Its the start of Season 2!! Time for Basaltic plinian eruptions, melt inclusions, viscosity and more. Today we going to head into one of my papers!

Because it’s one of my papers that means heading back to volcanology. Like other historical scientists covered here on Whimsical wavelengths I will follow where the data is pointing. Follow the path.

When I was planning my PhD, yes I was in the envious position of basically picking my projects, I knew I wanted to do more at Masaya Volcano. Masaya is however complicated. It is a unique volcano in many ways.

Here I'll focus on two things:

1. Masaya is persistently active. It has been in a perpetual state of unrest for 100’s of years. The last eruption of any significant amount was 1772 where it produced a lava flow from the central cone. Since that time there have been degassing, occasional lava lakes, and small vent clearing explosions. There is not many volcanoes on earth able to claim constant activity for 100’s of years.
2. It can have basaltic Plinian eruptions……

Basaltic plinian eruptions. For those who know a bit about volcanoes this may seem like an oxymoron.

Join the pod to find out all this apparent oxymoron!

Paper at the center of the episode:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0377027318303470

example Basaltic plinian eruptions at Masaya (there are lots but here is one):

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00585-5#:~:text=Las%20Sierras%2DMasaya%20volcanic%20system,%2DTIL)13%2C20.

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Time for someone who some have called the greatest scientist you have not heard of. Likely the reason average IQ's have no fallen (even if it feels like they have - idiocracy)!

This is the sibling episode to the last one. The rise of Leaded Gas. This time the story starts with Dr. Clair Patterson a geochemist. Before the PhD and discovering the age of the Earth, Clair Patterson and his wife Laurie (also a chemist) became civilians working on the Manhattan project. No not in New Mexico designing the bomb like depicted in the movie Oppenheimer. Instead they got to work on the problem of concentrating Uranium. A 235U electromagnetic separation plant (figure in the post!) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

From there on to a PhD. The following of the data lead to lead being everywhere. Before advocating for the elimination of lead he developed the first clean room and found the age of the earth by dating a meteorite (fragment of which is picture with the post). His work brought about the downfall of leaded gasoline. His story has been told many times before but probably not like this. Even if you already know the story I bet there is new nuggets here. Whimsical even....

So with the release of this episode, season 1 is done! Time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t.

Special thanks to those who did give me feedback throughout the year. It was needed. Embrace the terrible puns and jokes, don’t apologize for them! Was just one piece of advice I got.

And of course thanks to all the guests that agreed to come on the podcast! Some without any tie to someone I know and they took a chance to share their work. A unknown podcast showing up in an email or call out ask.

The next 3 eps will be encore additions. Some of my favourites from this inaugural season and then on September 15 season 2 will start!

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Today we are going to start to cover a real scientific disaster story. No it isn’t the hollywood variety although maybe it should be. We have the movie Oppenheimer although to tell the whole story here requires multiple main characters. Perhaps a TV series then. I have known I wanted to tell this story for some time but have struggled on the best way.

It starts at the gas pump and the question: Ever wondered why all pumps say “unleaded gas”? Or perhaps asked the question why would they need to? This is a story about scientific discovery, advocacy, environmentalism and corporate greed. The next sibling episode (they can stand alone) has direct ties to the manhattan project and the age of the Earth.

Covering a bit about the history of lead Flint, Michigan came up. Here are some links to see how that is still playing out however if you want to do a deep dive don't stop at just these two links!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/07/01/flint-lead-pipes-replacement/

https://eos.org/articles/flint-10-years-later

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Deformation and gravity go hand in hand in volcano monitoring like hot apple pie and icecream. They fit together great. as these two techniques tell us so much more together than separately.

This time I reached out to a friend to share her research!

Remember volcanic eruptions are dynamic. The amount of force and material involved in an eruption … Even if the eruption is small the changes can be significant to the overall system.

Volcanologists can see or image magma chambers that are close to the surface through a number of different monitoring techniques. Today we will focus on gravity and deformation. Mass flux and how the earth's surface moves in response to changes at depth!

Using what keeps us all attached to the ground's surface to monitor what is moving up towards us. This episode is full of hot material!

This time it is all about insects and their respiratory systems?! They represent so much of the biomass on earth.

Depending on the study and methods used there is more weight on earth within insects than humans. With over 8 billion humans and each of us weighs a lot more than an insect…… There are a lot of them. They form the backbone of many ecosystems.

Today though we will specifically focus on their respiratory system. How do they breathe? It is not like they have lungs like we do. Or gills like fish. I vaguely remember grade school biology and going over the number of legs and like.

You know what? I have never given it much thought. But now that I have …… I am intrigued!

Stealing the words from todays guest “With over 1 million identified species of insects, they’re a great vehicle for studying evolution There are all kinds of new things coming out of it, probably the most significant of which is flight”

So lets get into it! Time to follow the buzz to see if the Ant-ticipation i am chirping about is going to fly over our heads.

Please welcome Dr Hollister Herhold a Research Associate in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology, and Research Scientist in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City!

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There is so much we don’t understand about the early universe. Or any part of the universe not nearby. Part of the reason for this is time and distance. The universe as we understand/see it today started ~13.8 billion years ago.

So how do we test something that we cannot view or experience? The evolution of galaxies takes place over billions of years. We cannot track its changes over the eons because human history is in the thousands of years and observations of the deep cosmos can be measured in decades. Yes we can see many snapshots of different galaxies at different points on their evolution but how to connect them on their journey?

One way is to model physics or physical processes. Put everything in as we understand into a mathematical framework. Run the code or the “model” and see if it matches what we see in our observations. We do this type of exercise with many many different scientific disciplines including my own (geophysics).

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The Earth is dynamic. All of it. Plate tectonics, weather, ocean currents, biosphere, cryosphere, extraterrestrial like solar events, meteorites, nearby supernovae

And on and on and on

But the seas are constant right? I mean that they exist. They have almost always existed. No I am not going back to Porto oceans some 4 billion years ago! I am referring to the mediterranean! I hope you are up for a salty tale of disappearing sea.

This episode is all me. Because I like this topic, I have enough background to tell the story after digging through the literature, and wanted to spin this whimsical yarn in a different way than an interview.

Why is the Mediterranean Sea so confident?

• Because it’s always making waves!

But there was a time where nearly the whole mediterranean basin dried up! Called Messinian salinity crisis.

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Welcome back to Part 2 of Gravitational lenses on Whimsical Wavelengths. In part 2 we finally get to the real star of the show, strong gravitational lensing and the paper that was underlying the topic.

“Euclid: A complete Einstein ring in NGC 6505 “

A lot less to setup this time. No need to stretch this out like gravity stretches time.

But.....

How did gravity stop the reckless driver?

It pulled some strings… mainly the ones holding the car to the road.

Before everything gets pulled downhill, time to jump in Please welcome back Dr Georgios Vernardos!

Paper at the center the this episode:

https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/02/aa53014-24/aa53014-24.html

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