The Diary of a Wimpy Astrophysicist and The Time Machine Paperback – Large Print, August 12, 2023

When I started studying astrophysics, part of the program to become an astrophysicist was to prepare for what they called a general exam. The exam was divided into three parts:A general knowledge of astronomy in different subjects in which the answers should be essays about the topic explaining the physics. This was the easiest part of the exam, except for the fact that it could be any topic of a lot of what the astrophysics program covers in two years of courses.The second part was the hardest, which consist of solving astrophysical problems. The tradition of this part was to give the candidates for a doctorate a test of research trying to solve actual astrophysics problems. But most of the exercises were to probe the mathematical and physical skills of the candidates.The last part was to give each candidate a topic in astrophysics and prepare a presentation to show what the topic was about, what the current data and knowledge were, and what the possible paths of research were.This last part was a glimpse of what could be a Ph.D. thesis during three years of researching the topic trying to solve some of the questions related to it using theory or/and observations. To prepare for this part of the exam, the candidates would have two weeks in which they would read several seminal peer-reviewed astrophysical papers to learn about the topic and demonstrate their capabilities to do research.I should remember the topic of research when I did my exam but, I did this exam four times and I do not remember my topic from all of them but one. The topic could be something very particular, or something as broad as Infrared Galaxies. The last one was my last topic when I finally passed this exam, but I will tell in the book why I had to do this exam four times.It was preparing for this part of the exam that most of the candidates read currently published papers about the topic, in addition, they also had to read papers published in a journal called the “Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics”. This review consists of a book published every year from 1963 until now in which each chapter is an article of review about topics of high impact or saying in another way, topics of high interest inside the astrophysics community. These reviews are written by the most important investigator/investigators in the field. Writing one of these articles is a great honor for an astrophysicist and it gives a lot of prestige to the person who is honored to do the review.Among all the reviewers, the editorial committee selects one of the reviewers to write the introduction of the whole book. The selected person each year is usually a leader in the review topic after many years working in the field and is also highly recognized among the astrophysics community.You can imagine that after many years of working in the field of research in astrophysics writing the intro of this book became an honor and for that reason, most of the selected reviewers decide to write about their personal lives and how their love for astrophysics and the specific subject that they have been working on became that important.The very first time I opened one of these books, I read the introduction and it was very touching to learn about the life of this astrophysicist and his love for his job. Being that young I dreamt that one day I would write that introduction and talk about my inspiration to do astronomy, but my life was different to all of those who have done research in astrophysics and that dream never came true.That is why I decided to write this book because after all I did build a humble career in astrophysics and I learned a lot of stuff that touched and inspired me very deeply and I would love to share it. Read more