(gentle symphonic music)
- This is me, Liz Cottrell.
I'm the scientist, not the helicopter pilot.
He's having fun,
I'm trying not to think about not crashing into the water.
We're on our way to the top of an active volcano
in Alaska's remote Aleutian Islands.
So, you might ask yourself,
why go all the way to the Western Aleutians,
can't you find a volcano closer to home?
But these volcanoes are really unique.
And we had some really particular ideas to test,
and to test those ideas, we needed to get volcanic glass.
And that wasn't in any of the sample collections
that we have, anywhere in the world,
so we had to go get our own.
With my family, I had a real heart to heart.
When you're out in the field,
every time was potentially a critical time, as a scientist.
For three weeks, the ship was our home,
the helicopter was our only mode of transportation,
and the weather, a constant challenge.
The storms that roll across North America,
are born, here in the Bering Sea.
We're on the front lines of it.
And then, of course, there are the active volcanoes.
When a volcano erupts explosively,
the magma that was beneath the Earth,
blasts out and freezes to a glass, in the air.
Some of it comes out as large boulders,
but we're interested in the fine particles of glass
that settle into layers.
The layers contain the specific history and character
of each volcano and each event.
A window to Earth's interior.
Logistics was a challenge, and this was a real frontier.
We were on this boat,
so far out in the ocean from the Alaskan mainland.
I was trying to coordinate a bunch of different missions.
We had gas chemists, seismologists,
and the people there for the rocks.
Making sure that everyone got the science done
that helps us understand how the Earth is working,
out there in the Western Aleutians.
Each day of our trip meant getting up early,
grabbing breakfast with the team and crew,
and heading out to find a site to collect samples.
We need to dig them out, bag them, label them,
and load them into the helicopter.
We'll be packing and sorting them on the ship
late into the night.
The next day, we do more of the same,
if the weather cooperated.
Buldir Volcano was our most ambitious target.
But it's way out here in the middle of the ocean.
The rocks that erupt from Buldir, really mimic the rocks
that are found on the continents.
Lavas from Buldir suggests that this island
may provide key data about how continents form.
But we need volcanic glass to know.
But there wasn't anywhere, near Buldir,
for the ship to harbor.
So we had to fly 45 minutes over the frigid Bering Sea.
If the weather changed for the worse,
we would be cut off from the ship,
unable to fly back.
But that wasn't my biggest fear.
What worried me most
was the prospect of a forced landing in the ocean.
The helicopter would instantly flip upside down,
plunging us into the frozen darkness.
And if we survived that,
the ship would still be eight hours away.
That would be too long.
My family back home was counting on me.
I didn't want to exchange my life for these rocks,
and it definitely made me think.
I put my trust in my team.
My graduate students were supporting me.
Team member Michelle Coombs
works for Alaska Volcano Observatory.
She has lots of helicopter experience.
My collaborator Katie Kelley back home was counting on me.
We just kinda knew we had to do it.
This is what we came here to do,
and we're going to do it.
So we went.
When we got there, we found black ash.
That's something that few people predicted we'd find.
This is a mafic eruption of this volcano
and we're succeeding, this is gonna work.
That black ash has what we're looking for,
the mineral, olivine.
Olivine is a mineral that crystallizes in a magma,
beneath Earth's surface.
It can sometimes trap bits of that magma
and preserve them, like a time capsule,
for us to study later.
The sample we collected from Buldir
should give us a unique look into Earth's interior,
and help reveal the origins of continents.
Luck was on my side that day,
other days, not so much.
Volcanic slopes can be really dangerous places.
They're essentially giant, unstable rubble piles
of razor sharp rock.
While I was carrying a pack full of rocks
down the slope of Gareloi Volcano,
I fell.
It really hurt.
I thought my leg was broken.
There were no doctors,
and no hospitals for hundreds of miles.
Luckily my leg wasn't broken.
But it was a nasty injury.
I had my team to help me get the job done.
Everyone came together to complete the mission,
and we had fun, too.
Science isn't always about a white lab coat.
It's not a solo journey.
Something you do with your team, your friends, your family,
and the communities you reach through your work.
I am living for that moment of discovery.
That moment where things start to come together,
and I see how something works, I see the evidence.
I'm learning for myself for the first time,
how something works.
Or maybe,
I'm learning it for the first time for all of Humankind.
And that's a really great feeling.
Science is a place that you can experience
that feeling of discovery, mastery, and insight,
and sharing it.
And that's what science is all about.
(gentle symphonic music)