Tad Komacek

I’ve been looking forward to this! Excited to read it in full.

Mantle Convection and Nightside Volcanism on Lava World K2-141 b Ultra-short period lava worlds offer a unique window into the coupled evolution of planetary interior and atmospheres under extreme irradiation. In this study, we investigate the mantle dynamics, nigh...

Congratulations to Dr Tobias Meier (@tgmeier.bsky.social) on the publication of his paper "Mantle Convection and Nightside Volcanism on Lava World K2-141 b" featuring 12 former and current Oxoplanet members! You can read the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2603.02408

Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Epstein and the Politics of Betrayal I don’t expect much from politicians, corporate tycoons, the presidents of prestigious universities, billionaire philanthropists, celebrities, royalty or oligarchs.

chrishedges.substack.com/p/noam-choms... ✅

Hi y'all
You still have a few days to apply for our open professor position in planetary science in Bern, Switzerland. See more details below! For any questions, feel free to reach out to me.

🔭🧪⚛️#planetSci

Congratulations, @nichollsh.bsky.social! Your thesis was a joy to read, and it was great to get to know you over the past 1.5 years. I look forward to seeing the research that you and Oli get up to at Cambridge. Perhaps almost as impressive was your AOPP champagne cork shot! Video below.

Four smiling individuals, Professor Suzanne Aigrain (credit: Keiko Ikeuchi), Dr Deaglan Bartlett, Professor Andrew Bunker, Associate Professor Paula Koelemeijer, are shown against a starry galaxy background.

👏 Congratulations to Professor Aigrain, Dr Bartlett and Professor Bunker from the Department of Physics, and Associate Professor Koelemeijer from the Department of Earth Sciences, on their recognition in the Royal Astronomical Society Awards.

➡️ See: https://tinyurl.com/32wk7894

Happy birthday! And note that Somerville College at Oxford is named after her. A fitting tribute.

Most Rocky Sub-Neptunes are Molten: Mapping the Solidification Shoreline for Gas Dwarf Exoplanets Sub-Neptunes are the most common type of detected exoplanet, yet their observed masses and radii are degenerate with several interior structures. One possibility is that sub-Neptunes have silicate/iro...

Paper day! A new paper on existence of subNeptune magma oceans, arising from a collaboration between Cambridge and my group. Lead author Robb Calder is Oli Shorttle's doctoral student. subNeptune Magma Oceans are getting to be a hot topic! arxiv.org/abs/2512.05816

Large-amplitude variability driven by giant dust storms on a planetary-mass companion Global-scale storms composed of silicates and metals explain the extreme weather and variability of the super-Jupiter VHS 1256B.

Years ago Adam Showman described to me his long term plan to better understand brown dwarf variability by adding more cloud physics to his GCM. Thankful today to be part of team led by his former student Xianyu Tan growing and expanding the vision with this new paper. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

CDT in Aerosol Science is welcoming applications for fully-funded PhD studentships as part of our 8th cohort to start in autumn 2026: www.aerosol-cdt.ac.uk/2026-projects/
Aerosol science is crucial to so many things, check out the linked project catalogue for studentships!
#PhD #academicjobs

Impressive work, Richard!

Acquiring a white bowtie has been on my to-do list since the last viva I served as an internal examiner for! I'll be sure to get one by @nichollsh.bsky.social's viva in January.

YouTube video by BOWIE+ Seminars Demystifying the Sub-Neptune Frontier with JWST by Anjali Piette

Dr. Anjali Piette of the University of Birmingham gave a wonderful talk on connecting sub-Neptune atmospheres to their interiors as a part of the BOWIE+ Seminar Series. The video is now available on Youtube. #exoplanets #astronomy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHrT...

Really enjoying Dr. Shreyas Vissapragada's @carnegiescience.bsky.social seminar on three population-level surveys of atmospheric escape @oxoplanets.bsky.social!

Very exciting and well deserved @ntlewis.bsky.social, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you find!

I'm looking forward to the groundbreaking on Tuesday!

YouTube video by BOWIE+ Seminars Atmospheres on Rocky Exoplanets by Ryan Macdonald

As a part of the launch of the BOWIE+ Seminar Series, Dr. Ryan MacDonald (@distantworlds.space) gave a great overview of our current understanding of rocky worlds thanks to JWST. The talk is now up on Youtube if you're interested. #exoplanets #astronomy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN3y...

A Stellar Revolution: How Open-Source Tool MESA Changed the Way We Study Stars A Stellar Revolution: How Open-Source Tool MESA Changed the Way We Study Stars on Simons Foundation

Great article from the Simons Foundation about the open source MESA stellar evolution code, which has a had a huge impact on astrophysics over the past 15 years.
I had not heard that the code's architect, software guru Bill Paxton, had passed away in July.
www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/12/a...

Registration is open now for our fall workshop on Atmospheric Escape and Replenishment in Planetary Systems!

🔭 #exoplanets

Congratulations @timlichtenberg.bsky.social!! Very well deserved.

Just how bad will climate change get? The only way to know is to fund basic research Predictions of climate change are uncertain. That’s why we need to keep finding out how our atmosphere works.

Predictions of climate change are uncertain. That’s why we need to keep finding out how our atmosphere works, says Tim Palmer

go.nature.com/414QrVV

Two postdoc jobs available on our Arctic Butterflies project! (Not actual butterflies - basically Arctic dynamics and predictability - the butterfly effect in the Arctic...)

Oxford job: tinyurl.com/yc6h4b35

Reading job: tinyurl.com/ypn75jh2

Please help spread the word!

Job alert: we are looking for a postdoc to join the Atmospheric Dynamics group in Oxford to study Arctic atmospheric dynamics. The focus is on energy transfers between scales and implications for predictability. More details here: tinyurl.com/yc6h4b35

In our now-published paper we model the early history of three exoplanets to specifically study the role of tidal heating on their capacity to solidify. A physically robust feedback mechanism can keep them molten, even with relatively thin atmospheres, which may extend to lots of rocky exoplanets.

Geometric Considerations in Hot Jupiter Magnetic Drag Models Magnetic fields are expected to impact the atmospheric dynamics of hot and ultra-hot Jupiters due to their increased ionization fractions, compared to that of cooler exoplanets, but our ability to mod...

My paper with Tom Evans-Soma and Nathan Mayne on magnetic drag models is now accepted and up on the arXiv. For a quick summary, look at the PDF of my Exoclimes poster that I shared last week.

www.arxiv.org/abs/2507.08511

51 Pegasi b Guidelines and Application.pdf | Powered by Box

Do you want to work with me as a postdoc? The 51 Pegasi b fellowship is now open for applications heisingsimons.app.box.com/s/y8jg5tbsbd... This is one of the highest profile and most effective fellowships for early-career scientists studying exoplanets. (Read on for important news)...

See also my explainer thread below!
bsky.app/profile/nich...

Volatile-rich evolution of molten super-Earth L 98-59 d Small low-density exoplanets are sculpted by strong stellar irradiation but their origin is unknown. Two competing scenarios are that they formed either with rocky interiors and H2-He atmospheres (`ga...

New paper on the molten Super-Earth L98-59d by @nichollsh.bsky.social in our group. arxiv.org/abs/2507.02656

everything is terrible except for this

Three-dimensional Transport-induced Chemistry on Temperate sub-Neptune K2-18b, Part I: the Effects of Atmospheric Dynamics The low equilibrium temperatures of temperate sub-Neptunes lead to extremely long chemical timescales in their upper atmospheres, causing the abundances of chemical species to be strongly shaped by at...

I recommend giving this paper by @jiachenliu.bsky.social, @astroduncan.bsky.social, and Jun Yang a close read: arxiv.org/abs/2506.23891. Sub-Neptunes like K2-18b lie in an interesting regime where both the radiative feedback and mixing of chemical tracers is important, I’m looking forward to Part 2!