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...

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.

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.

The video is here! The hardest thing I've ever done: Rim to River to Rim of the Grand Canyon. youtu.be/9SO7vJeIZ8c?...

Our new exoplanet occurrence rate study, led by Penn State President's Postdoctoral Fellow Rachel Fernandes, gives us new insight into the evolution of young planets! Paper: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... Press Release: www.psu.edu/news/eberly-... 🧵1/8 #exoplanets 🔭🧪🪐

My strong schadenfreude over the stock market crashing has just come crashing down itself when I remembered my parents are retiring soon.

Have this link handy to send to people: neal.fun/asteroid-lau...

Having my first filtered coffee in 5 months since moving overseas. Spent a minute worried it was tea instead of coffee.

Please, who is teaching people that Charon doesn’t orbit Pluto?? 🔭🪐

Waiting for NdT to post: “AcTuaLy the sun doesn’t pull comets from their orbits.“

Ah! I forgot to post when my newest paper was published in Sept. We find that in exoplanet systems with complex spacings between multiple planets (C) there are less sub-Neptunes and more super-Earths. The radius valley and peas-in-a-pod are related: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

I will be shamelessly reposting my old tweets. 🔭

Now that I’m leaving the bird, my followers over there are going to skyrocket. I won’t be there to delete the bots following me every single day.

Everyone working in exoplanets needs to pick up a copy of this book for themselves and their family. Jason details much of the history and the most surprising discoveries in the exoplanet field. www.amazon.com/Hidden-Heave...

Movie poster out for what will surely be a hit film! The movie poster perfectly captures Nicholas Hoult debating how many of his own publications to recommend the authors cite. #AcademicChatter #phdlife #Reviewer2

I need a new break-time distraction. What's something that you can do at work that takes your mind off of things? Currently I move men around a map online, but I'm losing sleep over it.

Michael, the other postdoc in my group, kept my rattlesnake plant alive for a year! So nice to be back in my desk that sat empty for most of the year at the Open University.

Wild time to be moving overseas! Can't wait to see our new home in approximately 24 hours!

#ExSSV gave me what I thought was a preposterous idea, but today it's a preprint on arXiv! There's missing sub-Neptunes in irregularly-spaced Kepler multiplanet systems! Or should I say, "Mind the gap: gap complexity and the radius gap are correlated". arxiv.org/abs/2406.12239

Ever had an unyielding desire, to see EVERY confirmed planet all at once? No, just me? Enjoy a long scroll at davidrrice.github.io/ExoSystemPlo... It's only about 14 meters long. (works best on desktop)((only transiting planets, sorry to the less cool discovery methods)) #Exoplanets 🪐🔭

First time being upside down! Traveling around NZ before ExSS

You might be used to seeing the Trappist-1 planets on super tiny orbits. But what if you take Mercury's period and put it around T1, aka where is an 88 day orbit in the T1 system? Well here it is! I've wanted this plot for a long time so finally made it.

Tradle in one guess and 5/5 on Juxtastat. It's going to be a good day! #Tradle #716 1/6 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 games.oec.world/en/tradle Juxtastat 171 5/5 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 juxtastat.org

Meet TOI-1751 b, a warm Uranus around a sun-like star, which I "helped discover"! Orbiting its star in just 37 days, it most likely has an interior of super-critical water under a relatively small atmosphere. Paper arxiv.org/abs/2402.07110.

Fighting with a Reddit user about if moons orbit the sun, we keep going in circles, quite hilarious.

Thrilled to visit Yerkes Observatory! The passionate but small staff made our mini-tour unforgettable. Walking in the footsteps of Hubble, Kuiper, Chandrasekhar, Roman, and Sagan was truly inspiring!

Had a great time giving the inaugural talk of the exoVAST series about our interior structure solver, Magrathea: youtu.be/gVZpt-_U724?... emac.gsfc.nasa.gov/seminars/

So freaking pumped for ExSSV.

10 years ago I failed my first every Astronomy midterm. At least the whole class failed.

Still in awe. A beautiful weave of geology, anthropology, biology, and modern policy. This should be shown in every school, nay to every human asap. I put off watching this hour long video, and I shouldn't have; don't make my mistake. @gutsickgibbon.bsky.social youtu.be/uxTO2w0fbB4?...

Classic AoT Vegas final question. Put in order from smallest to largest: A. Years since the discovery of a variable star in Andromeda B. Number of keys on a grand piano C. Number of countries recognized by the United Nations D. Traditional number of collectible Power Stars in a Super Mario game

Cool addition my MNRAS: "Reviewers now have the option of assisting early-career researchers and graduate students to gain experience in reviewing manuscripts. This means that reviewers can share the manuscript in confidence with a reviewer in training, for educational purposes."

After using the clip art on 3 talks, I wonder how many people I've confused by the falling petunias. Great time presenting at the first exoVAST! They need more speakers on exoplanet software. emac.gsfc.nasa.gov/seminars/

Thank you to everyone who has watched so far and commented!!! I have exoplanets to hand out to anyone who watches and lets me know... 😉