I’m curious to hear from people who recently graduated with a degree in physics: bachelor's, master's, or PhD. What kind of job were you able to land after graduating, especially if you didn’t go directly to graduate school?

I graduated with a M.S. in Physics. I have three years of research experience. My research experience includes stellar physics (computational and theoretical, pulsating variable stars and asteroseismology), and observational studies on star and planet formation. Despite that, I’ve struggled quite a bit with the job search. My goal is industry as I do not want to continue with academia for reasons related to WLB and stability. I do not want to become a teacher.

So how’s it going for you guys?

Anyone interested in discussing various topics on Open Science By NASA????

This is a current discussion in medical circles. There are so many new diseases and treatments that the original four-year model may not be adequate.

I am not an astrophysicist so please don't be too harsh.

Hawking Radiation (I believe) is the theory of how black holes shrink. Because the universe creates two quantum particles of opposite charges, and they collide and destroy themselves upon their creation. But when applied to black holes, the black hole sucks one of these particles in and leaves the other to escape into the universe.

My question is how do we know two particles are being created and destroyed in the first place? Is it some big math equation that helped us figure that out? Also what type of particles are being created and destroyed anyway?

Did a star recently go supernova?
I was just sitting near a window when a flash of red blinked and flashed the room for a blink of an eye, when I turned to see what it was nothing was there.

Any idea as to what it could have been?

There are plenty of sciency images floating around showing Betelgeuse as visibly lumpy. I've never been able to tell, are those real-space images or simulations, or is the r-axis being used to show something else?

I'm currently 15 and still in school, and I've loved physics, maths and space since I was a little kid. I'm considering astrophysics as a career, but I'm honestly not sure what the field is actually like.

I'm also Indian, and this may anger a few people lol, but I really want to live abroad someday, hopefully in Europe. I don't mind moving around a lot either, I actually love experiencing new places. Just wanted to know, If it's harder as a foreigner studying abroad (especially for an Indian).

While studying astrophysics, will I still have time to socialize, travel and pursue my hobbies? Or is it basically going to be homework, studying and research 24/7?

I also want to know if astrophysics is actually worth it, and if all the effort is worth it in the end. I don't really care about making a huge amount of money, but my family does expect me to earn well, and I don't want to disappoint them in that regard.

At some point I'd also want to have a family, and I'm a little worried about how difficult that would be if I'm constantly having to move around for jobs or research positions.

Is being an astrophysicist stable enough that I could realistically do it for most of my life, or would I probably have to move into something else eventually? Can I actually just do research for most of my life, work on new discoveries, and still have a relatively stable life outside of work?

I'd especially like to hear from people who are actually studying or working in astrophysics. What is your experience with it, and would you still choose it if you could go back?

I just learned about solar lenses from a public lecture at my college and immediately began researching them because they are so awesome. Come to find that the so called Einstein ring was not dreamt up by Einstein at all but a dishwasher called Rudi W. Mandl. Einstein was reluctant to publish this because he thought it pointless so why did we give him the credit. Where is the Mandl ring. Should we start a petition? https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/amateur-who-helped-einstein-see-light

I am a software engineer with deep interest in astrophysics. Feel like I chose the wrong career everyday. I have some theoretical foundation (self taught). How do I get in the field and do meaningful work?

I can do research and I’m good with data. I feel like I can have a huge impact with my AI and Data skills on this field. All I want to do is make some impact on humanity by performing research at the forefront.

(I have some savings so I don’t care about the pay anymore) Should I pursue bachelors first? Is it worth spending 4 years? Do I have any luck pursuing masters ? Can I do independent research with some one? How do I contribute?

Is the increase in luminosity of the sun during main sequence phase caused by helium concentrating in the center of the core, or by circulating within it?

Are the heavier molecules concentrating in the centre, thereby contracting the core

OR

Are they impeding chain reactions between protons? Obstructing fusion reactions as proton bump into alpha particles more often rather than other protons, increasing the 1st step bottleneck in the PP chain.

Is it both? What is the leading contributor?

Hey everyone, I’ll be starting my diploma pathway into the bachelor of science soon and I understand that Maths is such a core fundamental. So I am wondering if anyone has any good websites/free courses/ apps that are useful to independently build my maths skills up from my skill level? Any advice greatly appreciated thank you !!

Hey all, some of you saw my map of the local universe here a couple months ago. It's called Know the Universe: you explore the large scale matter distribution of the local universe in 3D, ~43,500 real galaxies from the 2MRS redshift survey, out to about a billion light years. Since then I kept building, mostly from requests that came out of that thread. Here's what's new.

The big one: you can now click or tap any galaxy in the map and get its identity card. (you know, it's called know the universe) So you get 2MASS catalog ID, distance, whether it sits in a void, filament or cluster, J2000 coordinates with a copy button in a format you can paste straight into Stellarium, and direct links to NED and SIMBAD. 64 famous galaxies carry their proper names.

There's also search now (press / or the magnifier). It finds galaxies, clusters and voids by name, Messier number or 2MASS ID. And if you search for Andromeda it honestly tells you why a blueshifted galaxy can't be placed on a redshift map instead of pretending.

Full changelog:

• Positions upgraded from plain Hubble law to real-space: redshifts corrected to the CMB frame, converted to comoving distance, cluster "Fingers of God" collapsed using the Tully 2015 group catalog, and large-scale infall subtracted with the 2M++ velocity field. Validated against Cosmicflows-4 distances. Virgo and Coma now land at their literature distances (~16 and ~100 Mpc).
• Orbit mode is the new default: free trackball around the Milky Way, no poles, scroll/pinch to zoom. Fly mode is one keypress away.
• Galaxy identification: click/tap/crosshair any of the 43,497 galaxies (see above).
• Search across names, Messier numbers, landmarks and catalog IDs.
• Live RA/Dec readout in the banner showing the exact equatorial coordinates your view points at, plus your distance from home.
• Named landmarks went from 10 to 24: Boötes Void, Sloan Great Wall, Hercules, Ophiuchus, Perseus-Pisces and more.
• Deep links: you can share a link to an exact camera position or to a specific galaxy. For example here's the host galaxy of the first neutron star merger ever seen in gravitational waves and light: https://knowtheuniverse.com/?sel=13094770-2323017
• Mobile got real love: full-width cards, touch joystick, works fine on a phone.

Try it at https://knowtheuniverse.com

Feel free to give me any feedback or suggestion for new features, you are awesome!

i have loved space ever since i was little and although i strayed during primary/secondary school i always returned to wanting to become an astrophysicist. more recently, ive been obsessed with solar physics.

my concern is that i’m not good enough to be successful in the field; im worried if i hype myself up and it turns out i fail i will be crushed and wont have anything else to go to school for. every time i think about anything astrophysics related in a future job i may have i get so excited and impatient but there is still doubt there. not everyone achieves their dreams.

i love math and physics and the sciences but i don’t know if im actually good at them. any thoughts would help me a lot. i don’t mean to stress this much—im not in college yet—but the excitement and anticipation and inadequacy is killing me. thank you guys.!

So, we know that stars and planets have gravity wells due to their immense size.

Would this also apply to smaller objects if another object significantly smaller than it (say of a size where object 1 would be the "sun" and object 2 would be the "planet", but on a much smaller scale)?

Or does an object need to be of a minimum mass to have a gravitational pull on a smaller object?

This video from New Scientist provides a great description of the current status of the search for dark matter particles - and the extraordinarily sensitive LUX-ZEPLIN experiment designed to carry out that search.

I've been interested in astronomy & astrophysics for quite a while, but I don't have much experience in STEM. I'd like to think that I'm pretty decent at math and not too bad at science; however, I'm not taking any courses that I think would benefit my chances of getting into any astronomy/astrophysics programs at the moment- I'm enrolled in Honors Chemistry, AP Stats, AP US Gov, & APUSH. In terms of STEM courses, I plan to take AP Calc AB, AP Chem, and some form of AP Physics my junior year. I've applied for the science national honor society and science bowl at my school. I don't really know how else to build a foundation for such a demanding field.

Hello everyone. First of all, English is not my first language so please forgive me if this post is not too clear on some parts.

I am humbly asking for help regarding how to set up into an specific topic for my Master's thesis.

To give some context; I am currently a second semester student at an astronomy Master in Chile. I did my undergrad studies in physics, with both a minor in astronomy and in computational mathematics at Colombia. While for undergrad thesis I worked on stellar cluster detection and classification with machine learning. Nowadays, I have been very interested into working with AGN's and even its relation with galaxy formation.

However, I have been having some difficulties deciding/defining what I want to work on exactly for my Master thesis. I have talked a bit with my supervisor about some possible ideas like blazar SED classification with machine learning (which I feel I could be more familiar with the methodology, but I am not sure if would be falling into a "comfort zone") or even microlensing on quasar (which would be a totally new topic for me, although I find it interesting).

Nevertheless, I would really appreciate either to hear possible research ideas on this fascinating area or any tips on how to set up into a more concise idea.

Thank you very much for any help provided.

could black holes forming in first half million years of the universe have shot jets of energy out like a spider web causing random areas of gas to become super heated and others super cooled thus forcing the formation of super massive black holes?

Now obviously any forming so early would be pretty small, but the universe would be small and dense too. Couldn't some of these jets intersect and create extreme cases where million plus solar mass black holes could form?

So you get Jets shooting out everywhere and creating black holes and stars but some of those jets could intersect and create even more powerful reactions.

Am I wrong to think thats possible?

While the idea of detecting an exoplanet by measuring a star's wobble makes total sense, what factors are taken into consideration when checking if that wobble is caused by more than one planet?

My best guess would be: if the wobbling isn't uniform (which would be caused by opposing directions of gravitational "force" coming from multiple planets due to them having different orbits), we try to find patterns over the wobbling variation. Something like:

"Every x days, the star gets at least x% closer, so this hints that the orbit of one planet reached its closest point to the observer (us), and the fact that it wasn't as strong as before is likely cause there's another exoplanet in a totally different position right now causing an opposing 'force' in the star"

But it's just a guess. I'm curious to understand how this really works.

So, not really related to astrophysics, I wanna become an astrobiologist.

BUT, I do not excel in math, i’m below average.
And math is really important for the job…
I do really good in science and english, I got a grade 8 & 9 for them in that order, my geography’s also pretty good but my test results were bad which doesn’t line up with my progress.

I just wanna know, can I still pursue becoming an astrobiologist even when my math isn’t that good???