Third Pod from the Sun

Scientists have been testing whether life exists on Mars for over 40 years, ever since the Viking 1 lander touched down on the Red Planet. Researchers often perform experiments on Earth to better understand the context of data collected by Viking 1 and subsequent landers – data that gives scientists tantalizing clues about the habitability of the Martian surface.

In this episode, Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers Nina Lanza and Chris Yeager discuss their investigations into rock varnish in New Mexico, which could help them understand whether life is present on Mars. Rock varnish is a mysterious coating found on rocks in some of the harshest and most Mars-like landscapes on Earth, but no one knows whether rock varnish is created by living things. If so, finding it on Mars would be a sign that Martian life exists now or has existed in the past.

This episode was produced by Larry O'Hanlon and mixed by Kayla Surrey.

We're trying something new with Third Pod. In addition to your regularly scheduled programming, we're going to showcase short stories from scientists in a new series we're dubbing Sci & Tell. Like show & tell, but with science (and audio)!

Dr. Jim Green has spent 38 years of his life working at NASA. He started there with a fresh Ph.D. in Earth magnetospheric science and helped pioneer the magnetosphere research group at Marshall Space Flight Center. He spent 12 years as the division chief for NASA’s Planetary Sciences Division and was recently appointed to be NASA’s, Chief Scientist. His years of leadership in the space science community has helped shape what he calls the “golden age of planetary science” and has inspired a new generation of scientists and science enthusiasts to study the solar system. In this conversation, Dr. Green talks about some of the many planetary science missions he has been involved in, including the Saturn’s Cassini mission, Pluto’s New Horizons, numerous spacecraft to the Moon and Mars, and more. He reminds us how interconnected we are as a space science community and the value of communication and collaboration with collogues across the world. He looks forward to the new technological innovations that will revolutionize solar system exploration and the lessons we can take away from our better-than-ever understanding of the solar system.

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

Xavier Le Pichon came to Lamont Geological Observatory in 1959 and spent four months aboard the R/V Vema as a physical oceanography technician. The research cruise set out to test the existence of the mid-ocean ridge system: a long chain of seismically active mountains running along the ocean floor.

Le Pichon would go on to be one of the scientists on the forefront of the plate tectonics revolution – a theory that changed the way we understand our planet. Instead of being a solid mass, scientists discovered Earth is made up a series of plates that move and slide past each other, causing volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and geological formations. It was the discovery of the mid-ocean ridge system and magnetic anomalies on the ocean floor that led scientists to develop the theory of seafloor spreading, the process by which oceanic crust is renewed and a key piece in the development of plate tectonic theory.

In this new Centennial episode of Third Pod from the Sun, Le Pichon recounts the changes that took place in Earth science during the 1950s and 60s that led to the solidification of the theory, his own work developing the first global plate kinematic model and reconstructing how the planet looked like billions of years ago, and what it was like to be a young scientist challenging deeply held scientific theories.

This episode was produced by Nanci Bompey and mixed by Collin Warren.

Physicist Marius Millot investigates the intimate atomic worlds of elements in order to understand the inner secrets of the largest planets in our solar system. Jupiter and its fellow gas giants Uranus, Neptune and Saturn are comprised mostly of the lightest element, hydrogen, with a dab of helium, heavier elements, and more complex molecules. But researchers want to know what lurks at the planet’s core, under all that cloud. It isn’t clear that Jupiter has a surface to stand on that is at all like Earth’s—assuming anything could stand up under pressure approaching 100 million Earth atmospheres. That pressure may turn the depths into a hot, dense soup.

Millot can’t visit the Jupiter’s interior, but he can simulate some of its conditions here on Earth. As a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, he gets to play with giant lasers designed to explore atomic fusion. When the 192 lasers of at the National Ignition Facility focus on a single point, they can reproduce the unimaginably intense pressures in the interiors of planets, or even stars.

With diamond as an anvil, Millot and his colleagues have used the lasers to squeeze liquid hydrogen so tightly that it turns shiny, hinting that hydrogen near the center of the big planets may be a flowing metallic liquid, and perhaps the source of Jupiter’s mighty magnetic field. Millot explains how the center of Jupiter might just be a mushy blob in this episode of Third Pod from the Sun.

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

Many people have emergency kits packed to flee or survive forces of nature like floods, hurricanes, or wildfire. But what do you throw in your bag when you expect to rush toward a natural hazard? Geologist John Ewert has his go-kit packed with portable seismometers and gas-monitoring equipment, ready to mobilize when a volcano starts to rumble.

Ewert started his career at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington in 1980, months after the explosive eruption of Mount St. Helens. He has encountered a wide variety of volcanoes and volcanic personalities as a member of USGS’ Volcano Disaster Assistance Program (VDAP), formed in 1986 to deploy scientists and equipment to awakening volcanoes around the world at the request of local science agencies or governments.

The program faced its first big challenge in 1991, at a previously unknown volcano in the Philippines called Pinatubo. The VDAP team and Philippine volcanologists scrambled to get equipment on the mountain and analyze data. But science was only half the job. Earning the trust of people living near the volcano . Ultimately, Ewert and his colleagues successfully persuaded the U.S. Air Force, Philippine government and local indigenous people to evacuate over 60,000 people—more than 20,000 from what proved to be the path of certain death after the volcano’s major eruption on June 15.

In this Centennial episode of Third Pod, Ewert talks about driving away from Pinatubo in the “scary dark” of ashfall, creeping along in a crowd of hundreds of thousands of evacuees and using orange soda to clear the windshield when the wiper fluid dried up. He explains how every eruption occurs in a social and political context, how communication failure allowed the deaths of 25,000 people living below the volcano Nevada del Ruiz in Columbia, and how that tragedy galvanized volcanologists worldwide.

This episode was produced by Liza Lester and mixed by Robin Murray and John Shriner.

Much like x-rays can show broken bones (or noses), seismic equipment can show us what’s going on in Earth’s interior. While seismologists can’t take quick snapshots like medical doctors can, they can provide an image of tectonic plate movements over time to help the scientific community – and local communities – understand geophysical phenomena from mountain formations to volcanoes to the earthquakes that rock their world.

Lara Wagner, a seismologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, leads teams as they search for remote places around the globe to position their seismometers. This involves digging holes, being resourceful, and implementing equipment ranging from solar panels to duct tape, the latter of which Lara considers herself a connoisseur.

In this episode, she describes her work in South America, the process of selecting sites for seismometers, how she and her teams engage with local residents, as well as some surprising findings the sensitive equipment can pick up. Lara highlights what scientists have been able to learn about Earth’s gooey center through seismology, including weak plates that bend and break, and the impacts we experience on the surface.

This episode was produced by Katie Broendel and mixed by Kayla Surrey.

In 1972, in the waning years of the Vietnam War, U.S. military pilots flying south of Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam saw something unexpected. Without explanation, and without warning, over two dozen sea mines suddenly exploded. While the phenomenon was never officially explained, it peaked the interest of geo-space scientist Delores Knipp.

Knipp is a research faculty member at the University of Colorado Boulder Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department and editor in chief for the AGU journal Space Weather. She originally wanted to be a meteorologist but joined the ROTC in a weather position right with the goal of staying for four years to pay off her student loans. Twenty-two years later, she retired after a career with the Air Force studying weather or space weather.

Being a scientist on an Air Force presented some unique opportunities to educate her colleagues, specifically answering questions like, “What is dark?” It might sound silly but it’s a big deal when determining flights schedules. But she really started diving into some of the more mysterious stuff after she retired.

In this Centennial episode of Third Pod from the Sun, Knipp provides a unique perspective about the role of space weather in shaping global policy and conflicts. From a chance phone call from a colleague encouraging her to solve a decades old mystery to pulling out clues from the obituary of an Air Force commander, Knipp unravels some of the biggest space weather mysteries that many of us have never heard of.

This episode was produced by Shane M Hanlon and mixed by Collin Warren.

One of the most alluring parts of Earth and space science is that much of the key research takes place in the field, in some of the most incredible – and inhospitable – environments on the planet: on treacherous polar ice sheets, abroad sea tossed ships, at the mouths of active volcanoes, beneath turbid ocean waters, and atop the highest the highest windswept peaks. Under these often less than ideal conditions, instruments often fail, the weather can become uncooperative, and the best made scientific plans are undone.

In this special episode of Third Pod from the Sun, five scientists share their stories of “deviations from the mean” – when their fieldwork went awry on the account of everything from uncooperative arctic mollusks, inaccessible food supplies buried in snows of Greenland, overfilled stoves and flammable tents, wayward Turkish donkeys, and inoperative rifles in polar bear country. Mishaps, however, can sometimes lead to some surprising and unexpected insights.

This episode was produced by Joshua Speiser and mixed by Kayla Surrey.