Ra, Set, Russkiy!

  I don't have any profound spiritual commentary for the end of 2009, so in terms of another year around the Sun, this news seems appropriate. The Russians have devised a scheme to try alter the orbit of Apophis, the near-Earth asteroid which in 2004 was calculated to have a 1-in-37 chance of hitting the Earth (That figure was later revised to less panic-inducing odds). The timing of this announcement, just as NASA's shuttle program is expiring, appears to be a bid for the space portion of the news cycle, and fits well with Russia's "muscular patriotism". The plan does sound heavily inspired by movies, but then many space scientists have been inspired by science-fiction movies and stories, and quite a few science fiction authors have worked for NASA. On the positive side, Russia is the country over which the "path of risk" is imminent and the only country in which a large meteorite has exploded in recent times (I do not believe that the Tunguska Explosion was an exploding alien spacecraft). That experience does give it a little more authority than other nations in this matter, just as Japan has more authority than other nations when it comes to suffering nuclear attack.

Apophis appears to be an appropriately menacing name for the asteroid, but is less so if one has sufficient familiarity with Egyptian mythology. The namers of the asteroid seem to be bigger fans of Stargate than Sinuhe. Apophis is the Greek name for the Apep serpent, the cosmic embodiment of all that is evil, which threatens the sun god Ra as travels nightly through the Duat, but is always defeated by the god Sutekh/Set - despite his use as a Satan-equivalent in fiction, that is not his primary role in Egyptian cosmology-cosmography. Sometimes the struggles of Ra, Sutekh, and the Apep serpent resulted in earthquakes, storms, and eclipses when the Apep serpent got the upper hand, but Ra was ever victorious.Apophis, therefore, is a good name for an object in the darkness, be it Duat or Outer Space, which periodically threatens, but never prevails.