Third Pod from the Sun

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 leading steel and rail industrialists of the era – who were involved, the lack of accountability for the victims – save for a re-coop on the loss of a few barrels of whiskey, and the impact on the region that echoes to this day. He also provides insight into how the flood serves as a case study for current day hydrologists and engineers hoping to prevent, respond to, and investigate current and future flooding events.

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 three storm chasers killed by the El Reno tornado, and the first chasers to die while actively chasing a storm in the 50-year history of storm chasing.

This episode was produced by Lauren Lipuma and mixed by Adell Coleman.

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.

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 technology: the balloon.

In this episode, he describes what we know about Venus and its mysteries, the benefits of ballooning for Venusian exploration, and how the weather at 60 kilometers (37 miles) above Venus’ surface is like a mild December night in Washington, DC—except for the sulfuric acid.

This episode was produced by Liza Lester and mixed by Adele Coleman.

In a parking lot behind the Comstock Art Facility at Syracuse University, geologist Jeff Karson and sculptor Bob Wysocki cook up something almost unimaginable – homemade lava. Using a gas furnace the size of a small truck, the two professors melt gravel typically used for roadbeds into hot molten rock that they pour onto sand to recreate natural lava flows seen in places like Hawaii, Iceland and Italy.

This summer, 3^rd Pod from the Sun is taking a vacation. In the meantime, we’re revisiting some of our favorite episodes. In this episode, listen to Bob and Jeff describe their eight-year lava-making journey, from googling “how to buy basalt” to pouring hot lava into the cavity of a frozen chicken. Learn what Jeff has discovered about the dynamics of volcanic eruptions and hear how Bob has turned pouring lava into an artistic performance. And finally, find out what happens when a scientist and an artist team up to create something truly unique and spectacular.

Watch a video of the duo’s lava pours on the AGU YouTube channel and read more about their story on Eos.org.

This episode was produced and mixed by Shane M Hanlon. The original episode was produced by Lauren Lipuma and mixed by Tori Kerr.