Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Testing Venus - Preview to Interview with Professor Martha Gilmore

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Testing Venus - Preview to Interview with Professor Martha Gilmore · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: We recently had the pleasure of interviewing another exceptional geoscientist who is truly at the top of the game.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: Dr.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: Martha Gilmore is the George Seney Professor of Geoscience at Wesleyan University, and she is widely regarded as one of the true Venus experts in the world.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: Venus is super interesting for many, many reasons, and Dr.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Gilmore's expertise and enthusiasm is really just infectious.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: Today we have a preview to the full interview with Dr.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: Gilmore, so stay tuned next week for a longer discussion about Venus, a couple of exciting new NASA missions, and Dr.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: Gilmore's path into the geosciences.
• 0:55
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• 0:58
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• 1:00
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• 1:03
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• 1:08
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• 1:11
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• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy okay, Marty.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um so in order for you to study you know the rocks and the atmosphere in Venus, you have to replicate these conditions in a lab, right?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is that correct?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's correct.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right, how do you do that?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, can you paint a picture for us on how how in the world do you replicate Venus conditions?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's a nasty planet.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so on that note, didn't the Russian landers that you were just talking about, didn't they only last for like a half an hour or 45 minutes or something?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: Or am I getting the time frames way off?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, an hour and a half was the longest one.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: And that's just because of the chemical reactivity of the planet, or is it the pressure?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's the heat.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's the heat.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's the heat.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: They basically built a thermos bottle, and an hour and a half was the time it took for the thermos material to be overwhelmed.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: We call it dying, it died a heat death.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds horrible.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: It does sound horrible.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's funny, Chris, when you said, Oh, we're gonna, you know, we have all this time before these missions launch.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, there are a lot of rocks that we haven't yet studied under Venus conditions in the lab, because it takes a long time for a rock to like do its thing.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So in my lab, I have furnaces.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have three named Harriet, Ida, and Opal.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they those are good names.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a story behind those?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: There is, but I'm not gonna I uh three women whom I I respect.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I just turn it up to Venus temperature, I put little minerals in there, and then I flow Venus gases through there, the four primary gases of the Venus atmosphere, and I cook them and I see what happens.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the nice part about that is that it's relatively simple.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: The bad part is that it's not all the gases and it's not at pressure, but to have a pressure vessel is really hard.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so how how big are these furnaces?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my furnaces are are like I I know, I we're on a podcast.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're like as big as a like a really big, like a toolbox, I guess I would say.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So rectangular shaped, rectangular shaped, and so two feet long, one feet wide, you know, something like that.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Something like that.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the rocks are in glass tubes, they're in quartz tubes, and then we flow the gas through the tube, and the little minerals just sit there and are gassed on for the longest we've run so far is 90 days, because it takes a while for a mineral to react within an atmosphere.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we see what happened.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: We just look at it before and we look at it after, and we say, Ah, look at that.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have predictions as to what what might happen, but as many geoscientists, especially geochemists know, theory and experiment do not always that is really interesting.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: I I just had a thought that I've never had before.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: What is a rock?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: Is that what you were thinking, Chris?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: What is a rock made of it?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good one, Jesse.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good one.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you take these rocks that formed, let's say basalt, right?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you expose that rock to these conditions, the change that must happen, these rocks might be completely different now than they were.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they probably are.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So what do they look like?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: What would an ancient granite look like if it's been weathered under these conditions?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because the sulfur is the main aggressor.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have to go into the realm of like, okay, it's not uh it's oxidizing, but it's also making sulfur is doing all the damage.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So in Cleveland at NASA Glen Research Center, they have a giant pressure chamber that is the world's best at putting things in at Venus temperature pressure with nine Venus gases and seeing what comes out.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um why don't you have one of these?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's the question.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Chris is just asking really just interesting questions right now.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's huge.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like an airplane hanger size vessel.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: She's sending two probes to Venus.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what else do you want her to do?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think Dr.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Martha Gilmore needs one of these.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: I can't handle one of those.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I can't, it's too complicated.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I like my little uh Harriet, Opal and Ida are fine for me, and they allow me to change things up.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's gotta be fun though, to do that.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Seriously, that to play in the lab like that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're not playing, you're you're you're doing real, you know, scientific research, but that also has to, there's gotta be a fun side to it.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, my friend uh Darby Dyer is a professor at Mount Holyoke.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: She just sent me a bag of olivine today.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like literally a bag.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, I'm like, I need some olivine.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, how does she want?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, ah, a cup.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And she just came in the mail.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's just so beautiful.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is it sand?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's it's like little uh little like nuggets.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's uh yeah.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So so cool.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like little pebbles.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Gonna see what happens to the olivine, aren't you?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I have to grind, grind it and sieve it, but yeah.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: That is very cool.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: Very cool.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: All right, that's a wrap.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: Tune in next week for the full interview with Professor Martha Gilmore.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: We are at Planet Geocast.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: And please do leave us a review on your podcast app.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: We really appreciate it.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: Take care.