Third Pod From The Sun

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

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 i

Water is one of the things that none of us can live without. Yet, it’s taken for granted in so many parts of the parts, and even in parts of the U.S. But what would happen if we ever hit day zero, or the day that the water ran out. That probably won’t happen but Paula Buchanan is here to tell us that we still need to be vigilant. Buchanan is a doctoral student in Emergency Management at Jacksonville State University where she studies, water stewardship, or how we can more effectively use our limited water resources. She’s also one of AGU’s Voices for Science Advocates. Voices for Science is an initiative of AGU’s Sharing Science Program that centers around training scientists to address the critical need for communicating the value and impact of Earth and space science to key decision makers, journalists, and public audiences. This is the first of three episodes where we’ll feature Advocates from different scientific disciplines. In this first episode, Buchanan talks about what it’s like to work in di

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 in

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 anal

Check out this clip that didn't make it into our recent episode, X-rays of the Earth's Gooey Center, about some of the challenges Lara Wagner and her team face when setting up seismic stations in remote places.  

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 scientist

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

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 S

Venus, Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor, is a rocky world close in size to our own. In our solar system, it is the planet most like Earth. But Earth and Venus have taken different developmental paths, creating curious contrasts for scientists interested in planetary evolution. Conditions on Venus are not friendly to exploration. The thick, reflective atmosphere that makes Venus the brightest planet in Earth’s sky also obscures its features. Under that warming blanket of clouds, visiting spacecraft found a hot, dry surface inimical to Earth life and electronics. Siddharth Krishnamoorthy, a physicist and engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, is a part of a team seeking to learn more about the geology of our sister planet by listening for quakes…Venusquakes. To avoid the 460-degrees-Celsius (860 Fahrenheit) heat and 90 atmospheres of pressure at Venus’ surface, they plan to loft their sensors high in Venus’ atmosphere by mounting them on a modern version of eighteenth-century state-of-the-art flight technolog

Ryan Zeigler has a one-of-a-kind job: He’s the guy in charge of the Moon rocks. Starting with Apollo 11 in 1969 and ending with Apollo 17 in 1972, astronauts brought back more than 800 pounds of samples from the Moon – from micron-scale motes of dust to boulders weighing more than 25 pounds. In the 50 years since the Moon rocks arrived back on Earth, scientists all over the world have used these samples to peer back in time to the early days of our solar system, making major discoveries about the formation of the Moon and the Earth. Today, the Moon rocks are safely stored in a windowless, hurricane-proof building at Johnson Space Center. It is Zeigler’s job to oversee the samples and review proposals from scientists who wish to study them. Earlier this year, NASA announced that they will open up a new cache of never-before-studied Apollo samples, which they hope will reveal even more insights about our nearest neighbor and our own planet. In addition to the planetary science discoveries the Apollo samples hav

To those of us on land, the world underneath the oceans seems quiet and serene. But scientists who study ocean acoustics will tell you it is anything but tranquil underwater. Our oceans are home to a cacophony of sounds – from the songs of marine mammals to the cracking of icebergs to the rumbling of earthquakes to the roar of ships. In this episode, Bob Dziak, head of NOAA’s acoustics program, describes the sounds scientists study with their underwater microphones, including the noises they’ve heard at the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench and a mysterious “bloop, and how they use that information to understand natural processes and the impact from human activities. This episode was produced by Nanci Bompey and mixed by Kayla Surrey.

At Third Pod, we often talk with researchers about how they grew up to become scientists. But how does an actor become a scientist on screen? In this special episode of Third Pod from the Sun, we talk with actor Anthony Rapp about inhabiting the character of Lt. Commander Paul Stamets on “Star Trek: Discovery.” Rapp, best known for playing Marc Cohen in the original Broadway cast of the Tony Award-winning musical “Rent,” has been on stage since childhood. On “Discovery,” he plays the prickly lead scientist on the eponymous experimental ship. The USS Discovery, on a mission to test a mysterious “spore drive” that operates on an intangible, fungus-like mycelial network strung throughout the universe, has been conscripted into a space war on the Federation’s frontier. Rapp and castmate Wilson Cruz also took Star Trek to new frontiers portraying the first gay couple depicted in Starfleet. We caught up with Rapp at the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference, co-hosted by AGU and NASA in Bellevue, Washington, where h

The Clean Air Act of 1970 was one of the first and most influential environmental laws passed in the United States. But why was this law needed in the first place, and what inspired lawmakers to want to regulate air pollution levels? Two tragedies in the mid-20th century showed air quality was an issue lawmakers needed to address. In October 1948, a cloud of toxic smog settled over the town of Donora, Pennsylvania, and hung there until Halloween. The town was home to the largest nail mill in the world at the time, which burned more coal than the nearby city of Pittsburgh. The poison fog killed 20 residents in five days and sickened thousands more. Just four years later, a similar but larger-scale event happened in London. In December 1952, pollution from coal-fired powerplants and chimneys, as well as emissions from new diesel buses, created a smog so thick residents couldn’t see their own two feet. Thousands died and tens of thousands were sickened by the poison cloud that persisted for five days. In t

Few natural phenomena are more difficult to study than tornadoes. They’re short-lived, their locations are notoriously hard to predict, and getting close enough to observe them is both challenging and extremely dangerous. In this episode, Ohio University meteorologist Jana Houser describes what it’s like to chase these monster storms. Listen to Jana describe the terror and excitement of her first chase and hear her first-hand account of the 2013 El Reno, Oklahoma tornado, the widest tornado ever recorded. Learn how chasing this behemoth storm taught meteorologists that tornadoes form from the ground up – not the other way around – and hear just how much of the 1996 action movie Twister was based on real life. A special thanks to storm chasers Jeff Snyder and Skip Talbot for providing footage of their chases to Third Pod for this episode. Watch Skip’s original footage here and see Jeff’s videos on his YouTube channel. This episode is dedicated to the memory of Tim Samaras, Paul Samaras, and Carl Young, the

In the early years of the 20th century, several groups of explorers attempted to be the first to reach the South Pole, as Antarctica was one of the last unexplored places on Earth. A team of Norwegian explorers led by Roald Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole on December 14, 1911. A competing British party led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott reached the Pole roughly a month later. Amundsen’s team returned safely home but Scott’s team perished on the ice in March 1912. Recent research has suggested that Antarctica experienced unusually warm weather during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer of 1911-1912, and this weather may have influenced the outcome of Amundsen and Scott’s race to the South Pole. In this episode, Ohio University atmospheric scientist Ryan Fogt recounts the journeys of Scott and Amundsen during this fateful summer and discusses how the extraordinary weather affected the two polar parties in vastly different ways. This episode was produced by Lauren Lipuma and mixed by Robyn Murray.  

In this bonus clip for our most recent episode, Science Turns to Search and Rescue, David Babb describes the incredible wildlife of the Arctic.

  The Arctic Ocean is topped with a layer of frozen sea water – sea ice – that grows every winter and shrinks every summer. To study the ice in detail, researchers hop aboard an icebreaker ship that can plow through the sharp, cold ice floes without being damaged. But two years ago, the Canadian icebreaker Amundsen was called off its scientific mission to assist the Canadian coast guard with search and rescue operations in the North Atlantic Ocean. In May and June of 2017, an unprecedented amount of sea ice was choking the normally open waters around Newfoundland. The thick ice trapped many unsuspecting ships and sunk some boats when the ice punctured their hulls. In this episode, University of Manitoba sea ice expert David Babb recounts the 2017 rescue operations the Amundsen took part in. David discusses what it’s like to live and work on an icebreaker and describes the unusual conditions that allowed a record amount of Arctic sea ice to flow south and wreak havoc on ships in the North Atlantic that year.

About 11,000 years ago, the Sahara desert turned green. The region received ten times the rain that falls there now, filling lakes and supporting savannahs, woodlands, and human communities. This was not the first time our species had encountered a green Sahara. Every 20,000 years or so, the wobble in Earth’s axis called precession brings the northern hemisphere a little closer to the Sun in summer, and more rain to the Sahara. The wet period ended abruptly, 5,000 years ago, leaving rock art and artifacts in the sand. But the people were not gone, they had just moved. As the sands took back the Sahara, people congregated along the Nile valley, and the Egyptian civilizations arose. Our guest Jessica Tierney is interested in how climate changes influence human migrations. Tierney is a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson where she studies past climate change, from the time of the dinosaurs, to the human diaspora 60,000 years ago, to more modern shifts in North America’s own Southwest monso

Snapping shrimp are small but mighty creatures: they’re only a few inches long but are among the noisiest animals in the ocean. The loud cracking noise they make when snapping their claws sounds almost like a gunshot, and when enough shrimp snap at once, the din can be louder than the roar of a passenger jet flying overhead. Snapping shrimp are typically found in warm, shallow subtropical waters all over the world. But in 2016, researchers at Oregon State University discovered snapping shrimp inhabiting the Oregon coast for the very first time. They now suspect the crackling of the shrimp’s claws may serve as a dinner bell for eastern Pacific gray whales residing in those waters. In this episode, ocean acoustics specialist Joe Haxel describes the myriad of animals that contribute to Earth’s underwater soundscape, including fish that growl and crabs that scratch their backs. Joe discusses how he and his colleagues identified snapping shrimp by their characteristic racket and what the presence of snapping shr