So you want to get a PhD in physics? The video

[twofish-quant]

The stats at AIP to me that the number of physics PhDs who completely switch gears and become quants is a smallish percentage.

The stats that I've seen from AIP are just want people do immediately after their Ph.D. I haven't seen too many statistics that track careers over time. Would be really interested in seeing those.

A lot of engineering is applied physics. Physicists still work on things that go boom, and on making those things that go boom do so in the right place.

Yup. I know of a number of people from theoretical astrophysics that design hydrogen bombs. Someone has got to do it.

During the early-1990's, there was an largely successful effort by the US to hire ex-Soviet bomb builders and get them into the US. The logic behind this was that the Russian economy was a mess, and both the US and Russia had an interest in getting Russian scientists into the US. There's very little about hydrogen bombs that the US knows that the Russians don't and vice versa, and the point of getting Russian scientists into the US was so that they wouldn't end up in Iran, Pakistan, or North Korea.

 

[cdotter]

The stats that I've seen from AIP are just want people do immediately after their Ph.D. I haven't seen too many statistics that track careers over time. Would be really interested in seeing those.



Yup. I know of a number of people from theoretical astrophysics that design hydrogen bombs. Someone has got to do it.

Does that still happen? I thought that field largely died off (or went to simulations) after the nuclear test ban treaty.

 

[twofish-quant]

Does that still happen? I thought that field largely died off (or went to simulations) after the nuclear test ban treaty.

Someone has to write/maintain/debug the simulations.

For the most part, much of the work today involves running computer simulations to make sure that the bombs will still go off, and making sure that the knowledge is still there to be able to maintain and build new hydrogen bombs if necessary. It would *really* be a bad thing, if we found ourselves in a situation in which it turned out that the US couldn't build H-bombs, but Iran or North Korea could.

One of the reasons that all of the major powers were willing to sign the CTB, is that all of the major powers have enough computing power and physics Ph.D.'s so that they can be reasonably certain of their own H-bombs through computer simulations. This isn't true with Iran or NK, that don't have the computer infrastructure that the major powers have.

When I was an undergraduate in the early-1990's, there was this idea that soon all of the professors from the Sputnik generation would retire, and there would be a lot of new jobs in academia. This didn't happen in academia, because once someone retired they were willing to let the position go. This *did* happen at the national labs and defense industries, since apparently it's a very bad thing if no one in the US knows how to build an H-bomb, and so there's been a steady stream of hiring. Also, the number of people that are qualified for this position is reduced by security clearances. Most Chinese, Russian, or Indian physics Ph.D.'s aren't going to survive the security clearances.

 

[Pengwuino]

Someone has to write/maintain/debug the simulations.

For the most part, much of the work today involves running computer simulations to make sure that the bombs will still go off, and making sure that the knowledge is still there to be able to maintain and build new hydrogen bombs if necessary. It would *really* be a bad thing, if we found ourselves in a situation in which it turned out that the US couldn't build H-bombs, but Iran or North Korea could.

This reminds me of an article a couple years ago about a problem the Brits had with their nuclear subs (or something similar). Apparently a crucial material that had a fairly long shelf life required replacing... I think something about how they launched SLBMs. Well, long story short, they had forgotten how to make the material and no one had bothered to archive it and the company that made it had long gone bye bye. They had to track down everyone involved in that material to get more made . I hope someone remembers it better... it was a few years ago it happened.