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Monday, July 11, 2011

The Cosmic Sexiness Ladder

Nobody gets into astrophysics because they want to study the Sun.  Usually we start out wanting to find exoplanets or black holes, and then at some point get hooked into solar physics because there is such a wealth of data on the sun.  It turns out this effect can be quantified by measuring a quantity known as "cosmic sexiness", which is defined as "relative visceral appeal of different fields of astrophysics".  From Jeremy Drake, solar physicist:

He then notes that below the Sun would go atomic physics, followed by the weather.

3 comments:

  1. Apparently not. Who would have guessed?

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  2. Oh, come on!  Atomic Physics is AWESOME!!! 

    However, seriously, I would have thought that looking for extrasolar planets would rate above Quasars and AGNs, but to each his own.  Other than that I can roughly see his scale. 

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