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Ask Slashdot: How To Pick Up Astronomy and Physics As an Adult?
First time accepted submitter samalex01 (1290786) writes "I'm 38, married, two young kids, and I have a nice job in the IT industry, but since I was a kid I've had this deep love and passion for astronomy and astrophysics. This love and passion though never evolved into any formal education or anything beyond just a distant fascination as I got out of high school, into college, and started going through life on more of an IT career path. So my question, now that I'm 38 is there any hope that I could start learning more about astronomy or physics to make it more than just a hobby? I don't expect to be a Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I'd love to have enough knowledge in these subjects to research and experiment to the point where I could possibly start contributing back to the field. MIT Open Courseware has some online courses for free that cover these topics, but given I can only spend maybe 10 hours a week on this would it be a pointless venture? Not to mention my mind isn't as sharp now as it was 20 years ago when I graduated high school. Thanks for any advice or suggestions."
Honestly, one of the most exciting things that I did was to take an overnight tour at Kitt Peak. They've dedicated one of their older optical telescopes that's not really adequate for leading-edge science anymore to use for public outreach, and seeing the Jovian moons so clearly was very exciting and made it easier to want to continue.
It's probably safe to accept that you'll be a consumer of science rather than a producer of it, but that's okay. Go camping with a large telescope and enjoy the world. Buy books or programs that let you track the objects of the night sky. Look at what NASA, the ESA, and IAU release.
If you're lucky you'll identify a new asteroid or comet.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Look up "Galaxy Zoo". You can start contributing today.
As for classes, start reading. Find out which books are used for the courses and buy the books and read them even if you cannot take the courses.
"How can one human being be inferior to another? In all matters of discipline, one will be useless unless he has great pride. Unless one is determined to move the clan by himself, all his discipline will come to naught. Although, like a tea kettle, it is easy for one's enthusiasm to cool, there is a way to keep this from happening. My own vows are the following:
Never be outdone in the Way of the Samurai.
To be of good use to the master.
To be filial toward my parents.
To manifest great compassion, and to act for the sake of Man.
If one dedicates these four vows to the gods and Buddhas every morning, he will have the strength of two men and will never slip backward. One must edge forward like the inchworm, bit by bit. The gods and Buddhas, too, first started with a vow." - Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Hit the local community college. At one class per term you can brush up on math and after that's all fresh take a physics/chemistry/astronomy class as you deem appropriate. Once you have the basics down then move on to the MOOCs at least that's my plan.
The Teaching Company has some awesome courses on those topics. Link: http://www.thegreatcourses.com... They are taught by college professors and intended for audiences of educated adults, but not those who have majored in the topics of interest. These are a good place to start. With 10 hours a week to watch these, you can pick up quite a bit of background and then go from there. I've watched dozens of their courses and am always impressed! You can often find them used on Amazon for much cheap, and I've even seen them at my local library.
It's unlikely you can make the transition to working in the field without some really major sacrifices. (And if you do, it will probably be more on the computational side.) But if you love it for it's own sake I'd suggest talking to local labs and seeing if you can get involved in any projects - especially projects where you can work remotely at least part of the time, since your time is limited. And as a volunteer, you often get to avoid some of the more tedious bits that people who are being paid have to work on. My experience is that people with solid computer skills are needed, and people who will work are needed, and there's way more cool work to be done than there are money and people to do it.
And, of course, if there are any opportunities for you to work in a paid capacity, you'll be in the perfect position to hear about them.
I made the transition from tech to computational biochemistry to neurobio - but I had a lot of stock options, and I've been willing to become a grad student, and live mostly like a grad student, which is hard to do when you have a family. And while biomed funding has been cut, there's a lot more of it out there to begin with.
(I'm not generically saying that people should work for free, BTW. I know for me, research turned out to be what I wanted to be doing when I wasn't worrying about money. Though, um, then there were a couple of stock market crashes...)
I recommend "The Theoretical Minimum" books as a good starter to get you through to the level of mathematics needed to be able to read the quantum math and vector/tensor calculus used in field equations. Statistical calculus also.
Once you have these under your belt, comprehending the real physics textbooks and papers will be unlocked.
This stuff is not hard are impenetrable, but the language is if you don't know it. The language isn't hard or impenetrable. E.G. Vector calculus is much simpler that algebra. Just find a good book or teacher that doesn't blind you with procedure over concepts.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
PhD candidate here: are you in the 434 or 919 areas? If so, tell me and I we'll get coffee and see if setting up scheduled lunches gets us somewhere.
If not, Craigslist. Type "physics" or "physicist" in the meetup section of Craigslist and you'll find lots of budding graduate students or new professors that live to meet people like you.
The best place to start is by connecting with other people who share the same passions as you. I've similarly been fascinated by astronomy since I was a young child. A few years ago I rekindled my interest by buying a telescope and joining a club in Pittsburgh. I learned more from a few casual conversations with members than I had in months and months of reading and practicing on my own. Now I practice astrophotography and engage in lots of educational and community outreach events, and I owe just about everything to the club I joined. Best of luck, and clear skies!
There's also a lot of old and outdated information that can be refreshed/verified. During my freshman year astronomy class in college, we got some telescope time and we were calculating out binary variable stars to confirm that what was measured 50 years ago was still accurate. Ours turned into a paper for our professor when our binary star turned out to have a third star in there, causing faint fluctuations that our modern CCD camera could catch, but the older technology had not been able to detect.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
It's been proposed that it takes about 10,000 hours to get really good at anything. At 10 hours per week, 40 weeks a year (dropped to 40 to account for breaks), equals 400 hours a year. 10,000 / 400 = 25 years. So, if you keep at it, by the time you get to be about retirement age you would be at the point where you could contribute back to the field. Plus, on retirement, you could dedicate more time...
Some things take less than 10,000 hours to master. However, astronomy is a wide open concept with a lot of moving parts (literally)...
Good luck and, most important of all, have fun....