Speaking as someone who has also wished at times to make a more immediate, tangible impact on the world around me, I'm glad you're liking your new job. That sa

Speaking as someone who has also wished at times to make a more immediate, tangible impact on the world around me, I'm glad you're liking your new job. That said, even "ephemeral" things have value. Individuals will buy poetry books, for instance! You seem to be saying that, since one can't persuade the average person on the street to pay you to write a research paper[1], the research that gets done is "over-sold" through "advertising." In other words, the work is funded not on its own merits, but as a popularity contest. I'd argue, though, even within astrophysics alone, some research is more important than others: maybe it answers more fundamental questions, or could enable a unifying explanatory framework for a broader class of phenomena, or is actually of near-term importance to us on Earth (asteroid location, space weather). Science is a human endeavor. Yes, there is often hype and trends as people advocate for funding for their next big thing--but there's a lot of that here on Hacker News, too.