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SJay16
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Over the next decade, and few decades, which branches/ fields of physics will experience tremendous growth? I'm wondering what field I'd want to "specialize in" or focus in and could use some of your guy's opinion.
jedishrfu said:Quantum computing will need physicists as it ramps up. A lot of jobs will be to assist engineers in building production models of these devices.
Ivan Samsonov said:Classical mechanics might slightly grow, because we might need more calculations for rockets and technology to be used successfully.
Electronics will grow, because of the need of technology and its demand.
Atomic and molecular sciences will develop, because of the need of medicine and chemical engineering (nanotechnology).
High energy particle physics and nuclear physics will spread because of the thriving technology.
In my opinion these fields will prosper because of the technological development and recent human advances. These fields might be useful in nuclear and molecular medicine and medical research.
I would however choose particle physics, because in my opinion it is very interesting.
jedishrfu said:The problem with many of these fields is that engineers can fill the jobs easily and might be preferred over a physicist.
atyy said:I think you are wrong but hope you are right. I think it'll be 1000 years or never before we get a useful quantum computer. We'll have fusion and quantum gravity first ...
Ivan Samsonov said:However the engineers must be closely familiar and good with physics and that is my point.
Fervent Freyja said:Biophysics!
atyy said:I think you are wrong but hope you are right. I think it'll be 1000 years or never before we get a useful quantum computer. We'll have fusion and quantum gravity first ...
Ivan Samsonov said:We have already made a quantum computer!
jedishrfu said:But its experimental and not at the production level for commercial use. To get there will require physicists, engineers and programmers to develop the manufacturing tools, methodology and scheme for insuring that it works consistently and that the resultant answers are always correct.
Australian researchers have designed a new type of qubit - the building block of quantum computers - that they say will finally make it possible to manufacture a true, large-scale quantum computer.
It seems disingenuous to describe topological insulators as having been discovered. The transport experiments are inconclusive from what I know, and even fans of the subject will admit that some of the materials claimed to have these properties aren't "true" topological insulators (e.g. Bi2Se3 or one of its variants). (Good) Experimentalists I've heard give talks like to point out how they have leaky bulk states, which is a bit of a contradiction to the whole insulator bit. Here's a good recent experimental paper which posits a far less sexy, fancy explanation than ex-string theory math: https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.045433radium said:I would say that condensed matter physics in general is very promising field right now. I think quantum matter is very beautiful in that it can be very exotic and use techniques traditionally used by high energy theorists while also being connected to experiment. For example, a lot of the work now being done with hydrodynamic transport in strongly correlated systems was motivated by results in gravity. The discovery of topological insulators has motivated work in quantum computing and also the detection of Majorana fermions in solid state systems.
As mentioned before, biophysics (which has many connections to soft matter) is a rapidly growing field with lots of opportunities to find your niche. Much of this work has applications to understanding things like neurodegenerative diseases where it is thought that changes in cellular environment can make it energetically favorable for cells to aggregate and form certain structures or evolution in populations of bacteria.
Most of them, from what I know, basically need to cheat in order to operate, but some claims have been made that this is not the case.Ivan Samsonov said:We have already made a quantum computer!
jedishrfu said:Here's an article on the latest ideas in Quantum Computing which shows its still very much a research field:
http://www.sciencealert.com/breakin...d-it-finally-makes-quantum-computers-scalable
but that there's hope to build a commercially viable Quantum computer.
SJay16 said:Over the next decade, and few decades, which branches/ fields of physics will experience tremendous growth? I'm wondering what field I'd want to "specialize in" or focus in and could use some of your guy's opinion.
This is sort of good advice but I think it's missing the point that people are better off working in fields that are growing than fields which aren't.Dr. Courtney said:Learn to be among the best in your chosen field. Then you'll know how to become among the best if you need to switch fields.
Why desire a field where even the mediocre will earn a good living?
Yawn.
I disagree. You don't run out of work for physicists. A field often starts by physicists making some new discovery. Then engineers make an application out of the initial discoveries while physicists increase the knowledge about the field for the next generation of applications. And so on. There is no clear separation between the two things, of course, and physicists often join the development of applications.jedishrfu said:the engineers will take over as engineering specialization always wins out over physics.
mfb said:I disagree. You don't run out of work for physicists. A field often starts by physicists making some new discovery. Then engineers make an application out of the initial discoveries while physicists increase the knowledge about the field for the next generation of applications. And so on. There is no clear separation between the two things, of course, and physicists often join the development of applications.
Engineers (by education) have some more specific knowledge in some specialized fields - but physicists learn how to learn these things quickly, in addition to a (typically) broader knowledge in other fields.
The description sounds much like other types of industries. Some scientific or technological companies have research & development facilities in which people work but most of such people do not see the day-to-day production situations; but in the companies' other sites, there may be a few engineers at work overseeing everything at the sites.jedishrfu said:What I meant was in a company developing the technology the physicists are often pushed out once the engineers have a solid grip on the new technology. The physicists specialize in doing research but the development effort changes to commercialization and so they either lose interest or can't contribute as much. As an example, engineers own the production environment in IBM but physicists work at the IBM Watson research facility not in direct day to day contact with the engineers.
SJay16 said:Bump ^^
Vanadium 50 said:Trying to figure out where there will be shortages 10-15 years out is, in my view, a fools errand. You can start with Bohr's line "It is difficult to predict, especially the future", but there is the more pragmatic problem is that if a large number of people shift fields to anticipate where there may be a shortage, there won't be a shortage.
StatGuy2000 said:I agree with you that trying to figure out future shortages is an impossible task. That being said, one can make reasonable probabilistic assumptions about which fields are growing or not. For example, I think it would be fair to say that the likelihood that there will be a sudden growth in the need for, say, string theorists (or those who more broadly specialize in quantum gravity) will be fairly low.
ZapperZ said:But the OP is not asking for the field of study that he/she should avoid. He/she is asking which one he/she should go into. There is a distinct difference.
The ebb and flow of which field is "hot" or will provide opportunities for employment once a student graduates depends on way too many factor, not the least of which is the whims of science funding by politicians. Who has the ability to predict that and to what level of accuracy?
Zz.
ZapperZ said:Has our ability to predict the future improved since last year?
ZapperZ said:But the OP is not asking for the field of study that he/she should avoid. He/she is asking which one he/she should go into. There is a distinct difference.
The ebb and flow of which field is "hot" or will provide opportunities for employment once a student graduates depends on way too many factor, not the least of which is the whims of science funding by politicians. Who has the ability to predict that and to what level of accuracy?
Zz.
StatGuy2000 said:BTW @ZapperZ, we need to be mindful of why these questions get asked. We are expecting students to choose a major while pursuing their undergraduate degree college/university, which would take a minimum of 4 years (in the US and Canada -- anywhere from 3-5 years minimum elsewhere), and (if they intend to pursue graduate studies), take another 4-7 years or so to complete their PhD. That's anywhere from 8-12 years of their lives -- I don't think it's unreasonable to wonder whether such an investment will result in meaningful employment.
Otherwise, why bother? One could conclude that this is a waste of time and money.