When she wasn't in a Georgia Tech classroom in 2018, Amanda Stockton was likely found in the extreme environment of Iceland, in a fire-and-ice scene right out of a "Game of Thrones" episode.

Stockton's work among the volcanoes and glaciers could tell us more about the prospect of habitability – developing and sustaining life – in extreme environments elsewhere in our solar system, such as Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. 

“Searching for Habitability at the Extremes," the title of a Stockton lecture about her NASA work, is also the focus of Season 3 Episode 3 of ScienceMatters, the podcast of the Georgia Tech College of Sciences.

Stockton, an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is part of a NASA program called FELDSPAR, or Field Exploration and Life Detection Sampling through Planetary Analogue Sampling. Since flying to areas around the solar system is rather expensive, it’s a lot cheaper to use locations on Earth that are terrestrial analogs of these extremes, to better understand whether those places could actually be habitable.

Each ScienceMatters episode includes a quiz that refers to facts mentioned in each podcast. A winner will be chosen randomly from all who submit correct answers. Winners will receive special College of Sciences merchandise such as t-shirts and pens.

The Episode 3 quiz question: