3 ms·

It's hard to know what your current knowledge level is without more information, but it sounds like you're trying to develop a good background more just to dive

by deeths 5y ago

It's hard to know what your current knowledge level is without more information, but it sounds like you're trying to develop a good background more just to dive into areas that seem fun to explore as a hobby, rather than focused study-- so I'm suggesting things that lead to more exploration. A few of the resources below are good backgrounds, and Wikipedia is great for filling in your knowledge. Then to find interesting things to spark your hobby interest, I'd recommend following astronomers and astrophysicists on twitter, which will also help point you to interesting papers (which may take a lot of referencing Wikipedia to understand). You'll need at least a little quantum physics to have some things make sense, so it's worth getting that from some of the links people mentioned below if you don't already. If you don't know the topics below in detail, learn it from wikipedia to make sure you understand topics well enough to explore (in rough order): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysics - links to all the rabbit hole topics you may want to explore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_spectroscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_spectroscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertzsprung%E2%80%93Russell_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertzsprung%E2%80%93Russell_di... then look at all the "see also" topics on the last one to go over basic star physics Then for dramatic events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_red_nova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_red_nova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave Some twitter folks for key topics (and you can find interesting papers and other twitter folks from there): @badastronomer (great for pointers/explanations for lots of topics) @astrokatie (cosmology) @nasaSun (the Sun) @jannaLevin (black holes, gravity astronomy) @matt_of_earth (host of PBS Spacetime, which someone else mentioned) @ajpizzuto (neutrino astronomy)

tolarianwiz 5y ago
This is what I was asking for, many thanks! By the way, my background is BSc in CS, so there surely are a good amount of things to learn.
- deeths 5y ago
  I'm glad that was helpful. I'm in a similar boat of just being interested in this for fun. I have a little more of the math and physics background for it, but it's pretty rusty and I don't need it to understand even most of the interesting papers. You probably want to understand three areas in more detail than you'll get from the wikipedia links I sent: 1) cosmology (people gave several good recommendations already) 2) wrap your head around the weirdness of quantum physics. I really enjoyed Six Impossible Things by John Gribbin as a good intro to different equivalent ways of conceptualizing quantum physics. It's not heavy on math and you can do it as an audiobook without missing anything. 3) Standard Model of forces/particles. It's really helpful to do this as a part of a book or long article instead of just wikipedia. Some of the recommendations in #1 will cover this. I don't have any recent recommendations to give there, but I'm sure there's lots out there. Here are few recent articles and papers that are good for jumping in to some recent news: Summary of all the detected gravitational events since gravity astronomy became possible: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.14533.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.14533.pdf Here's an article on the above if the paper is too dense: https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-black-holes-offer-physicists-a-radical-probe-of-the-cosmos-20210217/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-black-holes-offer-physici... Puzzling out what changes in the brightness of Betelgeuse mean: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.10463.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.10463.pdf Another puzzle with changing star brightness: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.11268.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.11268.pdf And here's one that's helpful to get a sense of why proton/neutron physics is so complex and counterintuitive: https://www.quantamagazine.org/protons-antimatter-revealed-by-decades-old-experiment-20210224/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/protons-antimatter-revealed-b...

by deeths 5y ago

tolarianwiz 5y ago

This is what I was asking for, many thanks! By the way, my background is BSc in CS, so there surely are a good amount of things to learn.

deeths 5y ago
I'm glad that was helpful. I'm in a similar boat of just being interested in this for fun. I have a little more of the math and physics background for it, but it's pretty rusty and I don't need it to understand even most of the interesting papers. You probably want to understand three areas in more detail than you'll get from the wikipedia links I sent: 1) cosmology (people gave several good recommendations already) 2) wrap your head around the weirdness of quantum physics. I really enjoyed Six Impossible Things by John Gribbin as a good intro to different equivalent ways of conceptualizing quantum physics. It's not heavy on math and you can do it as an audiobook without missing anything. 3) Standard Model of forces/particles. It's really helpful to do this as a part of a book or long article instead of just wikipedia. Some of the recommendations in #1 will cover this. I don't have any recent recommendations to give there, but I'm sure there's lots out there. Here are few recent articles and papers that are good for jumping in to some recent news: Summary of all the detected gravitational events since gravity astronomy became possible: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.14533.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.14533.pdf Here's an article on the above if the paper is too dense: https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-black-holes-offer-physicists-a-radical-probe-of-the-cosmos-20210217/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-black-holes-offer-physici... Puzzling out what changes in the brightness of Betelgeuse mean: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.10463.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.10463.pdf Another puzzle with changing star brightness: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.11268.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.11268.pdf And here's one that's helpful to get a sense of why proton/neutron physics is so complex and counterintuitive: https://www.quantamagazine.org/protons-antimatter-revealed-by-decades-old-experiment-20210224/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/protons-antimatter-revealed-b...