of the goddess Nyx (night) and she was the goddess of retribution and agent of vengeance. Originally she was just one who dispensed fortune or luck without predetermined rewards or punishments, but morphed into a goddess of justice. The ‘Wheel of Fortune’ is thus associated with her. The celestial Nemesis is a hypothetical dwarf star binary companion to our Sun, a faint stellar object that has an extreme elliptical orbit that beings it close to the solar system once every 26 million years, which when extrapolated backwards, was useful in explaining periodic mass extinctions on Earth. Alas, all searches for this dwarf companion star have turned up negative, and the hypothesis is pretty much in scientific limbo today. 

Exobiology: Life in the Outer Solar System: The Gas Giants and Pluto

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. To investigate life-in-the-Universe perhaps we should start a bit closer to home and look to our own outer solar system, starting with the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) and Pluto. Apart from Planet Earth, we have no absolute proof positive to date that any other life, albeit relatively simple forms compared to terrestrial life forms such as ourselves and associated companion animals and plants, exists within the confines of our solar system. However, the odds are fairly high, almost certain in fact; those other, extraterrestrial life forms do exist in our immediate cosmic neighbourhood. 

Taking each of the four gas giant abodes (the Jovian planets) in the outer solar system followed by Pluto in turn…

Jupiter (The Giant Planet): Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, but composed mainly of gas. In fact, Jupiter has been insulted by being compared to our Sun, but a failed Sun. If Jupiter had been a fair few masses larger, it would have ignited in a ball of thermonuclear fusion and become a second stellar object in our solar system, turning it into a binary star system. Jupiter however is still solar enough such that it emits more energy than it receives from the Sun. Jupiter, because of the intense gravity, compresses its own stuff, and compression produces heat. Important point number one: Jupiter has its own internal energy source.

Important points two, three and four: Secondly, Jupiter’s atmosphere is composed of the right sorts of chemicals that one identifies with origin of life events – hydrogen, methane, ammonia, water vapour, etc. Thirdly, Jupiter’s atmosphere is turbulent such that there is a lot of mixing of those elements and compounds. Fourthly, the atmospheric bands of Jupiter are highly coloured, an indication that there’s lots of complex chemistry including organic chemistry going on within.   

The upshot of all of this is that it is not implausible that within the upper reaches of Jupiter’s atmosphere, as per the case of Venus, simple life forms couldn’t exist, survive and thrive. You have the chemistry – you have the energy. And maybe Carl Sagan was right and that something more complex than just a unicellular ecosystem could exist in Jupiter’s atmosphere. But it would have to be an atmospheric ecology.

Saturn (The Ringed Planet): Saturn is a quasi twin of Jupiter. Although slightly smaller and farther away from the Sun than Jupiter, the same general arguments that apply to Jupiter apply to Saturn. That is to say, Saturn has the right sorts of chemistry – and an internal energy supply. It’s however slightly less dense than the other gas giants, such that if you could find an ocean big enough, Saturn would float! That however has no bearing on the issue of finding an atmosphere-based ecosystem there.

Uranus: Uranus is a poor cousin compared to the likes of Jupiter and Saturn. It’s mainly a gas planet, albeit way smaller, but so far out from where it’s all happening that it isn’t too likely that even simple life could flourish in the atmospheric depths, although the chemistry isn’t dissimilar to that of the closer-in Jovian planets of Jupiter and Saturn.

Neptune: The same sorts of arguments apply in general to Neptune as to Uranus, with one slight exception. Although farther out, Neptune, like Jupiter and Saturn, radiates out excess energy. It’s solar independent, at least as far as any life forms might describe their environment and energy supply.

Pluto: The planetoid Pluto was recently officially demoted from strict planetary status, and is no longer acceptable to refer to it as the ninth planet. However, when I was growing up, it was the ninth planet, and so I say buggers to astronomical officialdom. That rant aside, Pluto is hardly top rock for vacation seekers. It’s cold. I mean it’s really cold. It makes Antarctica seem absolutely tropical in comparison. I mean polar bears would freeze to death on Pluto, not that there’s anything reasonably resembling an atmosphere as we know it for them to breathe. Again, Pluto is too cold to allow for the high temperature chemistry we associate with life-as-we-know-it. If you’re looking for life in our solar system, Pluto wouldn’t be your first port of call.