Ask Your Resident Physicist Questions

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Fundamentally, there really isn't a difference between astrophysics and other physics disciplines. All physics really is is making observations of some phenomenon, developing theories and models to describe it, and testing those theories and models with experiments. Astrophysics is no different, except we can't exactly do astrophysical experiments yet (at least not the really interesting ones). Instead, astrophysics relies heavily on observations and model-making to develop and prove its theories.
That's probably not a particularly satisfactory answer, but like I said, it's not my specialty. All I have to go on is limited experience and copious amounts of YouTube videos.

 

I only really know string theory at a surface level, so I can't say too much about it. From what I understand, however, it's... interesting, at least. It's a theory that's (as far as I'm aware) impossible to prove, but because it makes the math nice, so theorists like that. I'm an experimentalist, not a theorist, so I'm not really on board with string theory. If it can be definitively and experimentally proved, then sure, I'll buy it.

 

Hm... I vaguely remember a movie about Steven Hawking that lame out a few years ago... but beyond that, I can't think of any off the top of my head.

 

In leiu

Either sleep, play video games (Destiny 2 has been my main game for some time now), binge-watch YouTube videos, or go bowling.

 

I have multiple. Last I checked, I think I had... 9? 10? Most of them are for tournaments and I haven't been to any in a while, so...

-Feels... interesting. I wonder how many other active members are around that age...
-Bowling, honestly. I could understand how bowling balls can curve down the lane, but I wanted to understand why they did from a fundamental standpoint. One thing lead to another, and I eventually got the answers I wanted.
-Hello!

 

The first option, though most people don't even bother with the first two letters.

 

Hmm... Well, some homework assignments I've had were basically "derive this equation" or "derive this expression", and it's always satisfying to get the result you want after multiple pages of algebra and/or calculus.

 

1. Marinara. I'm a simple man.
2. Hm... The ending of Game of Thrones was pretty disappointing, as ( a majority of) the rest of the internet seems to agree.

A duck, because ducks are smaller and less inherently evil than geese.

 

I'll be honest, I don't keep up with science news as much as I should, so this experiment is new to me.

After reading through some articles, I'm struggling to see the applications of the experiments results. Like, it's neat to see a demonstration of weird quantum mechanical shenanigans, but I fail to see how that's useful for doing anything. Maybe that's me tending to look at things in a practical sense, idk.