Third Pod From The Sun

This year is the 50th anniversary. To celebrate, we chatted with over a dozen NASA scientists about what Earth Day means to them in this special compilation episode! This episode was produced and mixed by Shane M Hanlon.

On 24 December 1968, humans witnessed our home planet rise over the horizon of another world for the first time. The crew of Apollo 8 looked up from the Moon to see the blue and white swirls of Earth poised above the stark grey lunar surface—a single oasis in a big, dark universe. The moment, captured on 70mm color film, captivated audiences back on Earth. It fueled the environmental movement and the first Earth Day, which convened a little over a year later, on 22 April 1970. For the 50th Earth Day, we talk with Ernie Wright, a programmer and producer for the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Wright recreated that iconic Earthrise photo and animated it with the kind of 3D animation software Hollywood uses to bring CGI landscapes to life, using detailed surface images and altimetry from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. He talks about recreating the moment with Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, and how he used math to solve a puzzle

From 1946 to 1958, the United States military conducted more than 20 nuclear bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, an idyllic tropical island in the South Pacific Ocean. During the first of these tests, conducted in July 1946, the military anchored nearly 100 warships and submarines within Bikini’s large lagoon to see how a nuclear blast would affect a naval fleet. The first bomb, in test Able, was detonated in the air and caused a less than expected amount of damage to the fleet. But the second bomb, in test Baker, was suspended below a barge and detonated underwater. The Baker test was far more destructive than the military had planned. The detonation left a crater on the seafloor roughly 800 meters (half a mile) wide and 10 meters (33 feet) deep. A colossal column of boiling, radioactive water poured over the target ships, tossing them about like toys in a bathtub. Three major ships and several small aircraft were sunk within the first few days. The remainder of the fleet was so contaminated with radiation that only

Kim Cobb loves being out in the field. She talks about the euphoria and passion she has for it, saying “It's like nothing I've ever experienced literally, and I've given birth to four children.” In this interview, she talks about the connection she feels to the planet and to the people she works with in the field as well as the importance of supporting and promoting women in science. She also discusses the state of science and how it’s in a moment of evolution with room at the table for all kinds of scientists to weigh in. This episode was produced and mixed by Shane M Hanlon. Special thanks to Jordana Schmierer for production assistance.

In 44 BCE, a momentous event occurred. Somewhere on Earth, a volcano erupted—one of the largest of last 2,500 years terms of climate impact. Traces of the eruption can be found in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, in signs of cold weather in the growth rings of trees around the world, and records of famine and agricultural disaster from Egypt to China. The eruption caused global climate effects lasting several years. Also, in Rome, a conspiracy of senators murdered Julius Caesar and the republic tumbled into civil war. A group of young researchers say these events may be more closely intertwined than previously appreciated by classical historians focused on the internecine political machinations of the time period. They make the bold claim that the mysterious eruption in question is consistent with what seemed to be an unremarkable event at Mt Etna, a famous volcano in the center of the Roman provinces, in February of 44 BCE. Guests: Rafael Castro, undergraduate student in atmospheric science, Univers

Why do people feel they way they do about issues? Why do lawmakers and policy leaders seemingly act against their better interests? And how can information be developed in a way that leads not just to greater understanding, but to better decision making? Two veterans of the climate and risk management field, Dr. Roger Pulwarty and Dr. Michael Hayes, discuss how important it is to line up the sciences, policy, and society in the way that assures the consequences of the decisions are understood by all involved. Their work includes a collaboration on the bipartisan creation, National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). This episode was produced and mixed by Shane M Hanlon. Special thanks to Jordana Schmierer for production assistance.

In 1991, the United States government unearthed a staggering archaeological find during construction of a federal office building in lower Manhattan. While digging the building’s foundations, construction crews stumbled upon skeletal remains from the “Negroes Burial Ground,” a 6.6-acre cemetery of more than 15,000 free and enslaved Africans who lived in New York during the 17th and 18th centuries. Rediscovery of the burial ground changed anthropologists’ understanding of slavery in colonial New York City. Skeletal remains of more than 400 individuals were exhumed upon discovery of the site, which was renamed the New York African Burial Ground. Bones and teeth showed evidence that the enslaved Africans often performed hard manual labor, suffered from malnutrition, and had short lifespans. The remains were reburied in 2003, but samples of grave soil from the burial ground remained available for research. In 2015, Carter Clinton, then a graduate student at Howard University, began analyzing the soil samples to s

An analysis of timber used to construct buildings in Europe hundreds of years ago is giving scientists and historians new insights into the region’s history from the 13th to 17th centuries. Using samples of wood taken from old buildings in Europe, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, a historian and paleoclimatologist at Stockholm University, and Andrea Seim, a dendrochronologist at the University of Freiburg, figured out when the trees used in the buildings were cut down. They then created a huge database of building activity over hundreds of years. The researchers used this information to uncover societal trends. Changes in construction activity often reflect changes in society, making them good indicators of what was happening at a certain time period. In this episode of Third Pod from the Sun, Ljungqvist and Seim explain how they were able to date construction timbers in buildings in Europe to reconstruct building activity from 1250 to 1699 and used this information to uncover information about society at the

Bärbel Hönisch, Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences at Columbia University also known as Queen of Boron, transported us millions of years beyond the ice cores to the realm when Greenland had no ice. She took hold of a magical instrument and fell in love with plankton. Diving off One Tree Island near the Great Barrier reef, she conducted research in the blue water, and at times rose amongst a highway of turtles. Painstakingly, she reconstructs the microfossil environment. This episode was produced and mixed by Shane M Hanlon. Special thanks to Jordana Schmierer for production assistance.

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

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 majo

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 leadin

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 previ

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 mi

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.

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.