Alex

Planetary Exploration Newsletter
Volume 19, Number 42 (October 19, 2025)

The latest newsletter is posted at:

planetarynews.org

EPA loses its entire research division. seems important?

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/c...

NYT front page: "this guy was crazy" and "rich people eat croissants"

ah yes, you were using gemini-4o-xx1-beta-2, of course you got bad results, you have to use openai-o3-mini-xxl and toggle on the 'do it good' button

Map of the GRIT global river network. Source: Wortmann et al. (2025), Water Resources Research.

🌐 Introducing GRIT: the First Global Bifurcating River Network 🏞
developed by Michel Wortmann as part of the NERC Large Grant EvoFLOOD, in the Hydro-Climate Extremes group @oxfordgeography.bsky.social

Today, we're launching a dedicated action hub for the crisis threatening NASA science. Find actions, latest news and up-to-date resources at: www.planetary.org/save-nasa-sc... #ProtectNASAScience

This is from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson aired on May 20th, 1977.

Carl Sagan says something very important, a strong message that didn't lose any validity since then.

Classic ChatGPT

NOAA just announced a long list of datasets that are going away🧪⚒️🌊: www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/docume...
Download what you need asap and send comments to: ncei.info@noaa.gov

PLANETARY EXPLORATION NEWSLETTER
Volume 19, Number 15 (April 13, 2025)
The latest newsletter is posted at planetarynews.org

PLANETARY EXPLORATION NEWSLETTER
Volume 19, Number 13 (March 30, 2025)
The latest newsletter is posted at planetarynews.org

this meme is too real

Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023 This study presents estimates of the global expenditure on article processing charges (APCs) paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023. APCs are fees charged for publishing in some ...

🚨 Preprint! We combine our recent open dataset of #APC prices with the article counts per journal-year from #OpenAlex to estimate how much the academic community has paid in APCs over the last 5 years.

A. $8.349 billion ($8.968 B in 2023 USD)

$2.5B in 2023 alone.

arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 #metasci

PLANETARY EXPLORATION NEWSLETTER
Volume 19, Number 10 (March 9, 2025)
The latest newsletter is posted at
planetarynews.org

We are in the process of broadening our delivery platforms.

Image of Bill Nye, with text at the top of the image that says Speaker Announcement and at the bottom that says Stand Up for Science, March 7th, 2025 and a link to standupforscience2025.org.

STAND UP FOR SCIENCE SPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENT! ☀️

Bill Nye will be speaking at Stand Up for Science in D.C. on March 7th!

More speaker announcements coming soon, stay tuned! 👀☀️

PLANETARY EXPLORATION NEWSLETTER
Volume 19, Number 9 (March 2, 2025)
planetarynews.org/archive25/pe...

Query: Plot the number of plots of the number of published genomes on the vertical axis against the number of published genomes on the horizontal axis ChatGPT answer: Number of Plots vs. Number of Published Genomes Here is the plot showing the "number of plots" against the "number of published genomes." [Image: plot of sqrt[x]. If you'd like a different approach or specific adjustments, feel free to ask! ​ ​Query: Where did you get the data from? ChatGPT answer: The data used in the plot was artificially generated as an example. Specifically: Number of Published Genomes: I created a simple range of values (from 1 to 100) to represent this axis. Number of Plots: I applied a mathematical transformation (the square root function) to the "Number of Published Genomes" to create a plausible-looking relationship. This approach was chosen to provide a visual illustration since no real-world dataset was provided. If you have actual data or a specific dataset you'd like to use, feel free to share it, and I can recreate the plot with real numbers!

My colleagues are using ChatGPT to source data and plot analyses for them. I'm literally reviewing papers written this way.

Meanwhile....

Associate Professor, Economic Geology The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) appreciates your interest in employment at our growing institution. We want your application process to go smoothly and quickly. Final applications must be submitt...

We're hiring! New position at UNR now open in Economic Geology (nshe.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UNR-external...). I know there's a lot else going on out there, but I did want to plug this. I've been really happy in Reno and with our department. Feel free to reach out with Q's.

Encyclopædia Britannica will continue to use ‘Gulf of Mexico’ for a few reasons:

-We serve an international audience, a majority of which is outside the U.S.

-The Gulf of Mexico is an international body of water, and the U.S.’s authority to rename it is ambiguous.
🧵⬇️

Statement in support of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility NOTICE: This is a statement by Planetary Science Institute CEO Mark V. Sykes, and reflects the values and principles that guide the daily management of and planning for this Institute under his…

This is a statement by PSI CEO Mark Sykes, on the importance of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility for science, and reflects the values and principles that guide the daily management of this Institute under his leadership.

Read it here:

‘My boss was crying.’ NSF confronts potentially massive layoffs and budget cuts Trump could propose slashing agency’s budget by two-thirds

Entirely unsuprisingly, it looks like the Trump administration wants to cut the NSF budget by 2/3.

I'm an NSF-funded researcher. Let's talk about what this would look like.

Because there are unintended consequences you might not be aware of. 1/

www.science.org/content/arti...

PLANETARY EXPLORATION NEWSLETTER
Volume 19, Number 6 (February 9, 2025)

Coupled Seasonal Data Assimilation of Sea Ice, Ocean, and Atmospheric Dynamics over the Last Millennium ``Online" data assimilation (DA) is used to generate a new seasonal-resolution reanalysis dataset over the last millennium by combining forecasts from an ocean--atmosphere--sea-ice coupled linear inve...

Exciting new preprint by Zilu Meng, Greg Hakim, and @ericsteig.bsky.social where they reconstruct Earth's climate over the last 1000+ years at **seasonal** timescales. resolutionhttps://arxiv.org/abs/2501.14130 🧪⚒️❄️

Without a doubt the most authoritative and scientific map projections alignment chart there is

New paper: Linear dunes erode into the Lake Caroline, Simpson Desert, Australia, challenging the linear dune extension hypothesis. Erosion dates back 24 ka. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#Geology #geosciences

Check out our new(ish) paper in PSJ, where we used deep learning to map brain coral terrain in 58,000 HiRISE images on #Mars @uahirise.bsky.social
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Spatial patterns of valley network erosion on early Mars Fluvial valley networks are a key record of the geomorphic effects of past liquid water on the surface of Mars. Most valley networks formed early in M…

New paper in Icarus, where we explore global trends in martian valley morphology and argue that valleys may have formed prior to (or during) the growth of the Tharsis volcanic province www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Check out our new paper led by Anna Grau Galofre where we describe (relatively) recent glacial erosion on Mars

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hey that's me! (from NASA's Mars Science Update and Budget Overview)

34th anniversary of Pale Blue Dot: "That's here. That's home. That's us....It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world." -Sagan

First solo author paper: fluvial erosion on Mars may have intermittently persisted for 100s of Myrs www.psi.edu/blog/water-m...