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…

Parallels Between Terrestrial Intelligence and Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Part One

The existence, behaviour, motives, abilities of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), given ETI is behind the UFO and ancient astronaut phenomena, is way more convincing if there are parallels with our own (TI) existence, behaviour, motives and abilities.

Humans (and other higher animals) love to explore – what’s over the next hill? Food or sex or enemies or greener grass or gold or buried treasure – we’ve got to know. It’s in our very nature; our genes and probably a trait vital for survival. I strongly suspect the same will be true for any extraterrestrial (ETI).

Part of that survival is knowing about your neighbours (friend or foe) so we seek out new life forms and new civilizations, be they across the valley, across the pond, or across the gulf of space. That should also apply to ETI.

Traditional SETI (the Search for ETI) is handicapped in that it can only detect a small subset of new extraterrestrial life forms and new civilizations. SETI can’t detect non-intelligent life or intelligences that don’t have a high enough or suitable technology. That would also apply to ETI. Their SETI program wouldn’t have detected human civilization even as recently as say 200 years ago.

To find the rest, that is most life throughout the cosmos, we need to Boldly Go and travel to the stars. Ditto ETI.

There are no natural physical laws, relationships or principles that would prevent this, and that applies to ETI as well.

We’ve only just begun to Boldly Go, taking our first few baby steps into our own shallow waters that ultimately lead to the great depths of the cosmic ocean. ETI (in general) has had potentially vastly more time in which to sail the cosmic ocean and way more time to become more advanced technologically – as in interstellar spaceflight capability. We’ve only had roughly 4.5 billion years to get to where we are today; our cosmic (Milky Way Galaxy) neighbours have had potentially an additional 5.5 billion years on top of that since our galaxy is roughly ten billion years old.

More technologically advanced Europeans discovered Australia, Japan, the Americas, etc. not the other way around. By analogy, ETI will discover us before we discover them. In fact, translated, ETI has discovered us. We are the modern equivalents of the Aztecs, Maya, Incas, North American Indians, Australian Aborigines, the Japanese. But that’s getting slightly ahead of the game. In actual fact, ETI discovered Planet Earth probably way before humans were thought of in anyone’s philosophy – especially theirs (but that’s getting ahead of the game again).

We’d be excited to discover the biosphere of another planet – microbes on Mars would be exciting to astrobiologists. Biospheres are relatively rare in the cosmos compared to other real estate abodes. The Moon is cosmic real estate, but it’s not very exciting real estate. ETI would presumably be more interested in real estate with a biosphere – like our biosphere – because again biospheres are rare real estate.

Of course ET may not have actually discovered Earth and Earth’s biosphere by actually exploring our inner solar system. ET could have detected spectroscopically our biosphere remotely, at a vast distance, by finding biomarkers that’s unique to life like chlorophyll or oxygen, or otherwise suggestive of an environment that’s bio-friendly, like water vapour or methane. The parallel there is that we human’s are detecting via remote sensing, extra-solar planets at a rapid rate of knots. Determining the general chemical makeup of such bodies is plausible, and in fact has been accomplished for several extra-solar planets already. It probably won’t be too much longer before we detect an alien biosphere, or at least a potential one.

If humans discover something new and important, and assuming it doesn’t have sensitive military or diplomatic connotations, that information tends to get disseminated as quickly as the technology of the times allows for. In like fashion the first discovery of our biosphere could be common knowledge throughout all of our galaxy’s ETI civilizations within a maximum of 100,000 years at light speed (or less) since the diameter of our galaxy is only 100,000 light years.  Probably every space faring ET would want to come and have a look. The terrestrial parallels are obvious. Once we discovered Antarctica it quickly became common knowledge. We (collectively) went back, again, and again and again, finally setting up near permanent quarters despite the obvious costs and hardships, all in the name of science. We’ll go back to the Moon too one day – maybe not anytime real soon, but eventually. Your great grandkids will see lunar settlements or outposts like we today see in Antarctica.

Of course it would prove to be an extraordinary stroke of luck if, after 4.5 billion years of Planet Earth’s existence, that an ETI just happened to stumble across our humble abode at the very era in time that our generation (1947+) was in existence. Therefore, let’s postulate that ETI happened upon Planet Earth – oh, let’s bisect the timeline – say 2.25 billion years ago.

Like the Americas or Australia was to the Europeans – prime real estate, so too our Planet Earth was prime real estate to ET all those billions of years ago. That’s because even back then, Planet Earth had a biosphere, albeit one full of microbes – no humans, just lots of microbes. That’s okay since that still puts our home planet in the higher echelons of valuable and prime real estate.

Fast forward several billion years to just before the dawn of the human. As far as intelligence goes just before the dawn, dolphins and kin, and primates rule the IQ roost – along with the crows and their kin (like magpies).

As noted, way back then, ET couldn’t interact with humans – we hadn’t yet evolved from the primordial scum - yet – but that was to change. If a superior nation happens upon an inferior nation (superior and inferior referring mainly to technology), the usual outcome is, based on our terrestrial history, fairly obvious. So, ETI couldn’t do much with microbes, but they could bide their time until something more suitable and promising came along – the primates.

Enter the realm of mythology, a subject I take as factual until proven otherwise, especially when it comes to universals shared between all races, cultures, and geographical regions. So hence forth the mythological gods are actually an ETI that’s come to pay their respects to and investigate our biosphere. 

Universal Mythology Number One:  The ET ‘gods’ created humans. Why humans should have imagined they had ever been created in the first place is a total mystery unless someone (the ‘gods’) told them that was the case. Now unless the ‘gods’ are super-duper organic and biochemists, I’m sure they didn’t literally create humans out of mud and dust and all manner of other stuff. Rather humans were ‘created’ as a product of artificial selection and genetic (or bio) engineering from primate stock (as dolphins and crows weren’t quite as suitable as experimental subjects). 

Okay, haven’t humans ‘created’ all manner of breeds of organisms (cats, dogs, horses, cattle, roses, wheat, rice, etc.) via just such genetic (and bio) engineering and artificial selection? Genetically modified organisms are a big biotech industry. And isn’t such artificial breeding and genetic manipulation all done with ultimately us in mind, either for practical or cosmetic reasons?

Fast forward to the dawn of human civilization, that transition from hunter-gather to settlements and domestic bliss.

To be continued...

Mythology: Godly Attributes: Those Extraterrestrial Gods Behaving Badly

Godly Attributes:

*The ‘gods’, including ‘God’, do not serve as good role models. They tend to be rather hyper-emotional.  The ‘gods’ were a rather - well actually extreme - dysfunctional bunch, spending a lot of time fighting for power and dominance and in general just endlessly feuding among themselves. There have been several, even numerous ‘wars in heaven’ between the ‘gods’. These warring factions fight for supreme dominance over Earth and humanity.

*The ‘gods’ also spent a lot of time screwing each other and us humans. The sexual exploits of the ‘gods’ (especially the Greek ‘gods’) would put modern swinging and swingers to shame. The ‘gods’ were really quite a randy lot and not just the male ‘gods’ but a fair few of the fairer sex ‘goddesses’ as well. We’re well acquainted with Eros (Cupid) and Aphrodite (Venus) as to their job descriptions. The Biblical ‘sons of God’ were just as randy. Speaking of God…

The Monotheistic ‘God’ and His Place in the Cosmic Scheme of Things:

*The monotheistic ‘God’ is just one of the polytheistic ‘gods’. ‘God’ is but one of thousands of ‘gods’, albeit one of the higher ranking ones who in fact may have ultimately achieved Top Dog status. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was also one of the many ‘gods’ humanity has recorded in various historical texts.

*For a brief time ‘God’ became supreme ruler, but either abdicated because He was fed up trying to govern the rest of the motley collection of ‘gods’ as well as a rebellious humanity; or ‘God’ was recalled back to home base and stripped on His command for committing Old Testament atrocities on Earth and to earthlings; or was ganged up on by the other ‘gods’ and given His marching orders. Regardless, ‘God’ has left the building.

*Regarding those Old Testament atrocities, should God be tried in absentia for those Biblical crimes and atrocities committed against humanity in say the International Court of Justice or more likely as not the International Criminal Court? It would be no less than He deserves given a track record that puts many of our historical despots to shame. Hitler (as an example) had no monopoly on genocide.

*Now, if God were really not God, but ‘God’, an extraterrestrial, well Starship Heaven and crew might have left the building (Planet Earth) eons ago and sought greener pastures. I mean his Old Testament temper tantrums got him nowhere; we still take his name in vain and curse him “God damn it”; his Ten Commandments are often ignored by the great unwashed; God has lots of competition from other deities, as well as other goods and services that rival his. I mean God can no more compete with prime time reality television and rap music and cell phones and iPods and the Internet’s MySpace and Facebook, than Jesus Christ can compete with consumerism and commercialism on the 25^th of December. No, I think ‘God’ (the extraterrestrial since I don’t believe the supernatural God exists) has voluntarily give humanity the ‘big finger’ and taken his bat and ball and gone home to sulk. Or perhaps ‘God’ has been involuntarily exiled.

*’Captain God’, of the Starship Heaven, was a real Captain Bligh character. ‘God’ suffered His own mutiny, but unlike Bligh, prevailed, casting several officers (i.e. – Satan) and crew out on their ear, perhaps exiled back to their home world. However, as Yogi Berra is fond of saying, ‘it ain’t over till it’s over’ and so Round Two (probably the postulated Armageddon or apocalypse of ‘Revelation’) is or was apparently on the cards. However, that should have already happened (a real life ‘Star Wars’) and the net result was that perhaps the rest of the gods banished this entire lot of troublemakers back to where they came from. Again, regardless, ‘God’ has left the building. Unfortunately, no one bothered to inform the natives.

*One ‘god’, Jesus Christ, Son of God, was ultimately executed by humans. You’d think God, if all powerful, and was so willing, would have intervened and saved His offspring that awful punishment. But then in mythology, the relationships between father and son are often strained. Perhaps the father was a bit uncomfortable with His son who seemed to get more press coverage and overall public relations.

*Well after all God is indeed a jealous God by His own admission via the Ten Commandments so it stands to reason that He’d be miffed that His son has stolen His limelight. However, God laughs last and best because obviously Jesus didn’t get to follow Dad home since he of course met his waterloo nearly 20 centuries ago. Actually our extraterrestrial God wasn’t totally without compassion for His executed son (the straw that broke the camel’s back?), so before departing He no doubt ‘beamed’ His son’s crucified  body aboard His Starship Heaven, and in so doing explain the resurrection and the empty tomb!

*Jesus Christ might have been a representative of a minority of the extraterrestrials, yet a representation that might have resurfaced as those presenting themselves to the 1950’s ‘flying saucer’ contactees. The contactees might have in turn help spawn the 1960’s Hippy or New Age movement.

*Aspects of the polytheistic ‘gods’ do appear in the monotheistic Bible (i.e. Tartarus – part of the Greek polytheistic underworld). In fact there are many references to the 'other gods', 'their gods' and 'the gods' in the Bible, thus confirming their reality. If you believe in the Bible, you've got to acknowledge the existence of the polytheistic 'gods' as well.

Mythology: The Arrival of the Extraterrestrial 'Gods'

When I left off last time, E.T. was boldly going, exploring and colonizing the galaxy.

*The time it would take for E.T. to explore all the galaxy’s nooks-and-crannies would be a tiny fraction of the age of the galaxy. Translated, Planet Earth would have been noted and logged probably billions of years ago.

*That being the case, it’s logical to assume that there is at least one advanced boldly going extraterrestrial civilization currently in our here and now; probably one or more from our historical past and probably hundreds extending throughout our prehistory; even more in our geological history of 4.5 billion years - translated, no matter how you slice and dice it, we (i.e. – Planet Earth) have received multi-thousands of visitations over our 4.5 billion years of existence.

*Based on calculations by scientists interested in extraterrestrial life, ballpark figures suggest that Sol, our solar system and Planet Earth should have received or expected, on average, a random visitation by advanced extraterrestrials every 100,000 years (astronomer Carl Sagan) to an even greater once in every 10,000 years (physicist Edward Condon).

*Even varying the random frequency visitations downwards by even one or two orders of magnitude still translates into a lot of visits over our 4.5 billion years. This not only satisfies the Fermi Paradox (“where is everybody?”),  but all those critics that point out that our first ever alien visitation was unlikely in the extreme to be in 1947, the start of the modern UFO era.

*Thus, we note that random visitations have absolutely nothing to do with the existence of humans and human technology, like our radio and radar and TV signals that are expanding throughout (to date very nearby) interstellar space that could be in theory detected by aliens at home. E.T. is not responding to human technology; E.T. came here long before human’s walked the Earth.

*These boldly going aliens (one or many) might have been actual flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials, and/or augmented bioengineered half-biological; half-machine hybrids, and/or artificial intelligent Bracewell or Von Neumann probes, an initial space probe that can ‘boldly go’ but ‘reproduce’ themselves at various suitable pit-stops along the way like cancer cells and continue on, ever expanding throughout the galaxy, exploring and recording; exploring and recording.

*If the extraterrestrial ‘gods’ discovered Planet Earth say some four billion years ago, then they many have been responsible for seeding life on Earth in the first place via a process known as Directed Panspermia. E.T. might have been a sort of cosmic Johnny Appleseed. We may be originally not only of the stars (since all of the matter that make up you and I and our entire solar system originally originated from the death of previous generation stars – supernovae) but from the stars.

*It is possible that one or more of these boldly going alien races might have had the inkling of seeding suitable planetary abodes with simple life forms (unicellular microbes, etc.) – spreading their genetic material as it were throughout the galaxy, a sort of quasi-reproduction on their part. Such seeding might help explain the very sudden origin-of-life-event on our very young planet against all expectations given how complex an origin-of-life-event appears to be; and thus provides a possible genetic kinship to E.T.

*Okay, once Planet Earth, our solar system and Sol have been noted and logged by an initial random visit to our neck of the stellar woods; random visits will evolve into routine and more frequent visits. Why? From the get-go, well close on 4.5 billion years ago, or at least shortly thereafter, any extraterrestrial survey will have noted something slightly out of the ordinary about that third rock out from Sol. Life – a biosphere. In terms of cosmic real estate, biosphere’s aren’t a dime a dozen, rather they’re probably as scarce as hen’s teeth. That Earth is a really ongoing interesting place will be true even if ET kick-started life here via Directed Panspermia.

*Once we’ve (as in Planet Earth) have been noted and logged, catalogued into an ET’s database as something biologically special, well then that information can be transmitted throughout the galaxy via the galaxy’s news services, cosmic Internet, whatever. It only takes 100,000 years at light speed for electromagnetic (i.e. radio) messages to get from one farthest corner to the opposite farthest corner of our galaxy. That’s a cosmic blink-of-the-eye in cosmic time. 

*It needs to be stated that not only can’t we hide from any physical onsite alien visitation or E.T. scan, there’s nothing any life form(s) on Planet Earth can do to prevent the dissemination of any information obtained via that visitation or scan.

*Visitations to Planet Earth whether they be 4.5 billion years ago; 450 million years ago, 45 million years ago, or 4.5 million years ago, probably were scientific expeditions – aliens exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life forms and new civilizations. So once they have explored our strange new world and our new (if still primitive) life forms, then what? Again, I suggest that initial random visits (as calculated by professional astronomers and physicists within the ballpark of one per 10,000 to 100,000 years) will translate into ongoing more frequent and routine exanimations. Perhaps science as an initial rational eventually translates into more commercial areas. Science finds the resources; business exploits them.

*Fast-forward to say a few millions of years ago. An extraterrestrial expedition (scientific or otherwise) set up shop here on Planet Earth as a quasi, if not permanent colony, base of operations, resort site for R&R, whatever. Enter the realm of mythology, for these extraterrestrial beings would become the universal, throughout all cultures, as the polytheistic ‘gods’.