Most relevant topics and math for astrophysics

[Kyuubi]

Helloz. I want to become an astrophysicist and was wondering if there topics in math that are HEAVILY used in astrophysics so that I can start focusing on them from early on. I understand that A LOT of different aspects of math are used in almost every field of physics, but I want to know which topics should be my comfort zone. On which parts should I work so that they become "walks in the park" for me.

Thank youu.

 

[PeroK]

Everybody wants to be an astrophysicist these days!

 

[Kyuubi]

Surely that's not too much of a bad thing no?

 

[PeroK]

Surely that's not too much of a bad thing no?

I don't know. When I was a child everyone wanted to be an astronaut. I guess every generation wants to reach for the stars in one way or another.

 

[CrysPhys]

Everybody wants to be an astrophysicist these days!

Totally different from my experience. Nearly every undergrad I meet these days is majoring in business or finance. Only rare exceptions in pre-med.

 

[gwnorth]

Totally different from my experience. Nearly every undergrad I meet these days is majoring in business or finance. Only rare exceptions in pre-med.

Ok so @PeroK should have said that every Physics student seems to want to be an Astrophysicist these days. While Physics is still a pretty niche field, I've certainly seen an uptick in the number students lately professing a desire to pursue Astrophysics on the various education forums I frequent at least. It seems to be the hot Physics topic de jour next to the perennial favourite of HEP Theory.

As for the "hot" undergrad degree fields from what I've seen they're still mostly the same as they've been for awhile: CS, Engineering, Business/Finance/Accounting, and anything "pre-med" or allied health (with the newest attraction of these being Neuroscience and Psychological Counselling).

Most students tend to go where the demand/money is, and while that's not Astrophysics, for Physics students at least, it seems to be the new sexy.

In any case, that doesn't answer the OPs question but I'll leave that to those more knowledgeable than I.

 

[pasmith]

Helloz. I want to become an astrophysicist and was wondering if there topics in math that are HEAVILY used in astrophysics so that I can start focusing on them from early on. I understand that A LOT of different aspects of math are used in almost every field of physics, but I want to know which topics should be my comfort zone. On which parts should I work so that they become "walks in the park" for me.

Thank youu.

Everything necessary to understand the equations, and everything necessary to understand the numerical methods used to actually solve them.

 

[malawi_glenn]

Numerical and computational methods, statistics. Handling huge data sets.

 

[vanhees71]

I don't know. When I was a child everyone wanted to be an astronaut. I guess every generation wants to reach for the stars in one way or another.

Well, I'm not so sure, whether manned missions are good or bad. On the one hand, it takes a lot more effort to bring men into space and safely back than equipment like space telescopes, robots on Mars, etc., i.e., you can get more science per $ out with un-manned missions than with manned ones. On the other hand, without the possibility to repair Hubble several times by humans it would have been a big failure with its wrong optics, which was corrected in the beginning and it would have come out much less without some "repair missions" during all the years it's active. For sure, taken all together there came more science out of un-manned missions than by manned ones, and without astrophysicists we'd not even have use of all the phantastic data these missions collected.

 

[vanhees71]

Ok so @PeroK should have said that every Physics student seems to want to be an Astrophysicist these days. While Physics is still a pretty niche field, I've certainly seen an uptick in the number students lately professing a desire to pursue Astrophysics on the various education forums I frequent at least. It seems to be the hot Physics topic de jour next to the perennial favourite of HEP Theory.

As for the "hot" undergrad degree fields from what I've seen they're still mostly the same as they've been for awhile: CS, Engineering, Business/Finance/Accounting, and anything "pre-med" or allied health (with the newest attraction of these being Neuroscience and Psychological Counselling).

Most students tend to go where the demand/money is, and while that's not Astrophysics, for Physics students at least, it seems to be the new sexy.

In any case, that doesn't answer the OPs question but I'll leave that to those more knowledgeable than I.

I'm not so sure that astrophysics is such bad strategic choice concerning future funding since I think there'll be a lot of money in the coming years going in this field (another field is everything related to "quantum computing"), but it's of course hard to predict the future funding of science. But the chances for astrophysics seem not so bad, which is mostly due to the fact that we just are at the beginning of gravitational-wave astronomy.

That said, pursuing studies in astrophysics is for sure not a bad choice, because you need to cover physics in a very broad way to do astrophysics. In my opinion, the great thing with studying physics is that you don't need to specialize too early, and in my (somewhat outdated) opinion, you shouldn't. Within the European system, I think there shouldn't be any "specialization" during the BSc program (6 semesters=3 years of study at a university): There you learn the fundamental concepts in the experimental and theoretical physics courses and have the choice between many topics you might be most interested in. It ends with a 3-months thesis work. Only for your MSc studies you specialize somewhat more to do your 1-year thesis work, and finally if you also pursue a PhD, for which you really must specialize to work on an in-depth research topic.

For astrophysics for sure you need the complete BSc topics from classical mechanics and quantum mechanics to general relativity and the corresponding math (mainly analysis, linear algebra, statistics).

 

[gwnorth]

I think there shouldn't be any "specialization" during the BSc program (6 semesters=3 years of study at a university): There you learn the fundamental concepts in the experimental and theoretical physics courses and have the choice between many topics you might be most interested in. It ends with a 3-months thesis work. Only for your MSc studies you specialize somewhat more to do your 1-year thesis work, and finally if you also pursue a PhD, for which you really must specialize to work on an in-depth research topic.

I too believe in a broad generalized undergrad that focuses on the core topics of the major but allows for some flexibility in the upper years to take some more specialist courses in topics of interest. I typically counsel students away from the more "niche" majors in undergrad and instead advise them to stick to core programs and to leave further specialization to graduate school.

Our programs here in Canada are 4 years in length and generally without the same degree of "gen ed" requirements that are typical of many US programs. That then leaves plenty of room for students to add more specialized topics of interest in their senior course work in addition to 2 semesters of thesis work while still allowing some room for non-major related electives if so desired.

In my experience in Canada at least, there aren't very many "Astrophysics" undergraduate programs anyways and those that do exist are just your basic Physics program with some additional Astrophysics courses added in the place of other elective choices. Certainly you don't need an Astrophysics bachelor's to be admitted to Astrophysics master's programs.

 

[Drakkith]

Helloz. I want to become an astrophysicist and was wondering if there topics in math that are HEAVILY used in astrophysics so that I can start focusing on them from early on. I understand that A LOT of different aspects of math are used in almost every field of physics, but I want to know which topics should be my comfort zone. On which parts should I work so that they become "walks in the park" for me.

The University of Arizona's Astronomy undergraduate program requires Calculus 1 and 2, Vector Calculus, Differential Equations, and then various physics classes where they likely teach you more specialized math. Calculus requires a knowledge of Algebra and some Geometry and Trigonometry. I would focus on these topics before you even think about looking into more specialized math like statistics or something. To start, make sure you're up to speed on algebra. You can't do much of anything if you can't do algebra. After that I would progress up through geometry and trig before getting into calculus.

Remember, these math classes exist to teach you the subject, so don't try to really learn this stuff on your own unless you have a LOT of time on your hands. You're aiming for familiarity. Don't spend 6 months trying to become an expert in algebra before moving on.

Ref: https://www.arizona.edu/degree-search/majors/astronomy

 

[symbolipoint]

Finally @Drakkith begins to answer the question in his post #12. All I can add as a refinement is, you want to be as expert as you can with "Algebra 1 and Algebra 2", or generalized arithmetic using variables, before heading into Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, and Calculus 1 & 2 & 3.

 

[malawi_glenn]

Given that OP already is studying physics at the undergraduate level by his thread https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/current-on-infinite-periodic-lc-circuit.1048171/ I do think it is safe to assume that they do know the stuff mentioned by Drakkith and symbolipoint

 

[Drakkith]

Given that OP already is studying physics at the undergraduate level by his thread https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/current-on-infinite-periodic-lc-circuit.1048171/ I do think it is safe to assume that they do know the stuff mentioned by Drakkith and symbolipoint

Ah, that would indeed make things different.
@Kyuubi If nothing else, I'd recommend talking to one of the professors at whatever institution you're wanting to take astrophysics at. They could probably tell you better than most people here on PF since most of us aren't astrophysicists.

 

[malawi_glenn]

To me, it seems like they are asking about specific things like "I should be able to differentiate in my sleep but it is not so important to find linear vector subspaces"