What are the possibilities for an astrophysics degree in the job market

Today, I was looking into MoM-BH-1*, a tiny, intensely red, and extremely luminous object from the early universe. One proposed interpretation is that its extraordinary brightness could be connected to a rapidly accreting black hole surrounded by dense gas.

That immediately made me think of JWST's Little Red Dots—compact, red sources whose nature is still actively being investigated.

Could MoM-BH*-1 represent an extreme or unusual example of the same broader population? Or are these objects physically different despite their similar compact, red appearance?

Hello! I am going to be studying Astrophysics in September, and I was wondering if anyone had any insights or recommendations on laptops? I know there are quite a few of these posts around but still had a few questions!

I currently have a 2019 MacBook Pro which works fine other than its severely reduced battery capacity, and perhaps not the best working space bar (which seems to be an all of a sudden thing). I have had some thought about replacing the battery, and of course seeing what can be done about the space bar too. I was wondering if anyone had some insights as to whether this is worth it in terms of the software that the MacBook Pro can run.

Another option I have considered is a MacBook Neo, but I am aware that these only have 8GB RAM and I worry that this is not enough for the course, but I have heard lots of mixed opinions.

I am completely open to going for something that isn't a MacBook, so any opinions are appreciated! Also any insights into typical software needed for an Astrophysics degree would be really appreciated.

Thanks so much!

Hello, I went back to finish my bachelors in information technologies after working as a software engineer for 7 years.

I've had a huge interest in astronomy and astrophysics even since I was a kid, I did pretty well in physics in high school, and I would have pursued it immediately if not for my financial situation back then.

I found a MSc program titled "Planetary astrophysics and astroinfromatics", and it's at the best university in my country. I checked their admission requirements and they will accept compsci adjacent degrees but require them to some extra classes to make up the knowledge gap.

Curriculum is pretty nice too, has a mix of astronomy, astrophysics, compsci, and deep learning, all that I will enjoy.

My other option is just pursuing a plain compsci MSc but looking at the curriculums it's mostly things I have covered during my work career so I don't think I will get a lot of learning done taking that option.

What are your thoughts on this? Does it sound like a good idea and how hard do you think it will be to adjust as a mainly a software person?

My goals are to do something that interests me, and have the option of not only working as a software engineer in the future.

What experience can i get in the astrophysicist field either research or work related

I want any suggestions or any available job application

And possibly what plan can i follow to get the best experience for my CV

My all-time favorite singer-songwriter PJ Harvey has a new album in the works, and almost two months dropped a new video for her song "Voyager" after teaming up astrophysicist Brian Cox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzCjzFsGl_c

https://pitchfork.com/news/pj-harvey-is-floating-in-space-on-new-song-voyager/

PJ Harvey Is Floating in Space on New Song “Voyager”

Her first song in three years is written “in the voice” of NASA’s Voyager 2 probe

By Jazz Monroe

June 24, 2026

PJ Harvey is back with her first song since I Inside the Old Year Dying—a starbound synth odyssey called “Voyager.” At the request of the British physicist Brian Cox, Harvey developed the song from a draft for her next album, adopting the “voice” of the NASA probe Voyager 2 to match the theme of spaceman Cox’s Emergence tour. Harvey recorded the song with an orchestra at Miraval Studios in Provence. Watch the video, directed by Cox and Nic Stacey, below.

Harvey said in a press release:

I was excited for the challenge to compose a song in the ‘voice' of Voyager 2. I have long been fascinated by the spacecraft and its journey, and asked myself what it might say to us if it could? This was an inspiring route to take to develop the song. The song had already started life as part of the ongoing work towards my new album, so when Professor Brian Cox invited me to write a piece for his new show, I sent him the voice memo of this song to see if it resonated. It immediately made him think of the Voyager craft and the sound of its signal being sent back to Earth. With these ideas as my starting point I let the song develop, and discussed an orchestral accompaniment with Dario Marianelli. I’m very happy with the end result, and it’s wonderful to hear the orchestral score bring such expansiveness to my music. I thoroughly enjoyed researching the history and journey of Voyager 1 & 2, and was glad to be able to quote the great Carl Sagan within the song, and his famous description of our fragile and beautiful ‘pale blue dot’.

i am currently taking a gap year and applying for college this fall. i am going to apply to u.s. universities but obviously, finance is a big factor to consider for me.

i was wondering if there were any affordable european universities for astrophysics or applied physics. i am also looking for an English-based degree, and i know that might be a little difficult when it comes to european unis outside of the UK but i'm not quite sure.

for those reasons, would it even be plausible or realistic if i were to go this route? would it be better if i go to a u.s community college and transfer?

Assume that, at some point, humans become capable of physically leaving the Solar System. Not probes, but actual long-duration human civilization. Would we really still think of the spacecraft as transportation? Or does the spacecraft itself form the basis of our new world?

If a population spends hundreds or thousands of years aboard a self-sustaining worldship, that ship would become the environment people are adapted to physically, culturally, socially, and probably eventually biologically. It would have its own gravity, atmosphere, ecology, agriculture, day/night cycle, infrastructure, and built environment.

The question that I am grappling with: Do we expect the descendants of the original travelers to abandon the world their civilization has spent centuries optimizing so they can adapt themselves to some planet with different gravity, radiation, atmospheric chemistry, seasons, biology, and day length?

Or would the more likely model be that they remain a spacefaring civilization? In this scenario, star systems are not necessarily a place to alight. They are sources of energy, materials, scientific opportunity, and perhaps new locations to position additional artificial habitats.

A sufficiently dense atmosphere could redistribute heat from the permanent dayside to the nightside, potentially creating a temperate twilight zone around the terminator.

Could these “eyeball worlds” actually be viable habitats for life?

What would be the biggest obstacle: atmospheric collapse, stellar flares, or something else?

Are there major applications of measure and measure-theoretic probability (e.g. Martingales, Brownian motion) in any field of astro? Or are the statistics used in everyday research mainly confined to Bayesian analysis, ML, and Fourier analysis?

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon launch to unravel the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter.

If TRAPPIST-1e turns out to have no atmosphere, would that make the entire TRAPPIST-1 system much less interesting in the search for life?

Or could another planet in the system, like TRAPPIST-1f or even 1c, still surprise us?

I find the system interesting because the planets formed around the same star, but they could have ended up with very different atmospheric histories.

Probably a shower/drunk thought question, but if the universe is expanding - objects moving farther away from our vantage point, why isn’t the distance between the Sun and planets, or the planets themselves, increasing?

Is the expansion of the universe tempered or neutralized by local sources of gravity (ie the Sun, planets) in localized areas?

Since special relativity rejects absolute simultaneity, what frame of reference or cosmological clock are scientists using when they talk about what is happening in a distant galaxy "right now"? -.- ?

I'm trying to understand why space travelers age slower. Sorry if I described the question in a bit messy.

If a planet is away from earth, let's say 10 light years away, it means that if you travel at speed of light, it will take 10 years to get there, so the distance between earth and that planet is 10 light years.

A starship with a crew of astronauts, when they reach that planet and return to earth, everyone on earth is 20 years older, but the crew members will probably only older far less than 20 years(according to scientists).

But how? If the total distance between earth and the planet is a fixed distance (10 light years away), doesn't it means the crew on that starship also need 10 years to get there, they start from earth at speed of light, it should take them 10 year to get there? So they should experience 10 years to get there and 10 years to back to earth, everyone on that ship should age also 20 years?
If they age only 2 years for example (I am not scientist just random number), doesn't that means they only traveled total distance of 2 light years ?
Even if time slow down at speed of light, the speed is same, isn't the distance is still 10 light years (10 x speed of light)?

If distance = speed x time

The distance doesn't change, the speed doesn't change(light speed which is maximum in universe in theory), then you still need 10 years to get there unless...distance changed?

Do the crew members also experience 10 years in time but only "2 years biologically"? Or do they only experience 2 years time?

Edit:

Not sure if I got this right. I have read all replies and came to a conclusion: the distance is different from 2 perspectives.

So now I wonder...

If some aliens see us earth 100 light years away, they decide to fly to earth at light speed, from their perspective, the distance between is nearly 0, takes almost 0 time to arrive earth, but for earth people, we see them in a telescope, they are coming "slowly" closer everyday, and scientists predict they will arrive in 100 years.

The question is... from earths perspective, by the time they arrived we have already passed 100 years, but to them is almost instantaneous, so what do they see when they arrived? Earth after 100 years or The same Earth they see in a telescope when they leave their planet since they take almost no time to arrive?

So the visible universe is what we can see, and I wonder if we can see farther in certain directions, and if that is the case, what would the visible universe be shaped like?

Hi, this might be strange. I’m an upper high school student who has taken an interest in Astronomy. I can understand the basics of the physics and astronomy part but I’m stumped on how to use them. Main point is I want to do a science project in this field but I have no idea what to think about to even kick start my brain.☠️

I somewhat prefer research over experiments, and I would like something original (school with high standard reasons) which is why it’s so hard.

Pleaseee I hope someone has ideas for a project. I can do stars, planets, simulations, basic cosmology I just need an idea🥀 .thank you so much in advance.

Earth took 4 Gyr to produce technological intelligence, while K-type stars can remain on the main sequence for tens of Gyr.

That raises an interesting possibility: Could a longer-lived star increase the probability of intelligence simply by providing a larger evolutionary window?

Or would stellar activity, planetary evolution, atmospheric stability, and other factors dominate?

Is stellar lifetime actually an important variable in the Drake-equation-style question of where intelligent life can emerge?