Third Pod from the Sun

Drilling engineer and ice core scientist Robert Mulvaney has driven thousands of kilometers over Antarctica in the past few years in a snow tractor, creeping slowly over one of the highest points of the ice sheet, near a location known as Dome C. He’s looking for the perfect place to drill one and a half million years into the past. Gas trapped in the ice as it formed holds clues to Earth’s past climate and, Mulvaney believes, the atmospheric conditions that influenced the onset and denouement of the major glaciations of our current ice age.

To drill that far into the past, Mulvaney, the science leader of the Ice Dynamics and Palaeoclimate team at the British Antarctic Survey, and his colleagues with the EU-funded Beyond EPICA—Oldest Ice Core project need to find the perfect ice patch that is both thick enough to span 1.5 million years, yet has not melted at the bottom into a lake under the ice. In this episode of Third Pod from the Sun, he talks about camping at the bottom of the world, the beauty of the ice and how Antarctica is still the continent of exploration.

This episode was produced by Liza Lester and mixed by Kayla Surrey.

Lori Glaze, Acting Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters, works with everything from understanding asteroid trajectories and material make up to the InSight mission which recently landed a rover on Mars. It’s no exaggeration to say Lori Glaze’s impact on our understanding of the relationships between Earth and our nearest neighbors is volcanic. In fact, eruptions fascinated her since she was a pre-teen learning about the destructive volcano which buried the Roman city of Pompeii or carefully scraping ash from the Mount St. Helens eruption off the hood of the family car in Seattle in 1980.

Glaze’s early research on volcanoes was largely based on using remote sensing techniques – a skill she later realized could apply just as well to studying past volcanic eruptions on Mars and Venus. Even if the degree of remoteness was a little more exaggerated for these cases, models and fantastic image data could help reveal what past eruption conditions must have been like on these planets. A major mystery she hopes to resolve is whether volcanoes are still active on Venus. “If it’s still active today, it means Venus and Earth are even more similar than we think,” she says.

This episode was produced and mixed by Shane M Hanlon. Special thanks to Jordana Schmierer for production assistance.

The Johnstown Flood occurred on May 31, 1889, after the failure of the South Fork Dam, which is located on the south fork of the Little Conemaugh River, 14 miles upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam, constructed to provide a recreational resource in part to support The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, broke after several days of extremely heavy rainfall that liquified the dam and blew out the earthen structure, resulting in a torrent of water that killed some 2,200 people.

In this episode of Third Pod from the Sun, Neil Coleman, a professional geologist who resides just outside of Johnstown and teaches geophysics part time at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, describes how a confluence of greed, poor engineering decisions, and hydrology led to one of the most catastrophic disasters in American history.

Coleman also delves into the formal investigation of the event by American Society of Civil Engineers that was subsequently buried, the cast of characters – including the leading steel and rail industrialists of the era – who were involved, the lack of accountability for the victims – save for a re-coop on the loss of a few barrels of whiskey, and the impact on the region that echoes to this day. He also provides insight into how the flood serves as a case study for current day hydrologists and engineers hoping to prevent, respond to, and investigate current and future flooding events.

What’s it like to be a seismologist who’s studied the Marcellus Shale and San Andreas Fault, worked around the world from Pennsylvania to Rome, and is now a professor at the University of Oklahoma? We found out at AAA’s annual meeting earlier this year when we talked to assistant professor Brett Carpenter. Just a sampling of what we talked about:

· Being gifted a piece of Indiana limestone from a random person on the side of the road while doing fieldwork in Oklahoma.

· Batting away anxious scientists while pulling up sediment cores.

· Nervously retreating from a landowner who fired warning shots telling him to get off his land.

(All of these are true.)

This episode was produced by Shane M Hanlon and mixed by Kayla Surrey.

Mineralogist Jeff Post has a one-of-a-kind job: he’s curator of the National Gem and Mineral Collection, a collection of over 375,000 rock and mineral specimens housed at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. In addition to spectacular specimens of rare minerals and crystals, the collection contains over 10,000 gemstones, including the infamous Hope Diamond, one of the most valuable objects on planet Earth.

In this episode, Jeff takes Third Pod producers on a tour of the vault, where the collection’s most valuable and rare specimens are kept. Jeff shows us a 266-carat diamond; 12 ounces of pure gold; a nugget of osmium, the densest known metal; and countless rare gemstones, including a smoky quartz the size of a newborn baby. Jeff also tells us about the largest diamond ever found and the story of a diamond necklace given by Napoleon to his wife, Empress Marie Louise, to celebrate the birth of their first son.

This is the second episode in a two-part series. Be sure to check out the previous episode to hear about the history of the Hope Diamond.

This episode was produced by Lauren Lipuma and mixed by Kayla Surrey.

Mineralogist Jeff Post has a one-of-a-kind job: he’s curator of the National Gem and Mineral Collection, a collection of over 375,000 rock and mineral specimens housed at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C. In addition to spectacular specimens of rare minerals and crystals, the collection contains over 10,000 gemstones, including the infamous Hope Diamond, one of the most valuable objects on planet Earth.

In this episode, Jeff describes his day-to-day work of maintaining and growing this invaluable collection, which includes being personally responsible for the Hope Diamond and countless other treasures. Listen to Jeff recount the history of the Hope Diamond and its legendary curse and hear how museum curators have made a hall of minerals into a world-class tourist destination.

This is the first episode in a two-part series. Be sure to check out the next episode after this to follow Jeff through the mineral and Gem vaults at NMNH.

This episode was produced by Lauren Lipuma and mixed by Kayla Surrey.

Mining is more than just harvesting natural resources – it’s about who owns those right and what the land that those mines are on mean to the people who live there.

Lydia Jennings of the Pascua Yaqui and Huichol Nations grew up seeing friends and family fighting to advocate and protect their communities from being mined. Later in life she became an avid trail runner who loves to do anything outdoors, a path that led her to study environmental science. These days, she works to identify soil health biogeochemical indicators of soil reclamation, in order to make modern mining reclamation more effective and cost efficient, while also learning how policy has placed many mines on/or bordering tribal nations and extraction on public lands.

Note: Since recording this interview, the number of federally-recognized tribal nations has increased from 572 to 576.

This episode was produced by Shane M Hanlon and mixed by Kayla Surrey.

Earlier this year, scientists reported that radioactive fallout from nuclear accidents and weapons testing is present in ice sediments on the surface of glaciers in the Arctic, Iceland, the Alps, the Caucasus, British Columbia and Antarctica.

The presence of this radioactivity poses a potential problem to humans and animals living near glaciers. As the ice melts as a result of climate change, the radioactive fallout could wind up in rivers and streams, and potentially make its way up the food chain.

In the latest episode of Third Pod from the Sun, University of Plymouth scientist Caroline Clason details how she and her team discovered the radioactive fallout on the glaciers and what questions they are still investigating, including the potential effect of the radionuclides on ecosystems.

This episode was produced by Nanci Bompey and Lauren Lipuma and mixed by Robyn Murray and Jon Schriner.

Rafael Loureiro may confess to being an introvert, but he has no fear of people. He started off talking about AGU’s Voices for Science initiative, which he is participating in this year to develop his science communication and policy skills. That segued into his personal philosophy going back to his upbringing and study in Brazil. What makes a scientist a scientist, in Rafael’s view, is their commitment to serving people and connecting to them in personal, meaningful ways. After a challenging transition to the US, where he had no network, he landed a job and taught his first class. He now passes on challenges to his students at Winston-Salem State U. First class taught in USA: teaching completely different culture, and different teaching modes - pass on content in the best way possible, getting to know students, understanding their needs, knowing students on a personal level. 

This episode was produced and mixed by Shane M Hanlon. Special thanks to Jordana Schmierer for production assistance. 

Nina Lanza is a member of a research team hunts for meteorites in Antarctica. In this bonus clip from Episode 23, Between a Varnished Rock and a Hard Place, Nina describes the remote location where they set up camp, being holed up while the howling katabatic winds battered her tent and her brain, and explains the strategies and techniques for searching for and collecting space rocks that are lost bits of asteroids and planets. Bottom line: the hardest part is getting there.