Back to basics...

Astrophysics is an very interesting subject to me. Within so many branches, Cosmology is really like a supernova all these years. After I got into college, nearly most of my astrophysics knowledge was growing towards Cosmology. Yes, Cosmology is indeed a vast subject that touches particle physics to general relativity and even string theory. However, astrophysics is not just about cosmology, not just about those big questions of our Universe. When I was visiting a school during my 3rd year of college, I worked in a group of observational cosmology. I was surprised that knowledge of statistics, basic physics about radiation absorption, emission are also very important. Recently, I have been reading Frank Shu's book, Gas Dynamics which contains so much about fluid mechanics, turbulence etc. These are all very important to study about stars and gases. Maybe sometime we do need to stop thinking about those dark energy, dark matter, and spend more time to understand our stars at an even deeper level.

Application Season

It's now November. A scary season of graduate school applications just starts. It seems some schools have changed their application deadline this year, following the changes on GRE Subject test dates. Still, I think people would NOT start their application AFTER the result is released.

Third Post

Graduated school started for one and half months. I felt myself kind of disorganized these days. However, I have several things done. First thing I bought a laptop that is good for my work in the coming years. Second thing is that I found a professor for doing private reading. Better not to name anyone, since people could then find out which school I am and who we are.

The concepts of importance in astrophysics really depends on what school you are. Cosmology, particle astrophysics, neutron stars and black holes, galaxy formation, star formation, planetary rings, binary stars, gravitational waves, star oscillation, quasar, AGN, gamma burst, star burst, cosmic rays...many things to learn and for an entering graduate there are really many many choices. If you only meet professor doing cosmology, you may not even know how solar wind is generated. That's why I tried a kind-of fundamental area to study, fluid mechanics in astrophysics and possibly magnetohydrodynamics...Hard.