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October 12, 2021
Staff Picks: Mythical monsters & their real-life inspirations (Part 1)
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 cases, the legend in grounded in fact.
May 17, 2021
Scientists Mine 16th Century Ship Logs for Geophysical Research
As ships explored the world from the Age of Sail through 20th century, mariners kept detailed navigation records using the Sun and stars. Scientists scoured these ship logs, many of which are preserved in European libraries, for clues about Earth’s magnetic field. The work, published in 2000, created the first-ever magnetic field map for the past 4 centuries.
October 28, 2020
Special Release: Mythical Monsters and their Real-life Inspirations (Part 2)
In this episode, the second in a two-part series, we chatted with Rodrigo Salvador, Curator of Invertebrates at the Museum of New Zealand, about the connections between giant squids and the Kraken, and Danielle J. Serratos, Director/Curator of the Fundy Geological Museum, about the links between prehistoric aquatic reptiles and the Loch Ness monster, respectively.
April 6, 2020
Paradise Lost
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.
January 6, 2020
E25 – Antarctica’s Oldest Ice
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.
August 12, 2019
Special Release: Deviations from the Norm
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, aboard sea tossed ships, at the mouths of active volcanoes, beneath turbid ocean waters, and atop the highest windswept peaks. Under these often less than ideal conditions, instruments …
July 1, 2019
E19 – Eavesdropping on the Ocean
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.
May 13, 2019
E17 – Bonus Clip: Memories of the North
Check out this clip that didn’t make it into our recent episode, Science Turns to Search and Rescue, about some of the wildlife that’s found in the Arctic.
May 6, 2019
E17 – Science Turns to Search and Rescue
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.
April 1, 2019
E16 – Gunslingers of the Sea
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.
Third Pod from the Sun is the American Geophysical Union’s podcast about the scientists and methods behind the science. These are stories that you won’t read in a manuscript or hear in a lecture.
