The RockyTerrain Podcast

We have not been to the Moon for over 50 years, but this is about to change. The Artemis mission could start a new era of space exploration - one in which scientists working on another celestial body might become the norm. Thomas gives a general mission profile and we discuss different aspects of space exploration.

What does happen when ocean currents break down? Well, that is precisely the question addressed in The Day After Tomorrow. Since we had not seen it before, we decided to give it a shot and discussed the science involved (or rather not involved) afterwards.

The moon is often perceived as an unchanging, dead and pale object in our night sky. However, recent research indicates that the moon is in fact geologically active. Certain surface structures indicating tectonic processes seem to be of a relatively young age and it is very likely that these resume until today. This renewed view of a more active moon has important implications for future manned missions and especially potential colonization.

There is a strange paleontological dig site near Balve in the Sauerland of Northwestern Germany. All that is visible at first is a crevice filled with mud - mud which was deposited during the Lower Cretaceous. It and a few other such localities are all that is left to tell the story of an ancient nearshore environment with lakes and rivers. The site resembles a window back to the time of the dinosaurs in Central Europe and, more than anything else, grants a look at what animals were scurrying around their feet.

On the 18th of February 2021 NASAs Perseverance Rover successfully landed in the Jezero Crater on Mars. It will explore the region and its complex geological history and launch the first mini helicopter on another planet. It follows in the footsteps (or rather wheel tracks) of its older sibling rovers like Curiosity. We talk about the mission objectives and the technology aboard the rover, as well as about why Jezero Crater is a particularly interesting site to research.

For a change we decided to leave solid ground to enter the clouds of the ice giants Neptune and Uranus. As if they were not already fascinating enough, there might be something very strange going on in their clouds. Experiments have lead researchers to conclude that it could be "raining" diamonds there. Not only that, but certain observations could additionally support this hypothesis. If this process is actually taking place, it might even be useful for researching exoplanets light-years away from our own planet.

The 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens is one of the most infamous volcanic events in human history. To this very day it retains the title of largest eruption within the western world. At the same time, it has been monitored and studied in a lot of detail, making it an important event for volcanology. In this episode we go over the long eruptive history of Mount Saint Helens, as well as the events on that fateful day in May 1980 and the volcanic activity afterwards.

One month ago Netflix released the new series Alien Worlds, which takes us to fictional planets and presents to us the speculative life forms inhabiting them. In this episode of the RockyTerrain Podcast we review each of the four episodes and have a general discussion about the science and overall production of season one.

All things come to an end, even a year like 2020. In geology, the end of an Earth period and subsequent beginning of a new one is called a transition, so we gave a fitting name to this final episode of the year. We decided to do something different and talk about how we experienced 2020 at our university. The current situation influenced the usual routine severely, as it did everywhere. Nevertheless, this year had a couple of welcome opportunities in store for us, which we could not be any more thankful for. Going forward this is going to be our regular format for the final episode of the year.

What happens when a sleeping volcano suddenly awakens and threatens a nearby city? This is the question the movie Dante's Peak is centered around. So we sat down and watched Pierce Brosnan as a masterminded geologist whilst eagerly taking notes. Along the way, we encountered a surprisingly good and accurate portrayal of volcanology, as well as a not so realistic eruption and plot armor capable of taking multiple direct hits from a battleship main battery.

This episode is the second part of our look at the incompleteness of the rock record. This time around, Denis will talk about the fossil record, which is equally patchy, but often for different reasons. Finally, we discuss why scientists can still manage to piece together the story of our planet and, by extension, the story of life - the story of everyone of us.

In the second episode of the RockyTerrain podcast we talk about a problem geologists encounter regularly when trying to reconstruct the past - the incomplete rock record. In this first of two episodes dedicated to this topic, we explore what makes the rock record as patchy as it is. Additionally , Thomas gives "SOME" insight into why the rocky archive of other planets can be altered in completely different ways than here on Earth.

In this first episode of the Rocky Terrain Podcast, we talk about who the hell we are, why we started this project, and about our ideas for its future. We also discuss Earth Sciences, the discipline the podcast is going to be centered around.