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Research Articles
Long-form explainers and write-ups from my research on Venus, Mars, and icy worlds.
Venus's Molten Fault Lines: How Magma Lubrication Shapes a Planet's Giant Cracks
We keep calling Venus Earth's "sister planet"—and on paper the family resemblance holds up: similar size, similar mass, similar composition. But peel back those thick, toxic clouds and you find a world of extremes. The surface is hot enough to melt lead (around 460°C), there's no water anywhere…
Reading time12 min read
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Venus's Giant Eye: How Low-Angle Faults Reveal a Planet's Volcanic Past
Imagine standing on the surface of Venus—and just for a second, set aside the crushing atmospheric pressure and the 450°C heat. What you'd see is some of the strangest scenery anywhere in the solar system. My favorites are the coronae: massive, roughly circular structures that stretch hundreds to…
Reading time15 min read
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How Computer Models Helped Us Solve a 4-Billion-Year-Old Martian Mystery
Some of the most beautiful features on Mars are also the most stubborn puzzles. Pull up a map of the Red Planet and something jumps out almost immediately: the northern half sits about 3 kilometers lower than the southern half. We call this the Martian dichotomy, and it's had scientists scratching…
Reading time10 min read
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Unraveling Mars's Hidden Plume History Through Wrinkle Ridges
You can't really miss Mars's Tharsis region. It's a massive volcanic bulge, roughly 6,000 kilometers across and rising more than 20 kilometers high—picture a dome the size of North America, heaped with volcanic material that piled up over 4 billion years. For decades people have asked the obvious…
Reading time6 min read
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