Peter Gao

I don’t like how moist it looks

It is but only for those with government PIs and Co-PIs

Screenshot of Google calendar event titled “JWST CYCLE 5 DEADLINE” with the description “AHHHHHHHH”

I’m not panicking you’re panicking

if you saw an earlier version of this post no you didn’t

Costco knows How It’s Done

squinting Thor meme

are they though

it’s such a shame that our top minds are wasted working on AI slop instead of a much more worthy calling: eliminating all mosquitos

they should redo super size me but with Costco hot dogs

Netflix absolutely missed the boat by not investing in kpop demon hunters halloween costumes

Kids phonics toy spelling out dax

Jadzia Dax from DS9

fun with phonics

it’s crazy how we just accepted scam phone calls as a fact of life now like yeah please ruin one of our main modes communication we don’t mind

Fractal Aggregate Aerosols in the Virga Cloud Code I: Model Description and Application to a Benchmark Cloudy Exoplanet We introduce new functionality to treat fractal aggregate aerosol particles within the Virga cloud modeling framework. Previously, the open source cloud modeling code Virga (Batalha et al. 2025), the ...

✨✨✨Another Virga advert✨✨✨

Introducing V2.0, with fractal aggregate clouds! Restricted to spheres no more! We handle the dynamics and the optics self consistently.

Led by me and PhD candidate extraordinaire Matt Lodge (who is looking for a postdoc 👀 and is amazing).

arxiv.org/abs/2509.06708

I have a line at the beginning of my Research Statement about how many exoplanets we've discovered so far.

Every year I write faculty applications, I have to update that number.

I swear, whatever that number is the year I finally get a job will become my new favorite number.

Their Figure 2, showing the densest part of the Corona Australis cloud between 2017 (dark red) to 2021 (dark yellow), with two epochs in between. The entire bottom-right of the cloud is consistently moving towards the bottom and left.

Our galaxy is full of clouds of dust and gas. We can guess that they probably move, but it's hard to tell for sure. Until now!

A groundbreaking new paper by Martin Piecka et al. at @univie.ac.at presents the first *ever* direct measurement of the proper motion of the ISM! 🔭☄️🧪 #galactic

This is the spectroscopic transit of a #planet with an orbital period of 1.5 YEARS !! #HIP41378 🪐

In case you missed the great paper led by Salomé Grouffal (#ProudAdvisor), arXived over the summer, here is a recap'.

#Thread [1/8]

David Baltimore passed away this weekend. A pioneer of molecular virology who won the Nobel prize in medicine & physiology for his discovery of viral reverse transcriptase. This essay he wrote in 2018 reflecting of his 60yr career in science is a great read.
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Congratulations to Tim Lichtenberg, an alumnus of the Oxford Planetary Climate Dynamics Group, on being awarded the Europlanet Early Career Medal! The trio of medals has gone to a great bunch, recognizing three career stages.

www.europlanet.org/tim-lichtenb...

*phone rings*

Me: Hello?
Them: Hello sir, this is the Chase Fraud Department. Can you confirm that you opened a new checking account yesterday?
Me: Uhhh how do I know this is Chase
Them: *hangs up*

Old Luke shouting “The sacred texts!” meme from The Last Jedi

citing an exoplanet paper from 2010

NEW on the arXiv: “CO2 coma of 3I/ATLAS a tell-tale sign of aliens’ reliance on fossil fuels as main spacecraft power source“ by H. Astronomer

the enshittification of The Learning, Discovery, and History Channels in the last 20 years is a rarely talked about but extremely blatant sign of the collapse of civilization

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Observes Interstellar Comet - NASA Science NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS Aug. 6, with its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument. The research team has been

JWST successfully observed interstellar object (ISO) 3I/ATLAS. Interesting results. The composition of the coma could be due to a few different scenarios. Additional JWST observations of the object closer to the sun are needed. science.nasa.gov/blogs/3iatla...

You know when people say you’ll sleep better if you stop using screens before bed, are they referring to the big screen, the medium screen, or the small screen?

had a dream about resolving Overleaf comments

Awesome!! Glad you enjoyed it

not a big fan of new playgrounds looking more and more like modern art installations instead of places for kids to play

screenshot of when I googled “stellar type” and the results being the page for stellar type Pokémon

oh that’s not-

And I get the carnitas super burrito every time!

Very well said Ray! Thanks!