I had the opportunity to comment on a recent paper for Live Science modeling the orbital instabilities of moons around faraway exoplanets. Although we haven't discovered any exomoons yet, we think they should exist, and if they do, should be subject to the same orbital dynamics as moons are in our own solar system. This means that in many cases, they might gradually drift away from their hosts, leading to exciting cosmic collisions!
For Popular Science, I gave some of my thoughts on an unusual planet discovery paper. HD 167768 b is a recently-discovered Hot Jupiter orbiting an evolved giant star, with a projected surface temperature of around 3000 K. Evolved stars massively expand at the end of their lives, which would usually totally engulf any closer-orbiting planets. In this case, the planet's far enough away to survive, but not for long! HD 167768 b only has another hundred million years or so to live before getting eaten by its host star.
Our HST spectroscopy work on characterizing the atmosphere of the exoplanet TOI-674 b made it into the AAS Press Conferences! You can watch a recording of the presser here, or check out the KU press release, the NASA Discovery Alert, or the NBC News story I was able to comment for. Check out the open-access paper here!
I spoke to Live Science about an interesting preprint looking for information in the cosmic microwave background. I'm not super sold on the idea that G-d would've embedded a message there for us to read, but it's an creative data analysis problem regarding the observed isotropy of the CMB.
Did the universe's creator hide a message in the cosmos?
Our L 98-59 system discovery paper was written up for a NASA press release and I had fun talking to the press people about it! I mentioned my work using transit timing variations to constrain the planet masses and search for undiscovered companions, neither of which were very successful.
NASA’s TESS Mission Finds Its Smallest Planet Yet