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

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, which I think explains the prevalence of physicists in that role. We have the training in both the techniques and a sober assessment of uncertainties, which makes us desirable.

So far, in my search for outside employment, I haven't found anything that draws me as much as my present work, but if you're in the Seattle area and looking for an experimental physicist with a broad range of experience, please get in touch.

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 rare for specialists in these domains to simply go out and collect vast quantities of data, bereft of any guiding theory as to why it should be done. There are some exceptions, perhaps the most intriguing of which is astronomy, where sky scanning telescopes scrape up vast quantities of data for which machine learning has proved to be a powerful way of both processing it and suggesting interpretations of recorded measurements. In subjects where the level of theoretical understanding is deep, it is deemed aberrant to ignore it all and resort to collecting data in a blind manner. Yet, this is precisely what is advocated in the less theoretically grounded disciplines of biology and medicine, let alone social sciences and economics. The oft-repeated mantra of the life sciences, as the pursuit of ‘hypothesis driven research’, has been cast aside in favour of large data collection activities [7]. And, if the best minds are employed in large corporations to work out how to persuade people to click on online advertisements instead of cracking hard-core science problems, not much can be expected to change in the years to come. An even more delicate story goes for social sciences and certainly for business, where the burgeoning growth of BD, more often than not fuelled by bombastic claims, is a compelling fact, with job offers towering over the job market to anastonishing extent. But, as we hope we have made clear in this essay, BD is by no means the panacea its extreme aficionados want to portray to us and, most importantly, to funding agencies. It is neither Archimedes’ fulcrum, nor the end of insight."

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.201...

I'm not a physicist, but a physics drop-out. However, I am still in touch with many of the people I studied with. Only a few stayed in physics in the end.

One thing I noticed is that because physics has multiple decades more experience with dealing with big data compared to just about every other scientific field, a lot of physicists who jump ship tend to end up in a position where they can apply that expertise.

I worked as a programmer for a molecular neurobiology research group for two years. Biology is going through a kind of Cambrian explosion of new data (especially when it comes to anything that involves genetics). So it's probably not surprising that a number of people at work told me that it is extremely common to see physicists switch to biology because that's where all the exciting new research is happening, with new theories and discoveries, and lots of people who are very happy to steal whatever the physicists have already figured out about how to process and interpret mountains of data.

From someone who might be pursuing a physics degree soon.

> Some of us learn in graduate school that we can't spend our whole lives solving one problem. Would you please expand on this. I am not sure if you meant that problems are hard enough or what.

Nuclear physicist now developing options strategies and corresponding specialized financial software for a hedge fund. I'd rather go back and work at the particle accelerator but there is zero chance for a permanent position as a researcher for a regular dude like me.