Third Pod from the Sun

If someone offered you the chance to drop everything, fly to Hawaii, and spend four months trapped in a dome with seven strangers in the name of science , would you do it? For writer Kate Greene , the answer to that question was a resounding “yes.” Greene was one of eight people selected to crew the very first HI-SEAS Mars analogue mission in 2013 . In her recent book Once Upon a Time I Lived on M...

Many of us know that tree rings can tell us how old a tree is. But there’s so much more we can learn from these seemingly simple lines. In the mid 1800’s, right before the start of the U.S. Civil War, North America began to experience unusually low rainfall that lasted approximately 10 years. This drought, on par with the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, may have played a role in the near extinction of th...

If you were an ant living in an anthill in the Serengeti and you wanted to know whether an intelligent species lived on planet Earth, how could you tell? A particularly clever ant might pick up a radio signal and deduce that humanity exists, but how about subtler, indirect clues that, nevertheless, are a result of technological development? This thought experiment, posed by astrophysicist Jason Wr...

Scientists sent a remotely operated vehicle named Beast under the sea ice in Arctic winter. Jenessa Duncombe talks with scientist Christian Katlein about the race to characterize sea ice in the Arctic before it is too late. Read more at https://eos.org .

Last year’s explosive eruption at the New Zealand volcano tragically took tourists by surprise. Jenessa Duncombe talks with scientist David Dempsey about a new forecasting model that could issue alerts if another eruption is eminent. Read more at https://eos.org .

By drilling into ice sheets on Earth, a new instrument called WATSON can help us find biosignatures on icy ocean worlds across the solar system. Read more at https://eos.org .

How have wildfires in Canada changed in the past 50 years? New research documents how a warming climate contributes to patterns in wildfire severity and frequency and how the fires contribute to climate change. Read more at https://eos.org .

Leland Melvin’s scientific career began during his childhood in Lynchburg, Virginia, when he created a fantastic explosion in his living room with an at-home chemistry set. Little did Leland or his family know at the time that he would become both a professional athlete and a NASA astronaut, flying two missions to the International Space Station. In this special episode of AGU’s podcast Third Pod...

Utah’s famous bridges and spires hum with a deep, Earthly music, below the threshold of human perception. The wind that carved the sandstone of Arches National Park into spectacular arches and towers also plucks them, like giant guitar strings, making them ring at low frequencies. Geoscientist Riley Finnegan and her colleagues in the Geohazards research group at the University of Utah are recordin...

We’ve all heard stories about fantastical creatures that people swear they’ve seen and have evidence of but can never be confirmed. Think Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. Mermaids or the Kraken. While there’s no evidence backing the existence of these creatures, either in present day or at any point in the past, there must be a reason why such legends were created in the first place. In most case...

We’ve all heard stories about fantastical creatures that people swear they’ve seen and have evidence of but can never be confirmed. Think Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. Mermaids or the Kraken. While there’s no evidence backing the existence of these creatures, either in present day or at any point in the past, there must be a reason why such legends were created in the first place. In most case...

The latest episode of Third Pod from the Sun features an interview with planetary scientist Fran Bagenal, who has had a fascinating career working on NASA missions from Voyager to Juno and New Horizons. Currently working at the University of Colorado Boulder, Bagenal provides an overarching view of the different planetary missions going back a few decades and describes how the research and finding...

Well-documented torrential rains and unusually cold temperatures affected the outcomes of many major battles during World War I from 1914 to 1918. Poet Mary Borden described the cold, muddy landscape of the Western Front as “the liquid grave of our armies” in her poem “ The Song of the Mud ” about 1916’s Battle of the Somme, during which more than one million soldiers were killed or wounded. The b...

What happens when you cross medical science with geophysics? In one study published last year , the result was one-part interdisciplinary and one-part science fiction. Scientists have studied the presence of a magnetic mineral, magnetite, in organisms, but work on the human brain has been far and few between. Tiny chains of magnetite crystals in the cells of magnetotactic bacteria, for example, he...

About 3,600 years ago, a colossal volcanic eruption blew apart the Greek island Thera, now the popular tourist destination known as Santorini. Falling volcanic rock and dust buried the Bronze Age settlement Akrotiri, on the south side of the island, preserving multi-story buildings, frescoes, tools, furniture and food, until archaeological excavations uncovered them in the last century, much like...

Volcanic craters could be the largest musical instrument on Earth, producing unique sounds that tell scientists what is going on deep in a volcano’s belly. Chile’s Villarica volcano acted much like a gigantic horn when it erupted in 2015, created reverberating sounds that changed pitch as its lava lake rose to the crater rim. On the other hand, Ecuador’s Cotopaxi volcano has a deep, cylindrical cr...

What’s it like to be one of the most well-known climate scientists around? People (e.g. your dad) should just trust what you say, right? Well…it doesn’t always work out like that. Kate Marvel, Associate Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Engineering's Department of Applied Physics and Mathematics, started as a theoretical physicist before shifting to studyi...

On May 18, 1980, Mt. St. Helens erupted in Washington state, capping off a series of volcanic events that began on March 27th of that year. The May 18th explosions is credited with causing 57 deaths, >$1 billion in property damage, and forever changed the surrounding landscape. The eruption created a column of ash that shot into the atmosphere and was deposited in 11 U.S. states, , landing as f...

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is a Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry at the Life and Environmental Sciences unit, University of California, Merced. She received her PhD in Biogeochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley; M. Sc. in Political Ecology from Michigan State University, and BS in Soil and Water Conservation from University of Asmara, Eritrea. She is a recipient of numerous awards incl...

James Garvin is the Chief Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Garvin has been at NASA for 35 years in a variety of roles and missions, and is well known for his incredible work in NASA's Mars explorational programs. Listen to James talk about his beginnings in science, the legacy he wishes to leave behind, and what he hopes NASA will accomplish in the future. This episode was prod...

This year is the 50 th 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...

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 detonat...

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 disc...

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 eff...