astrophysics research?

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Jun 15, 2022 at 11:42	comment	added	Trunk		If any comparisons are being made by the OP it is surely between graduate school level research and say final year undergraduate projects - which do require the usual routine of major journal literature review, formal decision on experiments (or approaches in math), results, discussion and conclusions. Of course everything is deeper at postgrad level.
Jun 15, 2022 at 7:27	comment	added	Jochen Glueck		[...] Now the misconceptions might be slightly different for physics (e.g. the "there's nothing beyond highschool knowledge" misconception might be less prevalent, since some people have seen a picture of a function with a singularity somewhere and now believe they knew what a black hole is), but I don't see any reason to believe that a large number of people understood even remotely what research in physics means.
Jun 15, 2022 at 7:27	comment	added	Jochen Glueck		[...] The suggestions reached from the claim that there can't be research in math since everything were already known, over the idea that I would be working with numbers all day, over "You say you're not using numbers so much - ah, I see, so you're actually computing with variables", to the idea that the task of a researcher is to study things in books and then be tested on it by omniscient magic beings called "professors" who, for some reason, already know everything there is to know. [...]
Jun 15, 2022 at 7:27	comment	added	Jochen Glueck		@AnonymousPhysicist: Regarding the "research in secondary school" topic: I think you strongly underestimate how little the vast majority of people understand what scientific research means. Well, I'm a mathematician rather than a physicist; various people explained to me what they think mathematical research means. [...]
Jun 15, 2022 at 7:01	comment	added	Jochen Glueck		@AnonymousPhysicist: Also without lab work, the answer mentions various things that cannot be had from the internet: the entire process from coming up with an idea, testing the idea, and writing down the results in a journal article. What can be found on the internet is the result of this process (in the form of articles), but learning this process is completely different from seeing the results. I also don't understand your dismissal of attending seminars and conferences (in your first comment); these have multiple benefits that one can hardly get from reading arXiv papers.
Jun 15, 2022 at 6:26	comment	added	David Z		I can attest that when I was in high school I had no idea what physics research was like or how it differed from school projects. (Except that I assumed it was somehow harder, otherwise everyone would do it...)
Jun 15, 2022 at 1:37	comment	added	Anonymous Physicist		@BryanKrause I don't believe that a reasonable secondary school student would fail to understand that their research paper homework assignments are not like physics research.
Jun 15, 2022 at 1:08	comment	added	Bryan Krause♦		@AnonymousPhysicist I don't think the first paragraph is condescending at all - many people who haven't done research yet don't understand what it entails and how it differs from other things with the same name. Maybe OP doesn't need that paragraph but some other reader of this Q&A might, and if they did it would be unfortunate to leave it out and hard to understand the rest of the answer.
Jun 15, 2022 at 0:38	comment	added	Anonymous Physicist		@JochenGlueck The fourth paragraph is a good answer. The first paragraph is condescending and inappropriate. The second, third, and fifth paragraphs do not effectively explain why graduate school is useful. The only thing mentioned that cannot be had from the internet is lab work, and a fair number of physicists do not do lab work.
Jun 14, 2022 at 21:59	comment	added	Jochen Glueck		I think this is an excellent answer, and I would really be interested to know the reason for the downvote.
Jun 14, 2022 at 21:54	comment	added	Anonymous Physicist		"This is not in books in the library, but is some amalgamation of specialized journal articles, seminars with latest results, what you've seen or heard at conferences" It's mostly ArXiv, which the asker can access.
Jun 14, 2022 at 21:50	history	answered	Jon Custer	CC BY-SA 4.0