You are browsing the archive for Water Archives - Third Pod from the Sun.
April 15, 2019
When the Sahara was Green
In this centennial episode, she reveals the secrets of the mud, how humans may have weathered climate swings of the past, and what the past can tell us about our warming world.
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.
March 22, 2019
Special Release: Hawaii’s Volcanoes, Water, and…Vog?
Hawaii is frequently described as a paradise in the Pacific Ocean, but for some scientists conducting field work, there can be some challenges to overcome. In this special episode, Kate Brauman, the lead scientist at the Global Water Initiative at the University of Minnesota, describes her field work experiences in Kona on the big island of Hawaii. Kate’s research into land use and its impact on the ground water supply …
March 18, 2019
Centennial E4 – Toxic City Under the Ice
In 1959, the United States built an unusual military base under the surface of the Greenland ice Sheet. Camp Century was a hub for scientific research, but it also doubled as a top-secret site for testing the feasibility of deploying nuclear missiles from the Arctic. When Camp Century was decommissioned in 1967, its infrastructure and waste were abandoned under the assumption they would be forever entombed beneath the colossal sheet of ice.
March 11, 2019
E15 – Polluted Water Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink
Water is the most essential of essentials. We can survive weeks without food but only days without water. And it’s something that many of us take for granted. But water is not as plentiful, available, and clean in all parts of the world. And with climate change, water is going to become (and is already) a limited resource to some. From Arizona to Katmandu, Chris Scott, Research Professor of Water Resources …
February 15, 2019
Centennial E3 – Rifts Beneath the Ocean Floor
Kathy Crane is a true adventurer. As one of the first women in the field of marine geophysics in the 1970s, she hypothesized and then helped discover the existence of hydrothermal vents on the Galápagos Rift along the East Pacific Rise in the mid-1970s and was one the first people to see many of the strange creatures that make their home in this improbable environment.
January 2, 2019
E13 – Waiting for Poop
There are lots of weird, dirty jobs out there. Roadkill collector. Deodorant tester. Catfish noodler. Chicken sexer. But what about… whale poop collector?
December 17, 2018
E12 – Bonus Clip: The Smell of Water
Check out this clip that didn’t make it into our recent episode, The Oldest Water on Earth, what old water smells like!
December 3, 2018
E12 – The Oldest Water on Earth
Thousands of feet below the surface of the Earth is salty water that hasn’t seen the light of day in millions or even billions of years. Miners working deep underground had encountered and wondered about the origin of this water for decades, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that scientists started to investigate where this water was coming from and what it might contain – giving researchers clues into how life survives in the deepest parts of our planet.
November 1, 2018
E11 – Deep Sea Drilling with Dawn
The ocean floor stores a vast amount of information about Earth and its history. Volcanic rocks that make up most of the seafloor tell scientists about the composition of Earth’s interior, and the sediments lying on top of those rocks document what conditions were like when they were laid down millions of years ago.
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.
