Daniel Thorngren

@dpthorngren.bsky.social

855 Followers 347 Following

Davis Fellow at Johns Hopkins studying exoplanet interiors with computer modelling and statistics. Website: dpthorngren.github.io/index.html

Lurtz, an ork from the Lord of the Rings, brandishing a bow. He (spoiler warning) appears at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring and kills Boromir slightly too slowly to avoid getting his head lopped off.
A scene from Andor in which Rylanz confronts Syril. Syril has just repeated a debunked cover story to which Rylanz responds "Are you mad? That I'd believe that? That it's worth saying? What kind of being are you?!"
A meme from the comedy movie "Kung Pow! Enter the Fist", in which the master says of one of his students, "We purposely trained him wrong as a joke"
An image of the vicinity of Alpha Centauri A on the sky. A yellow star symbol is drawn in the center to mark where the star is, but the area around it has been blacked out by the telescope to prevent glare from the star preventing us from seeing planets. The picture is colored from black to red to white, corresponding with how bright that part of the sky is. The image has some lumpy noise, but a noticeably bright spot is circled and labeled S1. This is the candidate planet. The x and y axes are right ascension and declination respectively, in arc-seconds; basically a zoomed-in picture of that part of the sky. The title is "PSF Subtracted Image", which means they have processed out the fringing patterns you get from a telescope that is very zoomed in.
A screenshot from Star Wars: A New Hope, in which Han is focusing and C-3PO is leaning over him, saying "It's quite possible this system is not entirely stable...". Technically he said that line (but with asteroid instead of system) in a different scene, but ehhhhh whatever.
A screaming cyborg monkey from Superman, part of Luthor's troll farm. Yes, it's staffed by cyber-monkeys, typing vitriol onto the internet. Yes, that's pretty on-the-nose.
A map of the local stars near us, stretching out to 10 parsecs, viewed from above the galactic plane looking down. Around 500 stars are shown, mostly m-dwarfs, and many in binary systems. A bluish blob forms the background, representing local clouds of interstellar hydrogen. Two red circles stand out, representing the Stromgren Spheres of Sirius and 40 Eridani, which are regions where the stars have ionized the surrounding hydrogen. Stars with known planets are highlighted in green; not many stars are highlighted, which is more related to our ability to detect planets than whether they are actually there (it's much easier if they transit, but that's uncommon).
A Pikachu plush that is also a bag. Pikachu looks derpy and strangely wide, but it's still kinda endearing.
A diagram of possible interior structures of mini-Neptunes (sometimes misleadingly called super-Earths). Three cases are shown. Left is the "Hycean Word", in which there is a thin hydrogen & helium atmosphere over a liquid water layer on top of ice X (a high-pressure solid phase of water) over a rock iron core. Center is a "stratified mini-neptune" in which a hydrogen and helium atmosphere sits atop a (non-liquid) water-rich hydrogen layer, with a rock-iron core beneath. This is analogous to our best guess for the structures of Uranus and Neptune. Right is the "Miscible-envelope" case, in which there is only a hydrogen, helium & water layer all mixed together on top of a rock-iron core. The paper posits that warmer planets tend towards the latter cases (more mixed) and colder planets tend towards the earlier cases (more stratified, possibility of a water ocean). This figure is from Benneke et al. (2024), which covered the planet TOI-270 d, which is similar to K2-18 b.
An image of a planet orbiting a reddish star. The planet is blue with long white clouds covering most of the surface, and hints of bands of other clouds beneath. You can't really tell from looking at it if there's a surface or not. There is a second planet also orbiting the star in the background. This image is by ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser.
A picture of a Kaiju from the movie Pacific Rim
A meme depicting a cartoon character labeled "Transphobes" reaching out happily towards a blob labeled "basic biology". In the second panel, a blob with eyes and a mouth labeled "Advanced biology" reaches out to grab them, and they look nervous about it.
A diagram of the solar system planets by NASA JPL / Kevin M. Gill. The title is "Before Exoplanets". Pluto is crossed out as "not a planet", the rocky planets are crossed out as "basically debris" and the remaining planets are labeled as "2 gas giants" (Jupiter and Saturn) and "2 ice giants" (Uranus and Neptune.
A screenshot of twitter with three tweets. Elon Musk says "It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the @Space_station. It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let's go to Mars" Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) replies "Are you suggesting that the ISS be deorbited prior to 2030? As you know, SpaceX currently [h]as a contract to build the US Deorbit Vehicle to safely bring the station down in 2030." Musk says "The decision is up to the President, but my recommendation is as soon as possible. I recommend 2 years from now."
A screenshot of a Twitter quote tweet. The quoted tweet has a blurry video frame of a blob of red, green, and white lights. The tweet says "Saw one tonight. This is not a joke. 🛸 about ten minutes before arrival at LaGuardia. This seems a little close to the flight path, no??" The quoting tweet says "UFO report: the craft had standard red and green navigation lights and a bright light landing light and it was descending towards LaGuardia. Could be some kind of interdimensional transport orb"
A meme from Spiderman (2002) in which Mary Jane tells Peter Parker "Tell me the truth, I'm ready to hear it." In this meme, Peter replies "Your game doesn't need a launcher." Mary Jane begins to cry.
A scene from Jurrasic park, in which Jeff Goldblum's character Ian Malcolm sees the dinosaurs for the first time and exclaims "You did it. you crazy son of a bitch, you did it"
A screenshot from a website, reading "Purchase options at the top". One option is listed, a DRM-free ebook (PDF or EPUB3) for the low, low price of $8,984.00. A handy add-to-cart icon fills out the bottom of the screenshot.
A screenshot of an ad entitled "Thought-provoking stories". The ad's image is a picture of Saturn with prominent rings. The website has been crossed out with a large red line to avoid giving them free advertising. The title is "Saturn's Majestic Rings will Vanish in Just Six Months From Now". No they fucking won't. A lead-in sentence reads "Saturn's awe-inspiring rings are the most iconic celestial feature in our solar system. They will vanish in about six months from..." and then it cuts off to try to convince you to click it.
A picture of a cat in a suit at a table with a coffee and newspaper. The cat is staring into space. The title text reads "I should buy some Parmesan cheese"
A meme of Darth Vader telling Luke "It is... too late for me, son."
A picture of a pothos plant in a pot indoors.
A diagram of Saturn compared with the exoplanet WASP-12 b, to scale. Saturn is wider at the equator due to it's rotation, whereas WASP-12 b is pulled into a (symmetric) egg shape facing the star due to stellar tides from being very close to its parent star.
A picture of Bob the Builder.
A picture of the joker from Batman Begins in front of a huge pile of money that he has lit on fire. He is saying "...it's about sending a message."
Image of a cockatoo, because they live for a very long time.
A diagram showing how the web design of spiders degrades with the administration of various drugs. A normal web is shown, along with ones labeled Marijuana, Benzedrine, and caffeine. The most severe web is replaced with a picture of the Tesla Cyber truck and is labeled Ketamine. This references rumors that Elon Musk takes Ketamine.
A meme of a scene from Pacific rim in which a character describes exponentially more frequent Kaiju attacks. The text is changed to read: 1. In the beginning, the speaker candidates were spaced apart by 4 years, then 2, then 10 months. 2. The last one was a day. 3. In four days we could be seeing a candidate every 8 hours until they are coming every 4 minutes. 4. We could witness a double event within seven days.
A screenshot of the Wikipedia article on the twitter user and shit-poster Junlper (which may soon be deleted for non-notability). It estimates that she was born in 1995.