Mythologies of the Solar System: Part One

The names of the moons, planets and of course the Sun itself are not just household names unassociated 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.

Now you need to understand that at the time of the ancient Roman or Greek pantheon, only eight of the solar system’s celestial bodies were known. There were the three major bodies, the Sun, Moon, and Planet Earth itself of course (thus, way back then, you’d expect a mythological relationship between these three bodies), and the minor five visible planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn which were just points of light to the ancients, though it’s not surprising the ancients matched celestial physics with the personalities of their gods and named them accordingly. Apart from our satellite, the Moon, no other moons were known to the ancients.

MYTHOLOGY AND THE INNER SOLAR SYSTEM

SOL (Helios) is obviously the god of the Sun. It surprises me that given the prominence and importance of this celestial object, our Sun, that the god of the Sun didn’t take pride of place as head of the gods. Be that as it may, Sol, a first generation Titan, was born of the god Hyperion and the goddess Theia, brother to Luna (Selene) and Aurora or Dawn (Eos). His job is to bring light to men and gods alike. He rides in the sky in a fiery chariot pulled by his team of fast horses. Sol, from his vantage point, sees and hears everything (which proved to be the undoing of an illicit relationship between Mars (Ares) and Venus (Aphrodite). The god Apollo later fused as one with Sol’s image though once they were two different deities. Sol’s son, Phaethon, by the ocean nymph Clymene, once tried to ride his father’s horse-drawn chariot, but lost control and had to be killed by Jupiter (Zeus) before the runaway Sun destroyed everything. 

VULCAN (Hephaestus) was once upon a time actually sighted by astronomers and as the closest planet to the Sun, it would of course be HOT, and thusly was named after the deity of fire and blacksmithing. Alas, Vulcan turned out to be as mythical as the deity it was named after.

MERCURY (Hermes) when observed from Earth goes around the Sun quick-smart. So, it was natural to name that body after the fleetest of the gods, the messenger god who flies through the skies on a winged helmet and winged sandals, Mercury. No great mystery there.

VENUS (Aphrodite) was, because of its celestial purity of face and brightness, a female goddess, and of course THE female goddess was the goddess of love. Alas, Venus the planet turned out to be more appropriate for the Christian ruler of the underworld than the goddess of romance. Venus is Hell personified and thus the reality turned out to be vastly different than the expectation, but the ancients couldn’t have known that back then. Venus (or Aphrodite) had an unusual birth, the offspring of Gaia, but fertilized by the blood/semen of Gaia’s son and lover, Uranus, when Uranus was castrated by Saturn (Cronus).

*Neith was the name given to the lone phantom satellite of Venus. I say phantom because, like Vulcan, it was a case of ‘now you see it, now you don’t’. It vanished from the sight of astronomers across the world, but prior to that some saw something. That’s water under the bridge now. The naming of the satellite Neith broke from tradition for Neith was the mysterious early Egyptian goddess of Sais. She was identified with war and hunting and the personification of the primordial waters of creation, though later on down the track she was associated with weaving, which is what Neith means. Wisdom was one of her strong points. She had no known male companion, so was known as a ‘Virgin Mother Goddess’.

GAEA (Gaia) otherwise known as Terra or Earth was one of the original deities ‘born’ out of the original state of the universe – Chaos. Given the relative lack of bed partners around then, she mated with any and all available males, including her asexually created children, like Uranus.

*Luna (Selene) was born of the god Hyperion and the goddess Theia, sister to Sol (Helios) and Aurora or Dawn (Eos). Luna crosses the night sky on a chariot pulled by two white horses. As with Sol and Apollo, the Roman goddess Diana (Artemis) is often associated with, and has melded with Luna (as the crescent-shaped Moon) as has the goddess of the underworld, Hecate (as the New Moon). Luna remains as the Full Moon in the night sky.

MARS (Ares) son of Jupiter (Zeus) and Juno (Hera or Mrs. Zeus) was the god of war, though if mythology be believed, he was rather a wimp of a god, got his butt kicked on several occasions and was rather disliked up on Olympus.

*Deimos: Ares (the god of war) had an extramarital fling with the goddess of love, Aphrodite (who was married to the god of fire, Hephaestus) and from this union produced two sons, one being Deimos, meaning ‘fear’.

*Phobos: That Ares and Aphrodite pairing also produced another son, Phobos, meaning ‘terror’. Both Deimos and Phobos often joined daddy on the battlefield. However, apart from that, they play no significant role in mythology.

ASTEROIDS: There are only four really main or large asteroids among the tens of thousands that exist, Ceres, Pallas, Vesta and Juno.

*Ceres (Demeter) was the goddess of agriculture, the harvest, and the one who controlled the seasons. Zeus had a bedroom fling with her that resulted in Persephone, who Zeus then promised to his brother Hades as his wife. Alas, Zeus didn’t inform either Persephone or Demeter about that decision, which had major repercussions down the track.

*Juno is Mrs. Jupiter, or in the Greek, the equivalent of Hera (Mrs. Zeus). In either case, Juno/Hera is the queen of all the gods and goddesses. She is perhaps noted most of all for her vindictiveness against some of the offspring produced by her husband’s extramarital relationships, most notably, Hercules.

*Pallas is named after Pallas Athena, an alternative name for the Greek goddess Athena. In another version Pallas was the daughter of Triton, who acted as foster parent to Athena. A friendly fight between the two goddesses went sour and Pallas was killed.  

*Vesta (Hestia) was the virgin goddess of the hearth and home or home fire, a real stay-at-home sort of deity and thus doesn’t feature much in mythological adventures and doings. In the Roman version Vesta was represented by a shrine with an eternal flame guarded by the Vestal Virgins who, as a condition of their employment and of remaining alive, had better remain pure, or else. The god of war, Mars, raped one, and from that involuntary union, sprang the twins Remus and Romulus, the latter the founder of Rome. 

To be continued…

Exobiology: Life In The Inner Solar System

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 our own inner solar system – Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon and Mars. 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. 

Humans and our associated kin on the third rock out from the Sun are lords of life forms in the solar system. But, we’re not unique lords, just lords. Other abodes in the inner solar system, most probably Mars, are possible even probable habitable abodes to simple microbial life forms; perhaps something slightly above and beyond that.

But first a pat on the back for those terrestrial microbes; all those germs, bacteria, unicellular critters and even viruses (though viruses, depending on your perception of their actually being alive as we normally define ‘alive’ might exclude them from this discussion). They are tough, I mean they boldly go, survive, and even thrive where even angels fear to tread, far less humans.

On Earth, microbes rule, OK? The biomass of all those bacteria, etc. put together easily equals the biomass of every other multicellular plant and animal added together. One could easily argue that microbes, not humans, are the jewels in God’s crown – He made so many of them, and talk about being fruitful and multiplying. The number and mass of micro-organisms are many orders of magnitude greater than the numbers and collective mass of humanity. If fact, there are millions of microbes living inside you – most beneficial. In fact, it could also be argued that you are nothing more than an elaborate colony of billions of unicellular organisms – your individual cells that make you, you..

Microbes have another decided advantage over more complex life forms, like plants. Solar energy (photosynthesis) isn’t the only kind of energy available to organisms. Even on Earth there are lots of organisms, mainly unicellular ones, that use chemosynthesis as the means by which they directly derive their energy needs, directly as in from the chemicals in their environment. Today we know a great deal about chemosynthesis and the organisms that can produce organics from inorganic substances and derive energy from the process.

When I was a high school biology student (1962-63), it was absolutely gospel (and no correspondence would be entered into contrary) that our Sun was the be all and end all of the existence of terrestrial life. No sun; no life. All life ultimately depended on photosynthetic plants which in turn couldn’t exist without sunlight. And while we don’t get our energy directly via photosynthesis, we’re still dependent on solar energy since we eat the plants or the animals that eat the plants.

A well known, if little understood example of chemosynthesis are the colonies of microbes (dubbed ‘rusticles’) that are eating the iron structure of the RMS Titanic, resting some four kilometres below the surface of the North Atlantic. Within another generation or two, the famous shipwreck will have been basically consumed by microbes, without any benefit bestowed by our sun. Also from the marine environment, the entire ecological communities’ part and parcel of hydrothermal vent systems is ultimately based on chemosynthesis.

From terrestrial environments to those of outer space and our solar system is but perhaps a small step for microbes. Even back in those high school days however I seem to recall speculation by no less a scientist than the late Carl Sagan about the possibility of a non-photosynthetic based ecology in the atmosphere of Jupiter which gladdened my heart no end - however, it wasn‘t Jupiter that broke the photosynthetic mould, but good old Mother Earth herself as it hydrothermal vent ecosystems among many others now known. So gospel ain’t gospel any longer!

Now taking each abode in turn…

Mercury: The planet Mercury, closest planet to our Sun, unfortunately lacks any atmosphere to speak of, and broils on the side facing the Sun and freezes on the side facing away – much like our Moon, and is in fact is similarly heavily cratered. There’s no liquid water on the surface, and overall, like our Moon, seems totally inhospitable. Bacteria might be able to exist in a dormant sort of way in 100% sheltered niches, but actively survive and thrive they do not.

Venus: The planet Venus had long been thought of as Earth’s twin sister. It’s the second planet out from the Sun, and has a size and density very close to terrestrial values. It also has an atmosphere. Being closer to the Sun than Earth, Venus was, pre-space age, thought to be warm and moist, a totally tropical environment of lush vegetation where maybe dinosaur-like creatures or dragons roamed and chased scantly clad maidens! Alas, once space probes crossed paths with, and landed on, Venus, such dreams of a tropical paradise was dashed. Well its tropical alright, if ‘tropical’ means a surface temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit.  But the atmosphere, mainly carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas - is so thick and dense that the atmospheric pressure is way massive relative to Earth’s. So, Venus turned out to be more akin to Hell than a tropical Heaven. No life here!

But wait, perhaps such a judgment is premature. What happens here on Earth as you climb up a high mountain? Well, the temperature drops and the air gets more rarefied - and so too on Venus. In the upper atmosphere, the temperature and pressure of Venus drops to more terrestrial surface conditions. There can’t be surface life-as-we-know-it on that planet, but what about simple, say microbial life existing in the upper atmosphere?

The question therefore is, if life couldn’t have arose on the surface of Venus because it is just too damn hot (and no water), where hence did the atmospheric life (microbial most likely) come from? Well, the surface of Venus, way back when, may have been far more hospitable than it is now. However, there’s also Panspermia – life forms adrift in space that eventually impact other worlds. The upper atmosphere of Venus may have been seeded with microbial life forms at some time in the past via such a mechanism, the same mechanism that may have kick-started life on the early Earth, and perhaps seeded other planetary abodes in our solar system. 

Earth (Terra): Home! Nothing further need be said.

The Moon (Luna): Like Mercury, our Moon is airless and subject to extremes in temperature depending on whether the Moon is facing towards or away from the Sun. While the first couple of crews of Apollo Moon landing astronauts were quarantined after their missions, just in case, no extraterrestrial life forms of any kind were ever discovered. But that’s not quite the end of the story. The Apollo 12 astronauts brought back with them a few bits and pieces of the unmanned Lunar Surveyor that had landed about three years previously. Terrestrial bacteria within those bits and pieces were found to still be viable after exposure to the lunar vacuum, intense radiation exposure and temperature extremes. While hardly indigenous Lunar life forms, they give credibility (as if any were needed) that microbes are composed of the right stuff to survive the rigours of outer space.