Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?

Post by musgravepeter » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

jtms wrote: post #113

musgravepeter wrote: post #12

(PhD, 1996 in general relativity) Embedded graphics drivers for real-time systems. I keep the physics part of my brain alive by developing physics based Unity assets (nbodyphysics.com) and supporting a package for GR on github (grtensor). I still buy WAY too many physics books. Current aspiration is to work through "Modern Classical Physics" Thorne/Blandford.

I’d imagine there could be some really interestingly massive simulation possibilities integrating nbody with unity’s new ECS system

Post by tericho » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

Anon84 wrote: post #25

vanderZwan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of reminds me of what Jeff Hawkins once claimed was the issue with making sense of how the brain works: > So why don't we have a good theory of brains? People have been working on it for 100 years. Let's first take a look at what normal science looks like. This is normal science. Normal science is a nice balance between theory and experimentalists. The theorist guy says, "I think this is what's going on," t…

> Not that physics has no theories, but I dropped out of studying physics myself over a decade ago, and at that time it felt a lot like the balance in physics has shifted towards having to measure and process disproportionate amounts of data with so much precision that has to be automated, or like you said do a ton of really complicated modelling. It feels a bit "stuck" that way. The reason for is just how damn good…

Post by digitalsushi » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

superhuzza wrote: post #75

kriro wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""try to read bad handwriting from records from nuclear weapons plants. It's a dull job a monkey could do but it pays the bills.""" + """For years I worked as a computer guy for an academic department and that was fun and I'm trying to get back into it""" Sounds like you could enjoy automating your work. Learn a bit of Python and some Machine Learning/Deep Learning and digitize the handwriting and build a little pro…

I would be very, very hesitant to to this. First of all, you definitely don't want any chance of incorrect recognition of handwriting coming from a nuclear weapons plant . Secondly, who knows what policies he might violate by using some unauthorized, untested software (whether OP is the author or not) with potentially sensitive information.

Post by tericho » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

physics137 wrote: post #43

I'll leave this here, since many comments are about the transition from physics to data science. "For now, however, in hard-core physical science at least, there is little evidence of any major BD-driven breakthroughs, at least not in fields where insight and understanding rather than zerosales resistance is the prime target: physics and chemistry do not succumb readily to the seduction of BD/ML/AI. It is extremely r…

Post by boxcardavin » Wed, Mar 27, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

ISL wrote: post #41

Physicist, working as a physicist (PhD 2015). Precision tests of gravity, primarily. We test the equivalence principle, Newton's inverse square law, hunt for exotic forms of dark matter, and build/invent cutting-edge sensors for LIGO. I have begun looking about at jobs outside of academia in order to decide whether to stay or go. Data science is one of the easiest transitions a physicist with data-analysis can make,…