Don Hood and Allison Barbato on Mineral Connections
What information about Mars is locked in minerals on Earth? How can we learn about possible life on Mars from these Earth minerals? Don Hood, Ph.D. Candidate and Allison Barbato, B.S., members of LSU’s Planetary Science Lab in the Department of Geology & Geophysics, are heading to Sri Lanka to investigate serpentine mineral deposits to learn more about their formation and possible links to the serpentine minerals discovered on Mars. They share with us aspects of their upcoming research trip, why your support is needed, and skills they have each gained along their geology careers to ensure a successful mission. (Transcript below.)
Listen to the full episode below, and subscribe to LSU Experimental on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, TuneIn or anywhere you get your podcasts.
Transcript
Becky Carmichael
[0:00] This is LSU Experimental, where we explore exciting research occurring at Louisiana State University, and learn about the individuals posing the questions. I'm Becky Carmichael and joining us today are two members of the Department of Geology Planetary Science lab, Don Hood, current Ph.D. candidate, and Allison Barbados, a recent graduate from the College of Science and CxC, distinguished communicator, Allison and Don are seeking support for their upcoming research trip to Sri Lanka, where they hope to uncover properties of serpentine minerals, clues to the formation of the minerals, including potential life forms that were present, and the connection of serpentine minerals here on Earth, to those that have been discovered on Mars..
Tell me the story of this project.
Don Hood
[0:51] There's an interesting chronological start, I think. My advisor is is from Sri Lanka. And he had some collaborators and people that were applying to be his students and people that he was in contact with in the country, and we had one that we were meeting with. And he mentioned he was traveling to a region called Ussangoda, which is where one of these serpentine outcrops is, and he was going there for to show students. And I happened to be in a class where part of the class project was to analyze a rock sample. And since we are a planetary science lab, we didn't really have one lying around that was super relevant to my research, since we don't have any samples for Mars yet except for the meteorites. But anyway, we we happen to be on a Skype call with him. And I just said, Hey, can you send us some, you're going to go to this cool place? Why don't you send us some. And he did. And that's what I did my class project on. But ever since we got our hands on those samples, and started looking at them, we've been really interested by them. Serpentine rocks are just, they're cool, kind of on their own. They're interesting rocks to look at. But these were have weird amounts of heavy metals, they have cobalt, locked in some of the minerals. That's kind of weird. So there's always little interesting features. And as I wrote the report, because when I got the samples, I knew nothing about the location, I was just like, it's a cool rock. But as I wrote the report, to understand the context of the samples, I learned that there really wasn't much. People hadn't done the research to figure out where these things came from, and how they fit into the rest of the geology of that country. There's some basic stuff, a lot of it was done in the late 80s. But there hasn't been a whole lot done since then. So that's when we kind of figured out there was a little bit of a hole here in terms of the knowledge of the world and so that we can contribute to.
Becky Carmichael
[2:53] Allison, when you first heard about this project, what was the project? And why did it draw you in? What was it about it.
Allison Barbato
[3:02] Well I think, what was interesting about it for me, so I have always had an interest in minerals, and all of my research has kind of stemmed off of you know, my interest in mineralogy, and things like that. And of course, that's where I first met Don. But so what kind of drew me to this project was that when <inaudible> pitched it to me, he was talking about the serpentine kind of is saying, Hey, we can use this mineral to connect an earthly process that, you know, we see here on Earth, and we can tie it to process that we see on Mars. So it's kind of like this mineral is kind of like a holy grail, if you will, you know that we could study, you know, earthly processes, Martian processes, and you know, kind of advance the science going on in Sri Lanka. So it was it tapped on all these really interesting parts for me. I think that's really kind of what drew me in.
Becky Carmichael
[3:45] Very cool. So I don't know if I've ever seen serpentine. Tell me. How do you describe it? What does it look like? Can you give me some characteristics about like, if somebody is walking along? What would they see?
Allison Barbato
[4:00] So it's green, just for starters, it's definitely green. So serpentine is usually it's a secondary mineral. So it will come after another mineral called olivine, it's a mantle mineral. And so it can form in veins, you know, can just form in these massive deposits. So you, I mean, you can see it kind of forming in multiple different types of ways. But I mean, usually it's going to be a green and green mineral.
Don Hood
[4:20] Yeah, it's sometimes it's a little brown on the surface, because of because the weather's that way. And there is some iron in it. So that can happen. But it's, it's, there's a lot of range in the color of green, there's sort of the ones we have are pretty bright, I would say yeah, green, but I've seen some that are very dark green. And it's really soft, as another thing, which is part of the reason why it's kind of hard to find is it doesn't really last long at the surface, it weathers away pretty quickly.
Allison Barbato
[4:52] Even, really deep serpentine can have chromite pods, and so it's like these smaller, dark, green little splotches with...
Don Hood
[4:59] Yeah, almost black most of the time.
Allison Barbato
[5:00] Yeah.
Becky Carmichael
[5:01] So kind of end up looking this green color. Like, when I think of tones like olive or I'm thinking, would I be like maybe fern-ish colors? Like those kinds of greens?
Don Hood
[5:13] It's a little it's a little unnatural. It doesn't like olive green, and like Leaf Green is like a natural color. It's a little more harsher than that. Yeah, it's like I don't say maybe like, like Green Bay Packers green.
Becky Carmichael
[5:32] Oh, wow. That would be like really stand out to you when you're walking.
Don Hood
[5:37] Yeah. Sometimes it's not that dark, some can be lighter. But it's, it's a hard green. But yeah, it kind of looks like a Dalmatian <inaudible>. The black speckles It looks like a Dalmatian if the Dalmatian was green, but it's still got the black spots.
Becky Carmichael
[5:52] So that, that helps I can see the Green Bay Packers Dalmatian <inaudible>. So, you've mentioned that, you know, this is this particular mineral that you're going to be using to connect processes. What is it about serpentine this mineral that allows you to connect these processes?
Don Hood
[6:17] Well, we see the we see the mineral on Mars, serpentine, on Mars, and one of the things, there's really not a whole lot of different ways to make serpentine you need a magnesium rich mineral to start with. So Allison mentioned olivine, which is definitely common, but there's a couple others it can be. But you need to start with a magnesium rich source. And you need to pump it full of tons of water, it takes tons and tons of water to make serpentine. And there's all sorts of cool components about it. But But you, you're limited in that way. And you also have to be at kind of low temperatures to. It's not you have some geologic processes are going on it. Seven, eight or 900 degrees centigrade, which is really hot, but serpentine, generally you're below four or 500. So it's a little bit, it's kind of a low temperature thing going on. So all that to say, the one way we know how to make serpentine as a mineral, is a way that involves a habitable environment. That's the important thing. So the fact that we have those minerals, means there was at least habitable conditions to make them. We have really poor constraints right now and how long it lasted or when it was or how, you know, how much of an area was actually in that state. But, you know, at least some small tiny part for some geologically short amount of time was habitable.
Becky Carmichael
[8:02] When you say habitable? Are we thinking large organisms, small organisms? What are you kind of hypothesizing might have been able to inhabit this area? Or can you even do that at this point?
Don Hood
[8:15] Well, these definitely would have been microbes. This is not we're not talking about a beaver or something. This is deep underground, you know, it's still 400 degrees centigrade, that's really hot for anything, that's not a, you know, a really small thing. And, and when we say habitable, what we really mean is that it's got the three key ingredients, it's got water, heat, and something for the microbe to eat. So not necessarily food as we think of it, but geochemical pathways, where you can transfer energy out of the environment and into your, whatever your organism is, that that's food based in a most fundamental sense. So it's got those components, so it can support some little things.
Allison Barbato
[9:02] Yeah. And I think like, what, what we should probably touch on is just that when serpentine forms that will produce hydrogen as a byproduct, which is very important for any metabolic reactions. So that's kind of the crux of the importance of serpentine is that it can support possibly microbial life, because it provides that energy source as the hydrogen.
Becky Carmichael
[9:18] And so are these things that, you know, with the serpentine that's been discovered and found on earth? What can you draw from its formation?
Don Hood
[9:27] I think the biggest thing here is that we know very little about the ones we have on Mars, we the ones on Earth, not the one that we are going to go explore. But other ones that are much like it, we know a lot about we know exactly where they came from, and conditions they experience and so on. But the living if we're talking about comparison, the limiting factor is how little we know about the ones on Mars, we basically just know that they're there. And they're old. That's, that's pretty much it.
Allison Barbato
[9:58] That's true.
Becky Carmichael
[9:59] And you know them from the samples from that have been already been collected through the NASA missions, correct?
Don Hood
[10:05] It's from particularly the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer from Mars (CRISM) instrument that is the one that has made detections. I don't I haven't read any detections by other instruments. There are a couple others that might be able to, but the one I'm thinking of is with that instrument.
Becky Carmichael
[10:24] And so you just said that there's some serpentines that you that we know about on Earth a little bit more detail. What are some things that you think make that serpentine interesting to study?
Allison Barbato
[10:35]
Well, something that we had talked about was that the serpentines there are, they're pretty old. So they're around 600 million years old. So they're definitely relatively undisturbed. So what's good about Sri Lanka is that a lot of it was eroded away, and then it is it's separated from India. And so it wasn't, again, like altered by any flood basalt by neighboring continents and things like that. So it kind of has his own little preserved unique area where the serpentines are present there. And it's not, you know, there's not too much known about it, but they're very old, we want to study the oldest ones that we can to basically tell us anything about Mars. So...
Don Hood
[11:11] I think the biggest the biggest missing piece is how, in where these serpentinites came from, we know that they're made with we know we've been saying mantle minerals, that's we don't know that they came from the mantle. There are other ways to form them. They are just commonly found in the mantle. And that's kind of the question the two main ways you could get serpentines here. One of them is by literally getting material from the mantle and bringing it all the way up to the surface through tectonic forces and erosion and, and all that. The other way is possibly some kind of ultramafic volcanism. So something called a layered mafic intrusion is a possibility, essentially, some sort of magmatic activity where you had very, very magnesium and iron rich magmas that got sent higher up into the crust than you would normally expect. And then those would probably come from the mantle. But it's the difference of either taking melt that came from the mantle, shooting it up into the crust, and then having serpentines up there, or taking solid mantle rock and bringing it up as a piece and bring and bringing that up to the surface.
Becky Carmichael
[12:33] And just to clarify, so anybody who's listening may not be a geologist, when you're talking about you said, layered, is it morphic?
Don Hood
[12:42] Mafic.
Becky Carmichael
[12:42] Mafic, compared to kind of the typical volcanic activity that we see or we know this might be going on in Hawaii at this point, is this kind of what we're, is that a similar thing that they could have in them in mind of how you're potentially saying this is one versus another form of volcanic activity.
Don Hood
[13:03] I think if we put the chemistry aside for a moment, in terms, if we put the composition, off to the side, just layered mafic intrusion think of a volcano that doesn't go off, you get lava, that or magma, that comes up, and it doesn't necessarily reach the surface, it reaches some part of the subsurface, that could be a few kilometers deep, it could be 10s of kilometers deep. But then it stops. It stays there, and it cools there, and then forms this body in the earth that maybe gets eroded and uplifted later.
Becky Carmichael
[13:35] And through that tectonic plate movement, you kinda...
...then that can be pushed up further. What are you really excited about for this
particular project? On a personal research level? For your own science, your own interests?
What do you what do you both really excited about?
Don Hood
[13:37] Yes.
Allison Barbato
[13:55] Um, I think, I think honestly, looking at the certainty in the field, you know, and just being able to try and characterize them, so I was talking about it with Don serpentines will fluoresce under blue light, like that. And so, you know, this was just an interesting avenue that I went down, but, you know, I kind of, you know, I'm excited to bring out, you know, a hand lens with me with a black light, you know, check out these serpentines, and really just better characterizing them. And, you know, especially being able to tell anything about them based on their microscopic textures, you know, whenever we come back, I think, you know, that's the exciting part is really just being able to, like, better characterize them and just look at something that no one else has really looked at and characterize the way that we're going to do that. So, you know,
Don Hood
[14:38] I mean, I think I'm in a similar boat, one of the one of the things that I so I started in physics, and I moved into geology, and specifically planetary science. And I think the thing that brought me there was, because as geologists, and as planetary scientists, possibly even more, so we get to discover things, we get to find stuff that people haven't found before, be it you know, new images of Pluto surface that we've never ever had before, or, you know, another moon of Jupiter or something. Who knows? And so these rocks in Sri Lanka, a lots known about them, but a lot isn't, there's a lot of room to discover something totally new here. And maybe it will be totally normal. Maybe we'll go there and be like, Oh, this is the boringest serpentine outcrop in the entire world, but I highly doubt it. And, and but that's, that's we're discovering we're going out and finding something new. And that's. That's cool. That's just that's why scientists do science, right?
Becky Carmichael
[15:41] Absolutely. It's, I mean, the opportunity to be in the field somewhere and being able to explore, be able to go out and connect with others, and then just really get to the point to be able to get dirty and find something and just really test those questions is exciting. So I did want to ask you both a little bit about your backgrounds. So what is in your backgrounds, your own research that is going to help prepare you for going out and having a successful trip to undo this collection? What skills are you bringing to the table that are going to help you?
Allison Barbato
[16:17] I have had so I've worked in a bunch of different labs before. So I started researching my sophomore year actually in the same lab throwback. And so I started characterizing Martian soils to the best of my ability at that time, and jumped around a little bit worked in a sedimentology kind of an Earth processes group, looking at different grain sizes, and things like that. And then I went to a hard rock lab where I did metamorphic geology. And so that was, that was where I really started to look at minerals and things. And I started to characterize minerals, you know, I really started to kind of hone in on my interest in mineralogy, in general. And so I think that, you know, the skills that I bring to the table here, it's just my, my love for minerals, my enthusiasm for it, and just, you know, be being able to characterize these serpentines in a way that, you know, we haven't been able to do as well, you know, people haven't really done that as much in the past. And just to get, you know, just to get my eye on them, you know what I mean? And just take a look at them that way.
Becky Carmichael
[17:13] So you've already you've already had experience doing field work as well. So being able to go out and navigate and...
Allison Barbato
[17:21] Oh, yes.
Becky Carmichael
[17:22] ...be able to get to go in and do the rigorous work, you're going to, you've already done similar things, right. So it's not that's not foreign to?
Allison Barbato
[17:31] No, no, and I mean, especially just getting the opportunity to go out there, and especially with Don, and, you know, pick what samples we want to look at, you know, and say, Hey, this is this is a great place to, you know, get some serpentine samples here, you know, and possibly find new deposits that haven't been found yet. So, and I think that was one of the huge pieces of this project was to revisit, you know, in these sites and see, you know, what else can we add, you know, to what's already been done.
Becky Carmichael
[17:54] And Don, before you say something you I want to hear about kind of your journey, your background, that's, that's helping you prepare? Allison, you just mentioned, the sites? Have you already figured out the site, the locations to go to has, have you had you've had assistance in figuring this out? or Or is this going to be something you all are getting? You're getting ready to figure out here in the process of figuring out where to go?
Allison Barbato
[18:17] That's a it's a work in progress.
Don Hood
[18:18] Yeah, it's been, it's been interesting to find. So we know, we know the names of the sites and where we want to go. But this is sort of, I would say, it's kind of like, you know, getting directions in Louisiana. It's not as if someone says it's people know where they are, and they can tell you where they are. But you want coordinates on a map? You want something like
Allison Barbato
[18:42] It's just hasn't been well documented? Is the real problem,
Don Hood
[18:44] ...maybe that's not around.
Becky Carmichael
[18:47] So yeah, so you've got you've got some kind of things like maybe some, you've got to navigate a little bit and utilize the local expertise to help connect. Yeah, awesome. That's gonna be fun part of the discovery. So Don, tell me, what are some things that are going to help you prepare for successfully completing this project?
Don Hood
[19:08] So I think the biggest thing for me, or the biggest thing I bring to the table is the remote sensing perspective. That's the work that I'm used to doing on Mars, where everything is from a satellite, and we only have three or four things on the ground, running at any given time. So I'm accustomed to that view from above. And I, a lot of what I've been doing up to this point has been actually trying to figure out where these things are, we have rough coordinates from our collaborators. And I've been able to narrow that down and in find them on Google Earth and things like that. But the big next step for me is looking at better images and better different kinds of images than what you have through something like Google Earth, and start to really understand what the extent of these outcrops is. That's one thing. People know where they are. And they've sampled the soils. But how big is it really? Is it just this one spot that's half a kilometer wide? Or is there another one over there that no one found just because there were too many trees on it or something. So that's really bringing, bringing that and bringing that top down view. And for me going into the field, the biggest thing is being able to unite that satellite view and that ground view and bring them together. That's kind of what I'm excited about. And that's, that's the biggest thing for me.
Becky Carmichael
[20:36] What are some other things that you're really excited about venturing into this country? And and the possibilities?
Allison Barbato
[20:43] Well, we're definitely excited about scuba diving.
Don Hood
[20:45] Yeah, we're gonna try and do that.
Becky Carmichael
[20:47] Very nice. What else? What are some other things you're excited?
Don Hood
[20:50] I mean, I I hate to be such as like, stereotypical millennial, but the food and the, the people there, just the culture and being, you know, really, really being there experiencing that, because I think, in part, I've lived in a lot of cities, and I've met a lot of people that are from southern India, and that part of the world. But you know, meeting people, and even spending time with their families is not the same as really going there. So I'm really looking forward to that.
Allison Barbato
[21:24] And I think also seeing a part of Sri Lanka that not many people may be able to see to, and you're going to pretty remote locations also. So it's going to definitely give us a unique perspective that we wouldn't have probably seen otherwise.
Becky Carmichael
[21:35] That to me is that rich interaction, that intimate view, that then also connects with back to how are you going to be able to complete the work and having having this connections, having the people on the ground that can support you both in discovery of the serpentine locations, but also in the culture? And I don't think that's a bad thing to say that you want to go and test the food. I'm all with you. Anytime I'm like, we can go here. It's like, what am I going to get? Yeah, what what kind of food? Try? That brings me to kind of this big picture. So for this project that you're seeking support to do? Why should someone support this project? Can you tell me tell us a couple of things that are really important big picture issues? Why? Why should we care?
Allison Barbato
[22:25] Well, I mean, we want this work to be possibly foundational to many other projects. So it's not just, we want to go here and do this one thing for this one time, we want to get samples, but also, you know, what, what can we contribute to the pool of scientific knowledge on certain teams on earth? And what can they mean for serpentine on Mars? So you know, it's not just a one, you know, small project, we want this to build into something much bigger than just this one trip?
Don Hood
[22:51] Yeah, I would say it's, it's way more than just a research project, it's way more than someone's dissertation or thesis or something like that. And as Allison said, perfectly, we're contributing to the scientists there in that field. But I think Sri Lanka is, is in a position where they have people that are they're doing science and geology and and I'm sure there's even more going on that's outside my field that I'm not very aware of their, they're there, and they're excited and doing cool stuff. And the more we can bring attention to that, and bring them into the larger international community of science. That is, that brings, of course, that brings, you know, funding to them. That but that also brings greater interest in science, and that inspire students, and then students love science, and they get excited about it. And maybe they become scientists, maybe they don't, but they, you start to make those investments, and you start to really build into something really great. I mean, when you invest in sciences, when you invest in scientists and doing the research, you know, it doesn't just go into science, we're not gonna make a bunch of geologists, there's going to be biologists, doctors, engineers, astronauts, who knows, all these things are going to are going to start with people doing cool science that they share with others, especially young people and get them excited.
Becky Carmichael
[24:26] So for those that are interested in following along on your journey, where can they go? How can they follow you? What platforms can they go to, to kind of see the process of this, this project?
Don Hood
[24:41] I think if you're plugged into the the various LSU channels of science communication, so the College of Science on Twitter, and I believe on Instagram, as well. But most directly, we have our own Twitter account for our lab that is @LSUplanetary, and everything well, that's probably where everything will start. And then anything that comes from somewhere else, for LSU College of Science or wherever else, it'll come back to there. So the @LSUplanetary Twitter account is the place to hear about all that.
Becky Carmichael
[25:19] Awesome. Is there anything else that you would want someone who listens to be aware of or to tell them anything else that you could think of that? You want to make sure it gets out there?
Don Hood
[25:32] There's cool things happening. And maybe, maybe we should get a little more coverage of that widespread because it gets a little doom and gloomy sometimes. But there's a cool stuff happening. You know, there's, we are just two people doing this project. And it's a very cool project. It's very exciting. But I'm sure there's hundreds of other people at this university and at every other university doing equally cool things. So it's out there, and you can go find it. And hopefully, you can go support it.
Becky Carmichael
[26:00] You both are getting ready to go on this adventure. It's an around the world adventure into a new area, you're going to be meeting new people. And you're going to be doing scientific research in the field, which inevitably has issues. What's your plan for mitigating any issues that happen? And have you in the past had to MacGyver your way into collecting data?
Don Hood
[26:27] Okay, I have an answer for that one, that last one, because it was one of the things I was going to share for the other question, but I will share it now.
Becky Carmichael
[26:33] Share your MacGyver moment.
Don Hood
[26:35] So this is the MacGyver moment. And I actually I tell the story a lot, because I think there's a perception of scientists, that is, you know, not really a bad thing. But you know, lab coats and scientists and pouring vials of things into other vials of things and all that and it's all and then also you have maybe Big Bang Theory, these people that are very nerdy and all that. But once we were in the field in Hawaii, and what we were trying to do was measure the width of some craters that are there. They're volcanic, but they're not like the caldera. They're smaller ones. It's on chain of craters road if you want to go visit, which can't right now, because it's kind of on fire. But if you go down that road, there's there's a little crater called the Devil's Throat, and I say little is about 50 feet wide. And it's a lot deeper. And I say that because we wanted to measure the depth. But we didn't, we had a Laser Ranging device that couldn't reach more than 50 feet. So we actually couldn't measure the diameter all the way, we had to sort of measure chords and figure it out from there. But we had trig we had that on our side. But we couldn't...
Becky Carmichael
[27:46] Take math people.
Don Hood
[27:47] I know, right. But we couldn't measure it to the bottom because it was I think we ended up getting maybe 90 feet deep with the way they were doing it. So we couldn't measure the bottom and we couldn't, you know, measure from the top to the bottom corner, we couldn't measure the bottom as well, because it wasn't safe, we couldn't get close to the edge of this thing because it was kind of crumbling. So we couldn't just go hang over the middle and point it down. So we left for that day and stopped by a hardware store and got some string and a metal like a link of chain, like metal chain. And then we came back the next day, tied the string on to the chain and threw it into the crater holding the other end of the string. And then when it hit the bottom, we sort of straighten it up a little bit and drew a sharpie line on it. And just and then pulled it up. And we did that a couple times. And then when we got back to the hotel at the hospital later that night, we literally we measured with 10 feet down on the ground with tape. And then we just sort of ran it back and forth. We just walked out 10 feet and Okay, that's 10, 20, 30... and just walked it out. And that's how we got the depth.
Becky Carmichael
[29:01] Oh my gosh. See, that's amazing.
Don Hood
[29:05] It was I don't take credit for the idea. It was Jr's idea who was who's leading the trip. But that was just like we needed a measurement. And you just didn't know how long it is. So just throw something heavy in there. It worked.
Becky Carmichael
[29:20] I love this. So did you have like a margin of error based on the crumbly like sides?
Don Hood
[29:26] No we weren't, we didn't get that precise with it. We just we measured it at three points and ran with that. We did however, try to have a contest on who could guess the depth best. So we measured it with the string. And then we said we kind of all just said like, Well, how do we do we think it is. And it was actually really funny because it was me and two other students and the the guy who was leading it, and we all kind of took different approaches on it. So I actually threw rocks and tried to time how long it took the rocks to fall and calculate the depth. You can hear him right? Yes, I can I can hear him hitting the bottom. I tried to do it that way. I way overestimated, because I didn't take the air into account. I mean, I knew it wasn't I just thought it would try. And then the other I can't remember what the other two students did. But we all tried to guess it are different ways. And of course the guy was leading the expedition got it right because he was the postdoc. So he knew what he was doing.
Becky Carmichael
[30:21] That's cool. Okay, so you are prepared to go to Sri Lanka. And if you need to, you could use string and, and a sharpie and you can figure some things out. You can you can think.
Don Hood
[30:34] Yeah, I mean, you can do something.
Becky Carmichael
[30:37] This is cool.
Allison Barbato
[30:38] Wow. Excellent story. I can't follow that up.
Don Hood
[30:46] Yes, you can.
Allison Barbato
[30:48] In the name of science. Oh, my gosh.
Becky Carmichael
[30:50] Have you had your your MacGyver moment?
Allison Barbato
[30:53] It's just like, I know, I know that I have. I feel like I've just been caught in more of just like, not necessarily situations like, I haven't been in the kind of situations that are like struggling to get data, I was just kinda in situations that I was like struggling for just like general safety.
Becky Carmichael
[31:09] Okay. That bleeds into that whole craziest, dangerous, weirdest moment.
Allison Barbato
[31:16] Exactly. I was out in the field. And this was in Colorado, and I was with a partner. And so that, you know, there's always this lingering thing in the background that says, hey, you know, if you ever caught a lightning storm, you know, throw your hammer? Because you don't we walk around with these huge hammers. And obviously, pretty high up you don't want to be gotten this lightning storm,
Don Hood
[31:35] You're not supposed to hold it up like Thor?
Allison Barbato
[31:37] I mean, you can you can try and before but his chin, you know?
Becky Carmichael
[31:40] Yeah.
Allison Barbato
[31:42]
And whenever you're up in the mountains, you know, you can just have these changing weather conditions pretty quickly. And so we're up, you know, just probably about as high up as we could be. And, you know, we kind of reached the top and we see that there's just these clouds that are just starting to build up. We're out of range on our radio to hear some other people that we were with. And so they had given off a bunch of warnings about getting down off the off the top of the mountain. It's hard to get down, things like that. And so, as soon as we saw these clouds started to build up, we said, okay, we need to get down immediately. And lightning started. You know, we I mean, it was it was scary. That was probably the scariest situation I've ever been in and I did throw my hammer, I absolutely threw my hammer and it started raining and and my partner that I was with was also just terrified. But we knew that we had to get down. And so we started running and we just we just hauled it, you know, and lightning, I mean, that's the closest that I've ever been to any of it. I mean, it was it was very scary. But um, yeah, we started running went all the way down. And it was slippery too I mean, the sides that we were on very slippery and you know, in your shoes can only do so much for you. And at that point, you know, you're just, it was just a total disaster. But ultimately, we did get down to the base of the mountain, you know, we ran we were running. And I think the funniest part of it was that when I looked down I just had it just I had uprooted a cactus sitting in my calf. And I just did not realize it until we were at the bottom. And I was like, yeah, that's adrenaline for you.
Becky Carmichael
[33:12] Did you have like, pants on?
Allison Barbato
[33:14] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But you know, in Colorado, you just, and especially, I was not really paying attention, honestly. And they have these cactuses that they'll be uprooted pretty easily. But it was just stuck right there. And it was, you know, a trophy, if you will.
Becky Carmichael
[33:29] That is not the kind of trophy that I want. I was also thinking about, you know, once you start running, and if you're on that particular type of slope and it starts to get wet, that you basically you end up sliding and praying that there's no snakes that are going to be in your path.
Allison Barbato
[33:43] Oh yeah.
Becky Carmichael
[33:44] You know, to bite you?
Allison Barbato
[33:45] Oh, yeah.
Becky Carmichael
[33:46] Because I've had a couple of moments like that. And I'm like, okay, no, I don't need to see that. Okay, so...
Allison Barbato
[33:54] We did get some samples from the top of the mountain. Before we got down.
Don Hood
[33:57] Did you get your hammer back?
Allison Barbato
[33:58] No, I ordered one on Amazon. Thank you amazon prime shout out to you guys.
Becky Carmichael
[34:04] Okay, so....
Don Hood
[34:05] So you took it very serious...
Allison Barbato
[34:06] Oh, I threw it. That thing was not near my body.
Becky Carmichael
[34:11] My gosh.
Okay, so safety precautions you're going to review those before you travel.
Allison Barbato
[34:16] I guess so, It's worth it.
Don Hood
[34:16] Sure.
I'll share another this is I think I feel dumb about this more than anything else.
Yeah, it wasn't particularly dangerous. But it was just silly. So we were this was
recently this back in December. We were trying to do a geophysical survey in Louisiana.
And you may recall last December, it did something weird in Louisiana. It snowed.
And we went out in the field right after it snowed, which was Yeah, I did not I was
planning this whole thing. And snow was not at all on my radar things I should plan
for. Actually,
Becky Carmichael
[34:52] You got out and drove with the rest of Louisiana.
Don Hood
[34:56] This was a couple days after it It snowed so the roads were okay. The highway type roads were okay. The dirt roads on this property. We're not this we actually wrote a blog about this some some back. So in the LSU science blog, it's, it's in there somewhere. But I didn't put this part in the blog. So we're out there. And it's we were the first people to get to the property, I think since it had snowed. So, you know, any new features of the property were ours to discover. And one of the features that we discovered were trees falling across the road. And this is in pretty this is in St. Helena, Parish, so there wasn't it's very dense forest. So the tree across the road is just you can't go that way anymore. There was no way around. So me and the other guy who was with me, were the first we had kind of two teams. And we were the first one to get in there. And we were just looking at this tree like well, we can't, might be able to drive over it. But we've got to get this piece of technology, the GPR over it, that's not going to work. So I'm going to do and, you know, I think I just want I'm using my smart brain I could have like just like broke my car to it and just pulled it right out. But instead I was like, we can just push it let's lift it Come on. And we It was hard, it was still pretty much in the ground. And we almost made fools of ourselves like slopping around in this sort of cold icy mud trying to push this thing. But we did eventually get it a just through sheer. We we I'm not coming out this far and not getting any data just wench the thing out of the ground, and threw it to the side. Yeah.
Becky Carmichael
[36:32] So determination is on both your sides.
Don Hood
[36:34] Yes.
Becky Carmichael
[36:34] In collecting the data. Because even in the shear areas, you could be struck by lightning. You got your samples, you've gone and just didn't let that tree.
Don Hood
[36:44] Yeah.
Becky Carmichael
[36:45] That this is this is important. These are important personal characteristics.
That anyone who donates and supports your project knows you're coming back with something
coming back with that.
Don Hood
[36:57] That's true. I think our biggest our biggest possible concern at least for this one is is either I hope it's not wildlife, because the wildlife would be dangerous, but maybe livestock, all the places we're going it is it's going to be a lot of farms and probably people you know, letting their cows or I guess not cows
Allison Barbato
[37:16] I'm a little more worried about the spiders.
Don Hood
[37:19] Oh spiders.
Becky Carmichael
[37:21] All right, so give us what about the spiders? What's about the livestock? What kind of livestock are we talking about?
Don Hood
[37:27] Um, I think buffalo are really common to raise. I'm just I'm just you know, we're over going to be on people's land. And we might be trying to do this grid survey and like, well, we can't sample this point. Why not? There's a buffalo on it. Oh, gosh. Okay. can't dig a hole there.
Allison Barbato
[37:44] Oh, see, I'm more about... we don't, you know, going into the jungle there could be, you know, bird eating spiders in this area. We don't know.
Don Hood
[37:53] We're not birds, though.
Becky Carmichael
[37:56] Oh, my gosh, you have to take you see when you have to take a picture of it. Because that would just be amazing.
Allison Barbato
[38:00] All right, Don, that's on you.
Don Hood
[38:01] Okay, cool.
Allison Barbato
[38:03] I'll chase away the buffalo
Don Hood
[38:04] They also have, they also have, I think millipedes that are, like, a foot long,or more.
Becky Carmichael
[38:13] That's exciting.
Don Hood
[38:15] Exciting is a word for it.
That's the creepiest thing that I've heard of, though. Yeah,
Allison Barbato
[38:23] I'd say so I think just, you know...
Don Hood
[38:24] Nothing too crazy.
Allison Barbato
[38:26] No, I don't want to have to, you know, lift up, lift up a seat somewhere, lift up a bag somewhere, you know, get into bed one night, and there's just be a friend there waiting for you.
Becky Carmichael
[38:37] Yeah, sleeping with your clothes inside sleeping bag kind of thing. Kind of zipped up.
Don Hood
[38:44] They do have monitor lizards there. I'm very excited.
Allison Barbato
[38:46] Yes, that's true.
Don Hood
[38:47] I think there's it I just think they're so cool.
Becky Carmichael
[38:49] That will be I think that it's part of that adventure, there's so many different things that you're going to be able to experience and see. And then knowing that, you know, if you have it kind of got people that you already scientists in that area that can kind of give you a heads up, here's the things you want to look for a be aware of. It's scary. And at the same time, it's it's exciting.
Don Hood
[39:11] We wouldn't be doing geology at all or, or this project if it wasn't something we were at least on board and probably kind of excited about.
Becky Carmichael
[39:23] For your future in science, what are your hopes about this project that will help you, kind of, further your careers in the future?
Don Hood
[39:31] I think one of the what part of it is the collaboration opportunities, wherever we're going to go meet scientists, and we've already met some through email and things, but we're going to go meet scientists, and hopefully, you know, know them for the rest of our careers. And when they think I need someone who's an expert in this thing, Oh, I know one of those people. It's done. It's Allison. And then we are on call for for doing whatever cool stuff they're up to. So that's a very selfish reason to want to go there. And it's, you know, if I had to choose between having a really awesome, great collaborative, that's my cool friend in Sri Lanka, versus having a really cool, awesome, clever, that's my cool friend in Kansas, I might choose Sri Lanka, rather than Kansas.
Becky Carmichael
[40:23] They're good. Everyone from Kansas,
Don Hood
[40:25] Sorry, Kansas is cool, too. I can pick a less popular state, maybe
Allison Barbato
[40:35] Just start picking them off one by one?
Becky Carmichael
[40:36] What about you Allison, what are you? What are you excited? kind of future? What are you really excited to get out of this?
Allison Barbato
[40:45] Well, I'm kind of, I'm agreeing with dawn here as far as like, the collaborative work and just getting that experience of working internationally, you know, and I feel like just, I mean, I grew up overseas my whole life. So just kind of, you know, touching base with that my, you know, I hope to work overseas one day, you know, that's that I want to do, and just getting the experience of working with these people, because I feel like, you know, we do have a plan whenever we get there. And I'll be interested to see, not necessarily how it changed probably how it, how it and how it enhances, as you're interacting with the local community, and, you know, just kind of getting their input, you know, Hey, have you seen rocks like this somewhere? Yeah, we're here. You know, and maybe maybe no one's seen that before, you know, and just kind of that kind of that type of collaborative work. And, and as I've said, you know, they're just looking at the minerals, the characterization of that, and, you know, I hope that my, at least where I end up my future career, I'm working with microscopic evaluations, you know, I'm making Petra graphic reports. So this just is with a mineral that I hadn't worked with too much. So I'm just excited to see what I can learn.
Becky Carmichael
[41:41] You mentioned something about, you know, how you how, once you get there, what what might happen in terms. My major advisor would say, when we encounter issues in the field, that you modify the methods based on the field conditions. And so it was, it always stuck with me, it was just like, well, instead trying to force it to do something that potentially is definitely not going to work. What do you need to do to modify to make it work? And I think that that's important.
Don Hood
[42:08] Absolutely. Actually, I'll share, I'll share one more thing that I think it's... we're just kind of excited by this, because it'll be it'll be kind of fun. One of our planned perks for the crowdfunding campaign is too, if people donate enough money, we haven't decided how much, they can name samples. And we're going to let people and probably, you know, send pictures back with their sample that's named Greg, or something like that. So I think that it just seems kind of fun of a neat way to interact with the people that are supporting us. And I'm sure there'll be lots of was it rocky Mick rock face rocking the cracks, but I'm hoping for at least a few people that name samples after their spouses or kids or something that would be nice.
Allison Barbato
[42:56] These will be put in, you know,scientific papers.
Don Hood
[42:59] Yes.
Becky Carmichael
[43:01] That That right there is exciting is to be able to be, you know, to say, Hey, I provided this funding, I was able to support the science. And now let's watch and see where it goes. Yeah. So you know, I think that's an excellent perk.
Don Hood
[43:13] It's like naming a constellation or something.
Becky Carmichael
[43:16] And it's close to being able to name something from space, right?
Don Hood
[43:19] Yeah really.
Allison Barbato
[43:21] I hope so.
Becky Carmichael
[43:21] You've gotten… So you've got this Mars connection.
Don Hood
[43:22] I just hope, you know, if we find something really crazy, it's just going to be really funny. If someone happens that we say, Oh, this sample will what's the next one on the list? Oh, this one's named Greg. And then Greg becomes this world shaking sample that everyone knows about. And everyone knows about the rock named Greg.
Becky Carmichael
[43:40] Oh.
Allison Barbato
[43:41] That's another goal for this.
Becky Carmichael
[43:43] Yeah. I think that you've secured some funding. Really i do.
Don Hood
[43:47] Excellent.
Becky Carmichael
[43:48] All right, Allison. Don, thank you so very much for sitting down with me today. As I said, I'm really excited to see how this goes. And I look forward to talking to you soon.
Allison Barbato
[43:56] Great.
Don Hood
[43:56] Cool, thank you.
Becky Carmichael
[43:58] This episode of LSU Experimental was recorded and produced in the CxC Studio 151 here on the campus of Louisiana State University, and is supported by LSU's Communication Across the Curriculum and the College of Science. Today's interview was conducted and produced by myself Becky Carmichael the theme music is Brumby at full gallop by PC3. To learn more about today's episode, subscribe to the podcast, answer questions and recommend future investigators visit cxc.lsu.edu/experimental