Frankie mouse is at #Exoplanets6 this week. Come find me for a Magrathea v2 sticker, and check out my poster on the big mixing updates coming in v3. Poster: T3 #5 #exo6

Making a short presentation on the challenges of astronomy software development. Quick compilation of logos:

📣 New paper day! 🔭🪐 When a civilization stops being afraid of the dark, do it's defense mechanisms leave detectable atmospheric signatures? Explore with @radplanets.com and I the garlic smell of DMS, silver-lined clouds, and specter-countable salt limits. arxiv.org/abs/2603.28895

Plan 9: Detecting Atmospheric Deterrence Against Interstellar Monsters

Exoplanet atmospheres are usually discussed as tracers of climate, chemistry, and habitability, but they may also preserve signatures of planetary defense. We consider three folklore-motivated deterre...

arxiv.org

As it's now Wednesday in enough of the world - this is looking like a banner year for Acta Prima Aprilia, with a number of submissions in this year's issue: www.actaprimaaprilia.com/2026-issue Here's some highlights

A memorable breakout session at #RockyWorlds4 someday we’ll answer this question; for now it’ll keep us up at night. (After we catch up on sleep from a busy conference week)

Best conference hack: take photos of your friends presenting. Great talk Hannah!

Hannah Sanderson@han-san-planets.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Had a great time at #RockyWorlds4 this week - presenting my PhD work on magnetic field generation in planetesimals 🧲 and learning lots about magma oceans 🔥ready for my post doc project. Thanks to everyone for such great discussions and @rockyworlds.bsky.social for organising a fantastic meeting!

Frankie mouse made it to Groningen. Coming to #RockyWorlds4 tomorrow! And check out Magrathea for your MR relationship or planet composition needs: github.com/Huang-CL/Mag... v2 live now and v3 already on the horizon

Wondering why we've been so quiet this month? That's because we're busy preparing to welcome everyone *next week* to Groningen 🇳🇱 for... 🌋✨🚀 The ROCKY WORLDS 4 Conference 2026! 🪐✨☄️ Updates will be posted throughout the week from this account & others using the #RockyWorlds4 hashtag – stay tuned! 🔭🧪

I was looking for my folder of posters I like, and found the 2019 Sagan Workshop poster page. Wow blast from the past, crazy how well I remember so many of the faces even though many I've only seen once or twice. nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/201...

Officially started my postdoctoral fellowship at UW-Madison! Collaborating with Prof. Juliette Becker funded by the university's AI initiative. I haven't watch Big-10 football in ~10 years, but I think I'll have to get back into it (Go Cats!)

Hi all! If you are looking for a conference in exoplanet interiors in 2026, check out "Layers of Understanding: Model Intercomparisons of Exoplanet Interiors": layersofunderstanding2026.github.io It will take place in MPIA's campus in April 13-17th. The registration deadline is 15 January 2026

If you invite me to give a talk, I will bring my rock collection.

Fighting the intrusive thought of sending in "looks all good. QED." for a paper review.

Two of the first works I reviewed for the Journal of Emerging Investigators got published! Galaxy rotation curves: emerginginvestigators.org/articles/25-... X-ray binary classifications: emerginginvestigators.org/articles/24-...

I made a travel map generator ✈️🌍 Drop in a list of country codes or names → see your visited & planned trips on a world map. Runs fully in-browser (GitHub Pages). Try it here: davidrrice.github.io/TravelMap/ #Travel #Maps

Our new hydrosphere phase diagram is live for Magrathea: github.com/Huang-CL/Mag.... H2O ices, liquid, vapor, and supercritical. Largely inspired by the AQUA phase diagram from Haldemann et al. 2020, but with a couple of our own tweaks and ready to update with future EOS measurements.

I'm not sure why I've decided to die on this hill radius, but Pluto & Charon are not a "binary planet" because the barycenter lies outside Pluto. That’s a misconception. Binary just means two bodies bound together: binary stars, binary black holes, binary asteroids, binary planet.

Spent a day re-convincing myself that I know what an orbit is. Here are the barycentric orbits of Pluto-Charon and Alpha Centauri AB with correct proportions. Fun is that the radii of Pluto and Charon are even to scale with the orbit. #planetsci

My MIL handed me pharma-grade DMSO for mosquito bites. Not FDA approved, but my self-study found it more statistical significance than DMS on K2-18b. #exoplanets

Effect of Galactic Chemical Evolution on Exoplanet Properties. Jason H. Steffen (UNLV) et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10942

Our new preprint just hit the arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2507.10942 💥 We take a look at how the core mass fraction of planets may change through galactic time. My largest contribution is this plot with the planets from Weeks et al. 2025 reanalyzed with our interior model. 🔭🪐

Preparing to trade salt for fresh water—can you guess where I’ll be working next? Big move next summer, big science starting sooner. Excited for what’s ahead in 2026!

the woke mob killed SExtractor

Officially published today if you missed the arXiv drop a month ago! iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Uncertainties in the Inference of Internal Structure: The Case of TRAPPIST-1 f - IOPscienceSearchopens in new tab

Uncertainties in the Inference of Internal Structure: The Case of TRAPPIST-1 f, Rice, David R., Huang, Chenliang, Steffen, Jason H., Vazan, Allona

iopscience.iop.org

A lot of words to circle back to "go around the Sun". So neat, but seriously this is how we get multiple comments saying "the Sun orbits the Earth" which is an entirely unhelpful and wrong description of nature.

Hank Green@hankgreen.bsky.social · last yr.

The Earth doesn’t “go around the Sun” the Earth goes in a straight line through an area of spacetime that bends around the Sun and I think that’s neat.

I get a bit carried away with @matplotlib.org's hatching. But it's so helpful! The left plot you can pick any point in the middle and pretty quickly tell which 4 hatch marks are overlapping.

Uncertainties in the Inference of Internal Structure: The Case of TRAPPIST-1 f. David R. Rice et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.16201

Our new planet interior paper is accepted and up on arXiv, arxiv.org/abs/2504.16201! Explore all the knobs you can twist when modeling an Earth-like planet, in this case Trappist-1 f. Don't miss the appendix where I detail the "correct" way to plot a ternary diagram (below).... #exoplanets 🔭🧪🪐

don’t give Elsevier any ideas 😭😭😭😭😭😭 “PromoPlot: Covering open-access fees by filling wasted space in corner plots” arxiv.org/abs/2503.24254

I really really shouldn’t say anything; amazing selections for NHFP. BUT gas giants, brown dwarfs, and free floating planets being selected for “Are we alone?” is objectively funny. The answer for those “planets” is yes.