Peter Gao @PlanetaryGao Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Peter Gao

@PlanetaryGao

10,443

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Staff Scientist @ Carnegie EPL. Planetary and exoplanet atmospheres. He/Him/His. Black Lives Matter. Trekkie. Opinions are my own.

Joined March 2014

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@PlanetaryGao

Peter Gao

21 days

The Carnegie EPL Fellowship is officially accepting applications!! We invite theorists, observers, and experimentalists from across Earth, planetary, and exoplanet sciences to apply. Feel free to DM/email me if you have questions! Due date is Nov 1st

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EPL Postdoctoral Fellowships

carnegiescience.edu

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@PlanetaryGao

Peter Gao

10 months

65,000,000 BCE, colorized

@skeletaldrawing

Scott Hartman

@skeletaldrawing

10 months

Tragically, a brief snowstorm killed off my lawn dinosaur.

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2 years

Pedro Pascal as different physical units the pascal

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Peter Gao

2 years

just so we're clear

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Peter Gao

2 years

the end

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Peter Gao

5 months

I don’t care what they think I’m doing this for *me*

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Peter Gao

3 months

whenever I have to send one of my python scripts to someone else

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Peter Gao

4 years

Something to consider as you read about the big Venus news today: there is an unfortunate disconnect between what we do as scientists and how "science" is communicated to everyone. A thread.

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Peter Gao

3 years

scicomm: JWST is the biggest telescope to be sent to space it will help find life and tell us how the universe started isn’t it amazing??? astronomers: my entire career hinges on this bucket of single point failures I’m so nervous I’m crying and throwing up everywhere

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1 year

@frogsforgirls I love checking my mailbox! Yes it’s mostly junk and bills but sometimes there’s a surprise (a traffic ticket)

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Peter Gao

2 years

physicist reading the Bible: None of this is in Griffith E&M

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Peter Gao

4 years

taking a day off in academia

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3 years

News: “We are experiencing some of the worst inflation we’ve ever seen” Cosmologist: well actually

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Peter Gao

2 years

what’s wrong babe you’ve barely touched that paper you should be writing

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Peter Gao

2 years

@hankgreen thanks i hate it

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Peter Gao

2 years

astronomers should not be fighting each other we should be working together to attack the physicists

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Peter Gao

2 years

one day this amazing video will be posted without context and it will be hilarious

@ESO

ESO

2 years

🔵 Because the black hole is about 27 000 light-years away from Earth, it appears to us to have about the same size in the sky as a doughnut on the Moon. Squint to see the 🍩 in this video 🎥 ESO/M. Kornmesser/L. Calçada

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3 years

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6 years

I am a ⚪️ Man ⚪️ Woman 🔘 Postdoc looking for ⚪️ Men ⚪️ Women 🔘 Stability in my life and career

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Peter Gao

2 years

yay it’s working

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Peter Gao

1 year

Einstein would never tweet this

@AlbertEinstein

Albert Einstein

@AlbertEinstein

1 year

This is one of the most famous equations in physics. Do you know what it is?

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Peter Gao

3 years

100% of emeritus professors were hired at a time when there was no competition for the job

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Peter Gao

3 years

did it hurt, when you mixed up metric and imperial units and crashed into Mars

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Peter Gao

3 years

why does Jupiter, the largest planet, not simply eat the other seven?

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Peter Gao

5 years

I'll probably regret this but I need to get this off my chest: I don't care if Pluto is a planet or not, because that is literally the least interesting thing about it (thread)

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Peter Gao

2 years

@PeteStones123 that would've been wise, but instead I wasted several minutes making this in powerpoint

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Peter Gao

2 years

let's face it, astronomy doesn't have too many practical purposes in society but what it does better than almost anything else is inspiration and showing people that we are a part of something bigger than us, that there are big ideas out there taking that away is pretty shitty

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Peter Gao

2 years

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” - Carl Sagan

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Peter Gao

3 years

EVERY TIME JEAN LUC SAYS NOMINAL WE GET CLOSER TO GOD

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Peter Gao

2 years

I am accepting of many data analysis techniques but linear regression is where I draw the line

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Peter Gao

2 years

pick your fighter

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Peter Gao

2 years

please, I beg of you, it's the week between Christmas and New Years, stop uploading papers to arXiv

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Peter Gao

4 years

It's official! I am thrilled to announce that I will be starting as a staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science Earth and Planets Laboratory ( @CarnegiePlanets ) in Washington DC next fall!! 1/7

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Peter Gao

7 years

🎶 why d’you have to go and make clouds so complicated 🎶

@NWSElko

NWS Elko

7 years

One of the rarest clouds ever. This was taken over Battle Mountain, Nevada, USA on 8 March 2018. It's called a horseshoe cloud for obvious reasons. #nvwx Credit goes to eagle-eye Christy Grimes.

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Peter Gao

2 years

ok that’s it turn it off we weren’t meant to see this much

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gbrammer

2 years

Let's just see what JWST observed yesterday... Oh, good god.

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Peter Gao

3 years

god gives his stormiest skies to his most advanced space telescopes

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Peter Gao

9 months

for a small fee, I will go to your enemy’s talk and ask “what about magnetic fields?”

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Peter Gao

3 years

Hopefully around Don’t Blow Up meters in diameter and Please Deploy Properly for Fucks Sake meters tall

@ArianeGroup

ArianeGroup

3 years

Given that Ariane 5's fairing is 5.4 meters in diameter and 17 meters tall; do you know the telescope's dimensions? #WebbFliesAriane #ArianeGroup #Ariane5

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Peter Gao

3 years

PUTTING THE SPACE IN JAMES WEEB SPACE TELESCOPE AM I RIGHT HAHAHA OH GOD

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Peter Gao

3 years

BREAKING: NYT set to acquire arXiv, says it will “initially remain free to new and existing readers”

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Peter Gao

3 years

#JWSTLaunchMemes

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Peter Gao

3 years

ok now it’s a space telescope before this it was just space mirrors

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Peter Gao

3 years

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Peter Gao

3 years

physicists try to make physics sound interesting without invoking astrophysics challenge

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Peter Gao

4 years

But therein lies the disconnect: despite what many think, science doesn't provide THE answers - it never has - it provides *an* answer, and a temporary one at that, that may be falsified later. There is inherent uncertainty and skepticism.

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Peter Gao

5 years

I will never understand people who sit at window seats and NEVER OPEN THEIR WINDOW THE ENTIRE FLIGHT I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE SLEEPING IT’S BEAUTIFUL OUT THERE OPEN THE WINDOW AND WITNESS THE MAJESTY OF THE BASIN AND RANGE PROVINCE

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Peter Gao

1 year

I could be suspended for posting this

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@sanjanacurtis

s🎃njana curtis! 🦦

1 year

I could be suspended for posting this

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Peter Gao

4 years

The news is not that there may be life on Venus, but rather that this new discovery will spur further research on our hellish sister planet, its atmosphere, its surface, its formation, its evolution, and yes, its potential habitability. It's an exciting time! (end)

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Peter Gao

2 years

if you’re worried about PhD admissions just wait until you hear about college admissions - some of my parent friends have older kids who are getting college acceptances and some of them have literally started companies and written books - as high schoolers!

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Peter Gao

10 months

i'm sorry i only accept bisexual lighting neptune

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Peter Gao

3 years

Yesterday I was part of a discussion on paper writing and I would like to share a tidbit that has stayed with me for many years regarding writing a paper's introduction: Write it like you're crafting the movie version of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

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Peter Gao

2 years

just caught my 3 yo watching a youtube video about mantle convection??

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Peter Gao

2 years

ok the pretty pictures I get but never in my life did I imagine seeing an actual *spectrum* above Time Square what a world

@TimesSquareNYC

Times Square

@TimesSquareNYC

2 years

Absolutely breathtaking views of the @NASAWebb telescope’s first full-color images to the world 🔭 #UnfoldTheUniverse @OneTimesSq @NASA ✨

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2 years

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Peter Gao

11 months

I present to you the best paper of the year

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Peter Gao

3 years

NEVER HAVE I BEEN SO GLAD NOMINAL SOUND THE SAME IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH

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Peter Gao

3 years

james wordle space telescope

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Peter Gao

1 year

maybe dolphins are smart enough to not pursue radio astronomy

@depthsofwiki

depths of wikipedia!

1 year

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Peter Gao

1 year

hey boss i can't come in today i'm getting some bad vibes from the gravitational wave background

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Peter Gao

2 years

Fun fact: "Physics" is named after Lenny Physics who in 1903 dropped an apple and discovered gravity, which itself is named after his buddy, Billy Gravity

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Peter Gao

1 year

if I ever win the Nobel they better text first before calling

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Peter Gao

2 years

even the wacky title cannot prepare you for where this abstract goes

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Peter Gao

3 years

The CDC says it’s ok to not comment your code

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Peter Gao

2 years

but they were, all of them, deceived, for another Ring was made

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@ESA_Webb

ESA Webb Telescope

2 years

1/ *NEW* This is not an ethereal landscape of time-forgotten tombs, but rather a haunting Halloween portrait of the Pillars of Creation, taken by Webb's mid-infrared instrument ( #MIRI ). Read more:

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Peter Gao

6 months

as one’s career progresses talks go from well-practiced presentations to a series of rants prompted by whatever shows up on the slide

@seldo

Laurie Voss

6 months

Apparently a thing some people routinely do is make a bunch of slides and then just roughly remember what they were going to say in response to each slide without speaker notes, I cannot imagine being able to do that.

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Peter Gao

4 years

For those freaking out over vaccine passports: I’m getting my tetanus booster tomorrow, without which I literally cannot get my green card in this country

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Peter Gao

4 years

In 2021 I will stop apologizing when my toddler interrupts my zoom calls because frankly you all should be grateful that you get to witness the objectively cutest toddler in existence

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Peter Gao

6 years

I'm feeling a bit stressed out lately and need to shine a light on an issue that maybe others in our shoes are feeling as well. In addition to the "normal stresses" of academia, those of us who are not citizens of the US have additional worries, especially now. /ramble thread

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Peter Gao

4 years

FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

@ReichlinMelnick

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

@ReichlinMelnick

4 years

This is bad. ICE just told students here on student visas that if their school is going online-only this fall, the students must depart the United States and cannot remain through the fall semester.

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Peter Gao

4 years

These are not failures of science/scientists, nor do they reveal some flaw in science - this is what science actually is. These discussions will lead to new studies that will in turn generate more discussions and possible falsifications, ultimately taking us closer to the truth

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Peter Gao

2 years

yeah I’m reducing data - reducing their quality by having no idea what I’m doing

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Peter Gao

2 years

near-infrared far-infrared whereever you are-infrared

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Peter Gao

3 years

I really need people (mostly men) to understand that “expulsion from a field” is actually an extremely light “punishment” for the damage sexual harassers do, and it’s the LEAST we can do We can’t turn back time but we are obligated to stop further harm

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Peter Gao

2 years

I forced a bot to read 100,000 lines of fortran 77 and then asked it to write its own program and it just straight up deleted itself

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Peter Gao

1 year

people make fun of signs for having aliens invade a planet that is 70% lethal to them and then propose we colonize mars that is 100% lethal to us

@afrocosmist

COSMIC 🐙 SLOP

1 year

thinking about this dumbass alien from "signs" (m. night shyamalan, 2002) who was allergic to water & got beaten to death with a bat by joaquin phoenix

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Peter Gao

3 years

james weeb space telescope

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Peter Gao

1 year

Event Horizon Telescope: we made an Earth-sized telescope to image supermassive black holes NANOGrav: hold my beer

@AlexNeedsSpace

Flatland Astronomer, PhD

@AlexNeedsSpace

1 year

Wait it just hit me that we made a galactic scale telescope. What a absolutely insane bunch of monkeys we are

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Peter Gao

4 years

It is bittersweet that I announce that after months of uncertainty and stress I have received approval for my H1b visa, which will take effect in a few months. I will be able to stay in the US and start my work as a Sagan Fellow @ucsc .

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Peter Gao

3 years

gonna be fun when the Spitzer scientists start “back in my day”-ing the younger JWST generation

@fox_ori

Ori Fox❓

3 years

Have you seen this incredible comparison of the same star with #jwst and Spitzer?! *I can't take credit for this, but I don't know who to whom to give credit.

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Peter Gao

3 years

OUR GREEN CARD HAS BEEN APPROVED AHHH

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Peter Gao

4 years

But when we come to the very edge of our understanding, as is the case of new discoveries in astronomy, the sensitivity of the climate, and new viruses, the true scientific process is revealed: a messy molasses of competing ideas, studies, and arguments.

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Peter Gao

2 years

Me: hey do you want to watch something on Netflux? Them: sure! wait don’t you mean Net- Me: *opens youtube and puts on 8 hr radiative transfer lecture*

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Peter Gao

3 years

JaneWay Space Telescope

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Peter Gao

1 year

Are you an astronomer who’s having a baby? Here are some astronomical names for your child: Nebula Nova Andromeda Eris Venus Quasar CCD Seeing HD 189733b IRAF Extinction Zerodur

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Peter Gao

3 years

Someone who "was neither a monster [nor a] saint" and "was a bureaucrat subject to the ethos of the day" does not "inspire the next generation", @NASA

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Peter Gao

3 years

every time some twitter rando goes off on a tirade about scientists being involved in grand conspiracies I think about the fact that we can’t even agree on what to call the most common type of planet in the galaxy

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Peter Gao

2 years

this is by far the most impactful thing I’ve ever made in powerpoint

@PlanetaryGao

Peter Gao

2 years

just so we're clear

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Peter Gao

4 years

The vast, VAST, majority of studies either disprove a previous study or extend our current understanding only slightly. From the outside, this may make science and scientists look untrustworthy, either due to incompetence or worse, malice

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Peter Gao

3 years

That English-as-a-second-language feeling when you finally hear how a word is pronounced and it’s actually that other word that you’ve heard lots of times and you’re all ohhhhh it happened to me with hors d'oeuvres

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Peter Gao

4 years

We may not all have the same idea regarding why PH3 exists in Venus's atmosphere, but we all agree that Venus exists and that it has an atmosphere of mostly CO2. In other words, scientists disagreeing on some details of a topic is not an excuse to throw out all of science.

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Peter Gao

3 years

Introducing the next Great Observatory! "Steve from HR Who's Just A Little Bit Racist But He Means Well Space Telescope"

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Peter Gao

1 year

still getting sporadic likes to this day

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@BiggestttHater

Jon

@BiggestttHater

1 year

what is y’all most liked tweet?

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Peter Gao

3 years

I don’t deserve to be attacked like this

@ThomasVanRiet2

Thomas Van Riet

@ThomasVanRiet2

3 years

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Peter Gao

4 years

The only reason why it seems like science provides THE answer is that some of those temporary answers have been very hard to falsify, even after centuries, so that they become an everyday phenomenon and an accepted part of general knowledge, i.e. "truth"

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Peter Gao

3 years

if i were ever afforded infinite powers i would ensure that every grad student office has a couch for napping

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Peter Gao

6 months

officially petitioning to have “Earth-like” removed from our vocabulary until we can use it responsibly

@Nature

nature

6 months

‘Milestone’ discovery as JWST confirms atmosphere on an Earth-like exoplanet

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Peter Gao

4 years

Whether it's astronomy, climate change, or COVID, science is often seen as the answer to our problems, a definitive truth that can guide our actions. While some scientific studies may, in the long run, be seen as providing the "right" solution, these are few and far between

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@PlanetaryGao

Peter Gao

5 years

I'm super excited to announce that I have accepted a Sagan Fellowship @ucsc starting this summer! I have had the privilege to work with several current UCSC folks and UCSC alumni already and it's great to join the family. Looking forward to it!

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Peter Gao

3 years

We had some family friends over this evening and they were super excited to ask me about JWST, and were blown away when they found out that I was going to get data with it Sometimes I just have to take a step back and realize how lucky I am to do this job

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Peter Gao

3 years

maybe the real JWST launch is the delays we found along the way

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Peter Gao

3 years

Normalize including visa sponsorship policy in postdoc ads

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