December 18 2022, 00:28

I’m currently reading a book by N. Kukushkin about the origin of life, which presents an interesting example. Scientists investigated samples from a geothermal source called “Loki’s Castle” in the North Atlantic and discovered in the found archaea genes transitional to eukaryotes (organisms made of cells containing a nucleus — like us, for example). Loki is the god of trickery, deception, and cunning, among other traits in Germanic-Scandinavian mythology. The archaeon was named Lokiarchaeota. Later, scientists discovered another similar group and humorously named it “Thorarchaeota” in honor of another Scandinavian god, Thor. “There was no turning back.” Since then, other types such as Odinarchaeota and Heimdallarchaeota have been found, and as you’ve guessed, no one intends to stop this party. All this kingdom is now officially called Asgard — after the mythical world where all these gods mingled. It includes all eukaryotes, so we too can consider ourselves residents of Asgard.

This reminded me of a similar thing in space, described in the book by Alexey Semikhatov, “Everything in Motion,” which I read a little earlier. There is a group of asteroids with a stable gravitational equilibrium relative to the large Jupiter-Sun system. That is, they hardly move relative to the Sun and Jupiter because their gravity “balances” them. It all started when the German astronomer Max Wolf in 1906 named the first discovered object after Achilles, one of the leaders of the Achaeans, who besieged Troy in Homer’s “Iliad.” Then, new objects began to be discovered at the Lagrange points (L4 and L5). Soon the list of ships from the second song of the “Iliad” became popular text in astronomical circles: L4 became “camp of the Greeks,” and L5 — “Troy,” and the objects therein were named after the heroes who besieged or defended Troy. Here, however, there are a couple of exceptions — (617) Patroclus and (624) Hector are in the “camps” not originally theirs, simply because they were discovered before the idea to name such asteroids according to Homer’s epic came to astronomers. Such are these “spies.” Interestingly, Hector and Patroclus being in “foreign” camps is paradoxically logical: Hector killed Patroclus, and only for this reason did Achilles return to the battlefield, where he then defeated Hector.