How to surround myself with other physicists/students outside of academia?

[diegzumillo]

Hey, I figured the general discussion would be the most appropriate place for this discussion.

I finished my PhD a couple years ago and moved to my original country. I still keep in touch with my previous adviser as we are still working on my thesis research, which is great. However, because of a number of factors, pandemics included, I'm basically unemployed sitting at home all the time, and noticing how motivating it was to study a subject when you are surrounded by like-minded people, like, say, a physics department. I don't have that anymore and I could really use some alternatives! I find it harder and harder to keep myself updated on my own field or even interest on other interesting papers from other fields. Being alone drains my passion and motivation for physics and I'm afraid it will impact my future career.

When I compare with more popular fields or hobbies I notice how physics as a community is closed! For my game development hobby I participate in weekly online meetings with a group from a city I lived in, an online chat with another group, hundreds of people read a blog I write about and engage with me, a billion people interact about this on twitter. Even Math has an active twitter community which eventually led me to read about categories, just to know what they are on about.

But physics communities seem to be stuck inside physics departments. I can see the irony of this statement being made on Physics Forums, believe me, but this forum is too little. There is a clear separation between mentors and pupils and an air of formality which makes this more of a (great) resource than the kind of community I'm thinking about.

Anyone agrees with my assessment? If so, why do you think things are that way? if not, elaborate. Do you have any suggestions for me?

 

[phinds]

I finished my PhD a couple years ago and moved to my original country.

And is it a secret what country that is?

There just aren't all that many physicists around and in your country (which you declined to specify) there may be even fewer, so no, I don't think it's strange or that your experience is an outlier.

I'm extremely active in the woodworking community and know several people in person and tons more on-line but outside of PF I don't even KNOW anyone who is a physicist or any other kind of scientist other than wood scientists.

 

[George Jones]

The person with whom I share a bedroom has a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in physics.

 

[diegzumillo]

And is it a secret what country that is?

No, it's Brazil. I didn't mention because I was more interested in online solutions. Brazil is a large country with lots of physics departments scattered around, but none near me at the moment.

I'm extremely active in the woodworking community and know several people in person and tons more on-line but outside of PF I don't even KNOW anyone who is a physicist or any other kind of scientist other than wood scientists.

That mirrors my experience as well.

I guess one of the contributing factors is that physics is a wide field. It might be possible to find or form more specialized communities.

 

[phinds]

I guess one of the contributing factors is that physics is a wide field.

Yeah, I agree that that's one of the big issues. Even if there's a physicist or two near you, they may have totally different interests.

 

[f95toli]

I guess one of the contributing factors is that physics is a wide field. It might be possible to find or form more specialized communities.

I don't believe "open communities" of that type are very popular for "professional" physicists. Typically, you really only have that type of interaction with close collaborators and "forum" type platforms are only used if you are working in a project with many partners. I work on a couple of H2020 funded project and we use online platforms to share information but these are obviously not open to the public.

There are two obvious reasons for why you don't find many professional scientists discussing their work in open forums. The first is that science is very competitive and you don't necessarily want to tell others what you are working on until you are ready to publish or give a talk.
The second reason is intellectual property. The latter is usually not very relevant for fundamental physics, but most physicists work in fields where IP can on occasion be valuable and there are often rules against sharing information with the public without first considering IP.

These rules can be set by the employer or by the collaboration agreement if you work in collaborative projects.
Note that "IP" does not only mean patents; it can also be information that you simply don't want to reveal because it might be used as background IP in the future.

 

[diegzumillo]

Maybe you're right but I do see other equally competitive fields with a more exciting online presence. Computer science, for example. They can keep their work under wraps and still engage the community about recently published works, sharing opinions and stuff like that. Or, even more useful, to advertise their own work! Get it published first then talk publicly about it. I feel I'm more up to date with recent works in computer graphics than physics because of this.

 

[jtbell]

You might look at the PHYS-L e-mail discussion group:

https://www.phys-l.org/mailman/listinfo/phys-l

It's mainly oriented towards physics teachers (both high-school and university), although many users probably also do some research. I first subscribed to it in the early 1990s when my college first got Internet access, and probably unsubscribed when I retired and changed my e-mail address in the 2010s.

You can read the archives at the link above, to see if it looks promising. There are fewer postings now, than I remember from when I was subscribed. The users are probably mostly rather old now, dating from when e-mail was the Internet's "killer app" and Web-based forums like PF didn't exist (let alone Facebook!).

 

[gmax137]

You might look at the PHYS-L e-mail discussion group:

Thanks @jtbell I had not seen that one before.