Really detailed explanation and what is their salary if you were a professor?
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The salary depends on where they are in their career, and at which university, so that is hard to pin down. A respected professor might earn $100,000+ a year but I think everyone would agree they certainly earn that (i.e. the work is very hard!) You don't become a professor quickly and you don't go into physics to earn money, that's engineering :P
As for what they do - physicists look at 'basic' science - the stuff other subjects like chemistry or engineering are built upon. A particle physicist specialises in looking at the tiniest parts of the world we live in. You might know about atoms, or protons, but in fact they are made up of smaller and smaller things and particle physics tries to find, and then understand these. Once we understand them we can understand the larger things like atoms or electricity better, and from that we get new chemistry and engineering - cool inventions, faster computers - you name it!
So particle physics has a point, but it might seem like a bit of a fussy one. Trying to find particles is the easy part, and there are loads that have been discovered. Understanding them is another matter though. The way the particles are made is by quite simply speeding up bigger particles and smashing them together, and looking at what comes out! What comes out, and the way it flies out of the mess tells you a lot about the particles. It's a lot harder to do than it sounds though, so there are plenty of people working on computers and programs to look at these smashes and sort through the results.
Right now the 'hot topic' in particle physics is something called the Higgs Boson. It's a particle nobody has seen for sure, but all the other particles behave as if it were there. A machine in Europe called the LHC has been built to smash up stuff to look for it, and should find out in the next 5 years or so. If they do find it, the Higgs Boson will explain why things have mass, or weight. Fairly fussy, like I said, but think of it this way: You can't have flying cars and hoverboards until the higgs is found!
As for what they do - physicists look at 'basic' science - the stuff other subjects like chemistry or engineering are built upon. A particle physicist specialises in looking at the tiniest parts of the world we live in. You might know about atoms, or protons, but in fact they are made up of smaller and smaller things and particle physics tries to find, and then understand these. Once we understand them we can understand the larger things like atoms or electricity better, and from that we get new chemistry and engineering - cool inventions, faster computers - you name it!
So particle physics has a point, but it might seem like a bit of a fussy one. Trying to find particles is the easy part, and there are loads that have been discovered. Understanding them is another matter though. The way the particles are made is by quite simply speeding up bigger particles and smashing them together, and looking at what comes out! What comes out, and the way it flies out of the mess tells you a lot about the particles. It's a lot harder to do than it sounds though, so there are plenty of people working on computers and programs to look at these smashes and sort through the results.
Right now the 'hot topic' in particle physics is something called the Higgs Boson. It's a particle nobody has seen for sure, but all the other particles behave as if it were there. A machine in Europe called the LHC has been built to smash up stuff to look for it, and should find out in the next 5 years or so. If they do find it, the Higgs Boson will explain why things have mass, or weight. Fairly fussy, like I said, but think of it this way: You can't have flying cars and hoverboards until the higgs is found!