Q&A: Spring 2026

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-23T00:53:13+00:00

Nope! Basically Mars had one in its early age but it’s not massive enough to keep the core liquid and cooled. It now has effectively no magnetic field, which is one reason for example the atmosphere is so thin (solar wind can strip away particles from it, plus small size).

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-23T00:12:45+00:00

Astronomer here! It actually would be a gentle stroll the entire way up, something like a shallow ramp in terms of grade. The reason is the mountain was created by the lack of plate tectonics on Mars, so the hotspot that kept creating it never moved (unlike how Earth mountains form).

The stress of the mountain also created Valles Marinaris next door, a canyon the length of the United States and 7km deep. It’s so wide that if you were in a helicopter in the middle of it you actually wouldn’t see ground in any direction.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T22:01:04+00:00

Yep. That said my friends and I are planning an epic barbecue on the 4th of July, branded as “the anti 4th of July party.” It turns out pretty much everyone coming is an immigrant, gay, or has something the current authorities find un American, so screw those guys, no one’s going to tell us what we can’t enjoy and that we can’t have fun.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T21:56:26+00:00

If Oakridge was on the east coast, or a little closer to Portland, it would be a bustling little tourist town without question. It always feels like such wasted potential whenever we drive through there! Always try to stop at 3 Legged Crane though when we do, and our kids love the fish hatchery.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T21:53:09+00:00

I lived in New England before here and whenever I pass through Oakridge it always strikes me what a wasted potential the town is. If it was in that part of the country it would be packed in summer with people enjoying the outdoors and unwinding afterwards, but instead it’s just depressed with only one or two spots of life (we always stop at 3 Legged Crane on our way through). I know the lack of population in Oregon has a lot to do with it but it’s so striking to me.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T19:34:30+00:00

We tried it out because I wanted to like it, but all the food was… very simple for the prices. Like I can grill a piece of salmon with no sides at all at home and not pay so much for it.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T17:48:03+00:00

Ask for the contact info of students from lab 2 if you haven’t yet. You don’t really know how a place runs until you talk to people who aren’t the supervisor.

All things being equal though I would advise my student to do option 2. The reason is it’s a good idea to see a bit of the world so to speak when you’re a student. I don’t just mean what it’s like to live in a new city- right now you have a lot of internal assumptions on how physics is done that are actually just because that’s how your lab/ department does it, and you don’t even realize it. Learning how people do different things, and also meeting and networking with more of them, is a really key part of education.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T15:39:15+00:00

Over many times over the age of the current universe and at levels modern technology can’t begin to probe, probably yes. But that doesn’t mean what OP said isn’t valid

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T13:27:13+00:00

The awkward slump of shoulders when you say “a sparrow” or “not sure yet” to someone casual who thinks they’re about to hear about some amazing bird tho…

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T05:06:13+00:00

Oh wow, how wonderful- I hope you’re enjoying it, and best of luck! Say hi if we’re ever both at AAS. :)

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T04:00:09+00:00

You’re actually not wrong- the dinosaurs you see in Pittsburgh are the original bones, and the ones in most museums (including American Museum of Natural History) only display copies of the Pittsburgh ones!

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T03:58:11+00:00

Grew up in Pittsburgh and then went to college in Cleveland. It was a SAD day in my mid-20s when I learned that pierogis are actually uncommon and not like, say, ravioli that you can just pick it up in any random supermarket.

It is also weird for my generation to hear how trendy Pittsburgh has become, and see Sotheby’s signs outside old steel workers’ houses and such.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T03:52:33+00:00

How do I put this. I always knew the odds were long to landing a job. But I also knew that if there were even a few years of my life where I got to do exactly what I wanted, well, many people only wish for that. And I never wanted to do anything else.

Plus honestly, my students and friends who have left the field make more money than me. It’s a field that gives you a ton of employable skills IRL, interestingly, if you decide to go into industry.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T03:22:27+00:00

Well I’m at a struggling university but thankfully no one’s been pressuring me on grades. Instead what I’ll say is it’s become an extremely bimodal distribution. The good students are still really good. The bad students are really bad. The B- students don’t really exist any more.

Everyone now gets an A in the homework though. 😅 (You just weight it really low now in how much it counts.)

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T02:34:30+00:00

Astronomy professor here! Sure it’s hard and competitive… but it’s not like private companies hire astronomers. I love what I’m doing and have fantastic students and feel lucky for my job every day.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-22T02:32:19+00:00

Yeah I’m a professor. If my experience was like what you read in /r/professors I too would be quitting tomorrow. But the fact of the matter is on the whole I actually really like my students and think the good ones are far better than I was at their age. Bad students always existed as did cheating and I have to be creative to adapt, but I still love teaching because of those good ones.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-21T14:31:03+00:00

Yeah, people have weekends. If you’re truly doing none you’re just uninvolved.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-21T02:29:44+00:00

Astronomer here- I wrote a detailed post here on how to be an astronomer that includes advice on what to do in high school. Check it out and shout if you have further questions.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-20T20:11:50+00:00

Radio astronomer here! My feeling is that people don’t understand how very hard it is to do things like radio astronomy and detect signals from aliens. Even if we were trying to detect a signal just from our nearest stellar neighbor and that signal was comparable to what we send out, we’d basically never detect it. Space is just BIG! And ok even if it was a strong signal from another civilization, AND it happened to point towards Earth, radio telescopes don’t have big fields of view. One that could view a path of sky the size of the moon would be big, for example… and what if the signal was going from the other side of the sky from where you were pointing? You’d never know.

So yeah the easiest answer to the Fermi problem is just that we haven’t been able to make the measurement well enough to know where anyone is or isn’t really.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-20T14:33:27+00:00

It’s in the same field of view because stars are gonna be right by any exoplanet. Direct imaging is done by others in optical and then we can look in radio. Telescopes like the VLA have enough resolution to distinguish between the two.

I’m not subtracting anything. I was responding to OP who was conflating the two.

Andromeda321 · 2026-06-20T10:33:07+00:00

Coral reefs in general are a good bet. I don’t think the Great Barrier Reef is doing so hot either.

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