To my layman's eyes Compressed Sensing looked to me fundamental new tool to look at things, did it really make any difference to the methods of physics? Did it have any effect in electodynamics or optics?
Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
61–70 of 333 posts
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#62Just so you don't get the impression every physicist is having a fabulous time, here's me:
I have a bachelors in physics. I went for a phd in biology but had to bail to work to support family, plus I can't seem to come up with original ideas.
I now have a job with physicist as part of the title, but what I really do is 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 but nothing yet. I teach math at a community college for fun too.
I have great kids, so all and all I'm happy about things, but I am sad the physics thing never panned out. As an undergrad I was excited about chaos and nonlinear dynamics. Still read math texts for fun and play with Haskell.
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#63I’m in my last year of a PhD in quantum computing, working on experimental error corrected entanglement between superconducting qubits.
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#64(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.
Have you ever considered working on some low-hanging fruit problem in a non-physics field?
Some of the Unity asset work might fit that description e.g. provide a library of chaotic attractors packaged for use in a game.
My grad work had no connection to data/stats and I have not bumped into any low hanging fruit where Riemannian geometry might be the answer!
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#65I'm a postdoc (PhD 2015) working on radio detection of ultra-high-energy neutrinos. I spend most of my time writing software and doing data analysis, but I also do field work (including in Antarctica and Greenland!) and a million other things. It's a whole lot of fun except for the general uncertainty about what I'll be doing in the future part.
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#66I finished a PhD in astrophysics this year and just started a job as machine learning scientist, working in computer vision for a startup. I massively under-anticipated how much this change would improve my work conditions and my sanity -- and I haven't even gotten my first paycheque yet.
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#67Just so you don't get the impression every physicist is having a fabulous time, here's me: I have a bachelors in physics. I went for a phd in biology but had to bail to work to support family, plus I can't seem to come up with original ideas. I now have a job with physicist as part of the title, but what I really do is try to read bad handwriting from records from nuclear weapons plants. It's a dull job a monkey coul…
Sorry for the aside, but... Haskell gang represent!
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#68Just so you don't get the impression every physicist is having a fabulous time, here's me: I have a bachelors in physics. I went for a phd in biology but had to bail to work to support family, plus I can't seem to come up with original ideas. I now have a job with physicist as part of the title, but what I really do is try to read bad handwriting from records from nuclear weapons plants. It's a dull job a monkey coul…
"""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 program that reads the stuff for you. The default example for reading handwritten digits is called MNIST if you want to read further. I'd suggest fast.ai and watching the first couple of lessons. That should get you started to play around with this. You don't have to tell anyone that you do this (I probably wouldn't) but hey at least it might be a nice way to do a little less boring stuff and ease into a bit of programmin/data science?
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#69I have PhD in physics. Now working in IT startup team of five coders from various academic backgrounds. Been doing everything from app development to web, admin/ops, some elixir, lots of python. Currently working on a few machine learning projects, collecting data, making features, scaling infrastructure and so on.
Salary is decent, everything is moving a lot faster than at uni. Wouldn't say I miss academia as such, but I definitely miss working on actual fundamental physics problems.
I might go back some day to apply my new knowledge of operational data science. There's definitely a need for updated methods, especially in data heavy fields such as astrophysics.
Edit: To answer your question about what's better outside academia - I'd say for me it's the tighter collaboration with colleagues, better project management, clearer goals, more diverse team (in terms of educational background / role in company), and last but not least job security - I can live where I want, not where the next postdoc happens to be.
Re: Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?
#70Condensed matter physics PhD student here, working on ultrafast electron diffraction.
The field of ultrafast science brought forward by the advances in ultrafast laser technology (Nobel 2018!) is exploding. On the largest scales, the Linac Coherent Light Source and similar machines are generating a lot of buzz. It hasn't yet reached the public recognition of the LHC, for example, but it's only a matter of years.
A colleague of mine was just hired as a data scientist at a major tech company. Based on the interview questions I heard from him, it seems that the data science field is a natural extension of the kind of data analysis we perform daily.