Rocky Worlds Meetings
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rockyworlds.bsky.social
Rocky Worlds Meetings
@rockyworlds.bsky.social
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Monthly online seminars on all topics related to rocky planets & #exoplanets from chemistry to geology to astrophysics☄️🧪🔭🪐🌍🌟

Sign up & more info: https://rockyworlds.org

Watch previous talks: https://www.youtube.com/@rockyworlds
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rockyworlds.bsky.social
6,000 #exoplanets have been found to date, but ZERO of them are Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars! Why is that? Do any exist? Or is it just hard? ☀️🌍🔭

Join us on Thu 4 Dec @ 14:00 UTC for a #RockyWorldsDiscussion with Annelies Mortier to find out!

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail... ☄️🧪
An image of the speaker, Annelies Mortier. She is smiling and looking into the camera. She has brown hair down to past her shoulders, and is wearing a red top with a silver necklace. She is against a white wall background. An artistic illustration of Earth and the Sun (not to scale). In the bottom of the right half the image, the top half of the Earth is visible, showing some cloud coverage over parts of North/Central America. In the top of the left half of the image, the Sun is visible as a flaming ball, with bright edges around it and some granulation + bright spots. In the background, a starry sky. Image credit: Shutterstock
November 28, 2025 at 1:36 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
What sets our home planet 🌍 apart from our sister next door? 🌔☁️🔥 On Thu 6 Nov @ 14:00 UTC, Diogo Lourenço will be our next #RockyWorldsDiscussion speaker and tell us how bulk composition & lava flows impact long-term evolution of our neighbour Venus

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...

🧪🔭☄️
An image of the speaker, Diogo Lourenço. He is smiling and looking into the camera. He has brown hair down to between his ears and shoulders, and facial hair. He is against a white-ish background. Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) from 30 January 2018: "Venus at Night in Infrared from Akatsuki" - Image Credit: JAXA, ISAS, DARTS; Processing & Copyright: Damia Bouic. Description from the APOD caption: In the featured image taken by Akatsuki's IR2 camera, Venus's night side shows a jagged-edged equatorial band of high dark clouds absorbing infrared light from hotter layers deeper in Venus' atmosphere. The bright orange and black stripe on the upper right is a false digital artifact that covers part of the much brighter day side of Venus. Analyses of Akatsuki images and data has shown that Venus has equatorial jet similar to Earth's jet stream.
October 30, 2025 at 3:07 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
Cloudy with a chance of... haze? Aerosol? Carbon dioxide?!🌦️

Next #RockyWorldsDiscussion on Thu 2 Oct @ 13:00 UTC will feature Kazumasa Ohno (NAOJ) and recent JWST results that lift the hazy veil on the composition of sub-Neptune #exoplanet GJ 1214 b 🪐🔭🧪

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
An image of the speaker, Kazumasa Ohno. He is smiling and looking into the camera. He is wearing a navy blue cable-knit jumper with a checkered shirt, and glasses. He is against a background of what appears to be other people as the photo is seemingly cropped from a group photo. Artistic illustration of sub-Neptune TOI-421 b. A hypothetical exoplanet with similar banding to Jupiter, but in blue colours, is shown in the foreground. In the distant, the planet's host star is shown, which is a warm golden colour and shows diffraction spikes. Image credit: SciTechDaily.com
September 24, 2025 at 12:28 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
#RockyWorldsDiscussion is back from our summer break! 🔭🧪

Our next speaker is Laura Schaefer from Stanford University, who will tell us about redox gradients in planet formation simulations of terrestrial planets 🌍🌕🪨 Join us on Zoom on Thu 4 Sep @ 16:00 UTC

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
An image of the speaker, Laura Schaefer. She is smiling and looking into the camera. She is wearing a purple-grey zip-up jumper and sunglasses on her head. She is against a background of a large rock with some grass visible near the bottom, clearly outdoors. An artistic conception of early Earth showing the planet's surface impacted by asteroids. Earth is shown with partial oceans and the land that is visible is covered in clear craters. Part of the Earth (bottom left) is also shown as covered by lava or a magma ocean. Image credit: Simone Marchi, NASA. Taken from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/early-earth-s-atmosphere-was-surprisingly-thin/
September 2, 2025 at 9:38 AM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
The formation of sub-Neptunes is a steamy topic – literally! 😶‍🌫️ Remo Burn from MPIA will present "Between Steam and Stone: The Role of Volatile Delivery, Phase, & Partitioning in Setting Planetary Radii" on Thu 3 July @ 13:00 UTC 🪐☄️🔭 🧪 #RockyWorldsDiscussion

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
An image of the speaker, Remo Burn. He is smiling and looking into the camera. He is wearing a blue blazer jacket with a white shirt and pink-red tie. He is against a blurred, stony background with some greenery. An artist's interpretation of the water-rich atmosphere of K2-18b. The planet's surface and atmosphere is in the foreground, where the surface looks orange/brown (similar to Mars) and is dotted by some pale clouds. The upper atmosphere is diffuse and steam-like, and grey/blue in colour. In the background is a red/orange host star, seemingly quite active, and another planetary body is between this foreground planet and the host. The other body also appears to have a diffuse atmosphere around it. Image credit: Alex Boersma
June 30, 2025 at 12:42 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
📣 Calling all rocky enthusiasts! We are thrilled to announce that the ROCKY WORLDS 4 Conference will take place 19-23 Jan 2026 in Groningen, NL 🇳🇱 This is the 4th Meeting in our series & we can't wait to see you there!

Abstract submission is NOW OPEN groningen2026.rockyworlds.org/groningen-2026

🪐☄️🔭
Screenshot from the home page of https://groningen2026.rockyworlds.org/groningen-2026. It is the Rocky Worlds symbol (a stylised cross-section of a planet) on a plain, pastel-yellow background with the following information: Rocky Worlds 4 19-23 January 2026, Groningen, Netherlands Abstract submission open
June 10, 2025 at 12:20 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
Machine learning 🤖 + spectrometry 🧪 = astrobiology? 🌱🪐☄️🔭 Michael Wong @miquai.bsky.social & Anirudh Prabhu @anirudhprabhu.bsky.social of Carnegie EPL will discuss new biosignature detection methods at the next #RockyWorldsDiscussion Thu 5 June @ 13:00 UTC!

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
Two images side-by-side of the speakers. Both speakers are smiling and looking at the camera, and both are stood against a blurry, leafy background. Left: Michael Wong. He is wearing a pink shirt over a graphic tee. The bottom half of it is cut off, but the top half is seen to say "Support Your..." above what appears to be a globe. Right: Anirudh Prabhu. He is wearing an off-white button-down shirt with a faintly pin-striped black blazer over it. Artist’s conception of what life could look like on the surface of a rocky exoplanet. A planetary surface, similar to that of Mars or desert-regions of Earth, covers the image horizontally. The sky is a dark brownish orange-red, not dissimilar in colours of the surface. In the foreground, there is a green lagoon-looking pool, with an underwater cave visible beneath the clear water surface. In the background, in the sky, a close-up and seemingly active star (Sun) with three minor planetary bodies in front of it like moons. Image credit: NASA
May 29, 2025 at 2:45 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
What shapes the chemical environment of growing baby #exoplanets? 🧪🔭☄️ At the next #RockyWorldsDiscussion, we will hear Sebastiaan Krijt from @exeter.ac.uk tell us about planet formation with ALMA & JWST – join us on Thu 1 May @ 13:00 UTC on Zoom and YouTube

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
An image of the speaker, Sebastiaan Krijt. He is smiling and looking off to the left of the camera. He is wearing a blue jacket with a pale blue shirt and is stood against a faintly yellow wall. Artist’s conception of the view toward the young star Beta Pictoris from the outer edge of its disk. This disk of dust and gas orbiting the star is produced by collisions between and evaporation of asteroids and comets. A giant planet may have already formed and terrestrial planets may be forming. Credit: NASA/FUSE/Lynette Cook
April 28, 2025 at 7:58 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
Ever wonder what it'd be like on a planet hot enough to vaporize rock?🔥 Our next #RockyWorldsDiscussion speaker is Lisa Dang @astrolisadang.bsky.social who will present surface & atmosphere mapping of a lava #exoplanet on Thu 3 Apr @ 14:00 UTC on Zoom 🧪🔭☄️

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
An image of the speaker, Lisa Dang. She is smiling at the camera. She is wearing glasses and a grey turtleneck sweater under a checkered blazer. An artist illustration of a lava planet. The rocky planet has patches of lava covering the majority of the surface, and what looks like a thin atmosphere around it. There is a smaller moon nearby, seemingly made of grey rock, looking not much unlike our own Moon. Credit: Earth.com
March 31, 2025 at 3:05 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
Tides? Volcanism? Magnetospheres?! Everyone’s favourite Jupiter moon Io has it all!🌋🧲🌊

On Thu 6 Mar @ 16:00 UTC on Zoom, Katherine de Kleer from @caltech.edu will tell us about Io's tidally-driven volcanism & mass loss at the next #RockyWorldsDiscussion 🧪🔭

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
Image of the speaker, Katherine de Kleer. She is smiling at the camera and her arms are crossed. She is wearing a short-sleeved red shirt and is leaning against a concrete wall. Jupiter's moon Io, its night side illuminated by reflected sunlight from Jupiter, or "Jupitershine." Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Emma Wälimäki © CC BY.
February 28, 2025 at 7:43 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
Whatever happened to Venus?! 🪐☁️🔥 Join us for the next #RockyWorldsDiscussion on Thu 6 Feb @ 14:00 UTC (on Zoom) to hear Michael Way tell us about the climate history of our toasty neighbour Venus and recent work reanalyzing in-situ data from Pioneer Venus 🛰️

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
Image of the speaker, Michael Way. He is smiling at the camera and is leaning with his right arm against a museum exhibit model of a spacecraft that is mostly out of view. He is wearing a light purple shirt and a darker purple tie with black trousers. He is also wearing a conference lanyard around his neck. First color images from the surface of Venus (Soviet Venera missions). The sky is a hazy yellow and the ground is dark rock or soil (I think? Sorry, I'm no geologist!!) with cracks in it. It looks quite a lot like dried-out Earth ground! Image Credit: NASA National Space Science Data Center/Harvard Micro Observatory/Don P. Mitchell
January 24, 2025 at 5:50 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
Tides? Volcanism? Magnetospheres?! Everyone’s favourite Jupiter moon Io has it all! 🌋🧲🌊

On Thu 9 Jan @ 16:00 UTC on Zoom, Katherine de Kleer from
@caltech.edu will tell us about Io's tidally-driven volcanism & mass loss at the next #RockyWorldsDiscussion

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
Image of the speaker, Katherine de Kleer. She is smiling at the camera and her arms are crossed. She is wearing a short-sleeved red shirt and is leaning against a concrete wall. Jupiter's moon Io, its night side illuminated by reflected sunlight from Jupiter, or "Jupitershine." Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Emma Wälimäki © CC BY.
January 7, 2025 at 6:54 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
Habitable zone planets around M-dwarfs: do they end up as airless rocks or do they retain atmospheres? 🌥️🪨 Join us Thu 5 Dec @ 16:00 UTC on Zoom for a #RockyWorldsDiscussion with Joshua Krissansen–Totton talking about TRAPPIST-1, models, & more!

www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...

🧪🪐🔭
Picture of the speaker, Joshua Krissansen–Totton, smiling Artist's impression of the surface (as seen from space) of a rocky planet around the TRAPPIST-1 star, a red dwarf, which is seen in the distance. Another small exoplanet transits the face of the glowing red host star.
November 28, 2024 at 4:55 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
How will we study rocky exoplanets in the era of Extremely Large Telescopes? 🔭🌎 Jayne Birkby
@jaynebirkby.bsky.social of University of Oxford will present "Rocky Worlds in High Spectral Resolution" – Thu 7 Nov @ 13:00 UTC (Zoom) #RockyWorldsDiscussion

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
November 4, 2024 at 10:43 AM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
A blazing hot talk happens *today* Thu 3 Oct at 13:00 UTC! 🔥☁️ Our next #RockyWorldsDiscussion features Maggie Thompson – "Inside out: Volatile partitioning experiments and modelling to constrain the rocky planet interior-atmosphere connection"

More: rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
October 3, 2024 at 10:16 AM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
What are we feeding baby planets? 🍼🪐👶 Alice Booth (CfA | Harvard & Smithsonian) will answer this at the next #RockyWorldsDiscussion on Thu 5 Sep at 13:00 UTC (Zoom), where we will hear about the chemical inventory of protoplanetary disks as traced by ALMA

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
Picture of Alice Booth Composed image of the star HD100546 (right) with the methanol reservoir (left) in its warm part of the protoplanetary disk. (c) ALMA/Booth et al. & ESO/NASA/ESA/Ardila et al.
September 2, 2024 at 2:25 PM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
Are you ready for the next Rocky Worlds Discussion? Tune in on Thursday 3 July at 18:00 CEST to hear Renyu Hu (JPL Caltech) talk about JWST Thermal Emission Spectroscopy of the Super-Earth 55 Cnc e 🔥🪐🔥

Abstract: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...

Join the meetings: www.rockyworlds.org/join

🔭
A picture of the speaker, Renyu Hu Artist's impression of the extremely hot super-Earth exoplanet 55 Cnc e near its host star
June 28, 2024 at 10:43 AM
rockyworlds.bsky.social
Our first #RockyWorldsDiscussion in 2024 will be given this Thursday, 02/02/24 at 13.00 UTC, by Hannah Diamond-Lowe (DTU Space) on "Observing Rocky Exoplanets: Populations, atmospheres, and open questions". You can join the meetings at discussions.rockyworlds.org/join. 🌋🔭
January 31, 2024 at 12:55 PM