Dr. Szilárd Gyalay 🪐
@szilardgyalay.com
Follow my adventures as a planetary scientist! At SETI/NASA Ames. UCSC & UCLA alum. Time Person of the Year 2006. He/him/ő. Views are my own.
Fun fact: my ego is big enough to think I personally inspired both that xkcd comic and this one because a few weeks before they were published, I chatted with Randall Munroe at his book signing about my work on showing that some icy satellites might not actually have subsurface oceans.
December 17, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Fun fact: my ego is big enough to think I personally inspired both that xkcd comic and this one because a few weeks before they were published, I chatted with Randall Munroe at his book signing about my work on showing that some icy satellites might not actually have subsurface oceans.
Bonus: the art shop I got my poster printed in left a little surprise when they wrapped my poster
December 16, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Bonus: the art shop I got my poster printed in left a little surprise when they wrapped my poster
A snippet of my #AGU2025 poster as a teaser. Drop by posterboard P21E-2658 tomorrow (Tuesday) morning to learn more about what the location of Herschel crater might have to say about Mimas' interior! 👀
December 16, 2025 at 5:20 AM
A snippet of my #AGU2025 poster as a teaser. Drop by posterboard P21E-2658 tomorrow (Tuesday) morning to learn more about what the location of Herschel crater might have to say about Mimas' interior! 👀
Catching up on Star Wars: Visions Season 3, and in episode 6 they just did the funniest thing and referenced the Back to the Future scene where Marty says he’s Darth Vader
November 12, 2025 at 6:20 AM
Catching up on Star Wars: Visions Season 3, and in episode 6 they just did the funniest thing and referenced the Back to the Future scene where Marty says he’s Darth Vader
Not Google’s AI drawing the complete opposite conclusion from my work when I was trying to quickly grab a copy of my paper 😭
August 27, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Not Google’s AI drawing the complete opposite conclusion from my work when I was trying to quickly grab a copy of my paper 😭
I love that at some point, someone decided stegosauruses should be green with orange plates, and everyone agreed.
March 22, 2025 at 7:06 PM
I love that at some point, someone decided stegosauruses should be green with orange plates, and everyone agreed.
With the inclusion of material strength, the impact of proto-Charon into proto-Pluto doesn’t just disintegrate the system and spawn two new worlds from it. Instead, with a grazing impact, the two worlds remain relatively intact, just kissing as a contact binary (e.g., Arrokoth or 67P). 2/X #LPSC2025
March 14, 2025 at 2:59 PM
With the inclusion of material strength, the impact of proto-Charon into proto-Pluto doesn’t just disintegrate the system and spawn two new worlds from it. Instead, with a grazing impact, the two worlds remain relatively intact, just kissing as a contact binary (e.g., Arrokoth or 67P). 2/X #LPSC2025
Denton et al. revisit impact-formation scenarios for the Charon and Pluto (pic JHU/NASA). However, here they account for the material strength of the bodies rather than fully approximating them as fluids for the impact (usually a fine assumption). 1/3 #LPSC2025
March 14, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Denton et al. revisit impact-formation scenarios for the Charon and Pluto (pic JHU/NASA). However, here they account for the material strength of the bodies rather than fully approximating them as fluids for the impact (usually a fine assumption). 1/3 #LPSC2025
Sori presents on the possibility of a regional (non-global) subsurface sea beneath Occator crater on Ceres (our solar system's largest asteroid). Occator (pic from wikipedia) is famous for bright salt deposits discovered as the Dawn spacecraft approached Ceres. 1/6 #LPSC2025
March 13, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Sori presents on the possibility of a regional (non-global) subsurface sea beneath Occator crater on Ceres (our solar system's largest asteroid). Occator (pic from wikipedia) is famous for bright salt deposits discovered as the Dawn spacecraft approached Ceres. 1/6 #LPSC2025
Blanco-Rojas & Sori examine how Herschel crater (the big one that makes Mimas look like the Death Star) might relax within the presence of a subsurface ocean. The idea is that an ocean would imply a warm shell and couldn't hold the shape of Herschel's peak and rim for too long. 1/2 #LPSC2025
March 11, 2025 at 10:25 PM
Blanco-Rojas & Sori examine how Herschel crater (the big one that makes Mimas look like the Death Star) might relax within the presence of a subsurface ocean. The idea is that an ocean would imply a warm shell and couldn't hold the shape of Herschel's peak and rim for too long. 1/2 #LPSC2025
Fuhrman et al. examine polygonal craters on Mimas, to see what is going on beneath Mimas' surface. Simply put, a polygonal crater has straight edges (e.g., Earth's meteor crater is basically a square). These can form when the shockwave from impact encounters fractures in the crust. 1/3 #LPSC2025
March 11, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Fuhrman et al. examine polygonal craters on Mimas, to see what is going on beneath Mimas' surface. Simply put, a polygonal crater has straight edges (e.g., Earth's meteor crater is basically a square). These can form when the shockwave from impact encounters fractures in the crust. 1/3 #LPSC2025
If such a core exists, then yes. If you imagine an ice shell and a denser ice-rock core, an elongation in the core basically acts like a giant mass concentration beneath the shell. Through polar wander, the longest axis of the core would want to align with the axis pointing from Mimas to Saturn.
March 11, 2025 at 8:06 PM
If such a core exists, then yes. If you imagine an ice shell and a denser ice-rock core, an elongation in the core basically acts like a giant mass concentration beneath the shell. Through polar wander, the longest axis of the core would want to align with the axis pointing from Mimas to Saturn.
Harwell et al. tracked the "rheological regimes across the simple-to-complex transition." Simple craters are the small bowl-shaped ones, while complex craters are big and form peaks/rings within them. (I've attached pics of Moltke and Tycho lunar craters from Wikipedia as examples.) 1/3 #LPSC2025
March 11, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Harwell et al. tracked the "rheological regimes across the simple-to-complex transition." Simple craters are the small bowl-shaped ones, while complex craters are big and form peaks/rings within them. (I've attached pics of Moltke and Tycho lunar craters from Wikipedia as examples.) 1/3 #LPSC2025
And wow, these cute otter socks I saw my friend wearing 🦦🦦😍 #SocksOfLPSC #LPSC2025
March 11, 2025 at 1:25 PM
And wow, these cute otter socks I saw my friend wearing 🦦🦦😍 #SocksOfLPSC #LPSC2025
Titanosaurus 🦕 for day 2 #SocksOfLPSC #LPSC2025
March 11, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Titanosaurus 🦕 for day 2 #SocksOfLPSC #LPSC2025
Starting #SocksOfLPSC strong with my Red Panda socks. My thickest and warmest socks were needed this morning at #LPSC2025 because it was 42°F (6°C) and I’m just a California boy 🥶
March 10, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Starting #SocksOfLPSC strong with my Red Panda socks. My thickest and warmest socks were needed this morning at #LPSC2025 because it was 42°F (6°C) and I’m just a California boy 🥶
On the bright side, the sunrise was pretty
March 9, 2025 at 4:30 PM
On the bright side, the sunrise was pretty
We’ve been working on this puzzle ALL year 😩
January 1, 2025 at 8:04 AM
We’ve been working on this puzzle ALL year 😩
It was so nice just hanging with my fam this past week, not thinking about work or even checking emails. But now the LPSC abstract deadline looms and I’m regretti spaghetti about all the procrastination I did before my vacation 😰 Got some great pics at the SD Zoo tho 🦩🦎🦛🐨📸👀
December 30, 2024 at 9:43 PM
It was so nice just hanging with my fam this past week, not thinking about work or even checking emails. But now the LPSC abstract deadline looms and I’m regretti spaghetti about all the procrastination I did before my vacation 😰 Got some great pics at the SD Zoo tho 🦩🦎🦛🐨📸👀
I shouldn't be too surprised the new paper cites me, since my PhD advisor (and co-author on my Io paper) is on the new one, but it's doing wonders for my ego/self-esteem right now 🤩
![screenshot snippets from the new Io paper, "Io’s tidal response precludes a shallow magma ocean" by Park et al. (2024) in Nature. The first snippet is the beginning of a section titled "Io's lack of a shallow magma ocean," which reads "Our results indicate that a shallow global magma ocean in Io does not exist, and these findings are supported by our current knowledge of Io's long-wavelength shape [Reference 39]." The second snippet is from the reference list, showing 39 is "Gyalay, S. & Nimmo, F. Io's Long-Wavelength Topography as a Probe for a Subsurface Magma OCean. Geophys Res Lett 51, e2023GL106993 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL106993"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:rytgqraxy5bhbhphjikiqet4/bafkreigjyfqr2ulnapxdf34ccup7jkuyt7dnu3ykm2nmk4tb6xmhpunl5e@jpeg)
December 12, 2024 at 7:37 PM
I shouldn't be too surprised the new paper cites me, since my PhD advisor (and co-author on my Io paper) is on the new one, but it's doing wonders for my ego/self-esteem right now 🤩
The utter chaos of my Spotify wrapped: my 1st and 3rd top artists are there because of all the ambient music I play while running DnD sessions, while my 5th top song is specifically Jack Black’s dulcet tones covering a Brittney Spears classic 🐼
![My Spotify Wrapped, showing my 5 top artists as ASKII, BAND-MAID, Michael Ghelfi, Olivia Rodrigo, and Taylor Swift. My 5 top songs were “Centuries,” “bad idea right?”, “brutal,” “Scatterbrain,” and “…Baby One More… [title cut off in the image].” I listened to 17,050 minutes.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:rytgqraxy5bhbhphjikiqet4/bafkreifujaijqauwj5jhppi5chioeec227epm5aeotig7lkv5vn3uoyqoe@jpeg)
December 4, 2024 at 6:41 PM
The utter chaos of my Spotify wrapped: my 1st and 3rd top artists are there because of all the ambient music I play while running DnD sessions, while my 5th top song is specifically Jack Black’s dulcet tones covering a Brittney Spears classic 🐼