My memory of the college entrance examination | Who said that "idle books" are useless? He applied for astronomy because of popular science books.

Interviewed guest: Li Ran, researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Guangming.com: Why did you choose astronomy in the college entrance examination?

Li Ran: I was recommended to study. There were not many choices at that time. Astronomy was the most familiar choice for me. Because I read a lot of popular science books on astronomy, the one that impressed me the most was "Cosmos" written by Carl Sagan, and the other was "Black Holes and Time Warps" written by Kip S. Thorne, who won the Nobel Prize a few years ago. After I finished reading them, I thought I knew more about them than other subjects, so I studied astronomy.

As an astronomy practitioner in China, the next 10 years are obviously a great opportunity, and in fact the same is true for the whole world. Today, the world's largest radio telescope FAST has been built, and a series of very important astronomical instruments will be built and put into use in the future. If you are an astronomer entering the field of astronomy at this time, it means that you will have more possibilities than your predecessors to access astronomical data that no one has ever seen, and you may really make very important discoveries. Then I think it definitely has a very great prospect. Moreover, astronomy is a very broad industry. You can do theoretical research, observation, instrumentation, or scientific management. No matter which aspect, your talent will not be wasted in this field. But on the other hand, you are unlikely to become the world's richest man by studying astronomy, but it will give you a salary that can support your life.

Guangming Online: What’s the fun in studying astronomy?

Li Ran: I think there are several aspects to the fun of learning astronomy. First of all, when you start learning, the things that other people learn are unlikely to be more grand than astronomy. Our entire universe evolved from the Big Bang, and then produced a colorful world today. You may have heard of such things in popular science, but when you enter a course to systematically learn these things, you will find that they are interconnected and built on a solid evidence and logic foundation, then your cognition and perspective of the whole world will be different from everyone else.

Secondly, when you really start doing scientific research, you are faced with a frontier subject that is constantly advancing. You may see information that no one has ever seen before. On a dark and windy night, you are the first person in the world to see this information. Suppose a supernova explodes, and you find it in your telescope and in your data. No one has ever seen this. Most of the time, its discovery is a small change to our existing knowledge, but it may also be a huge change. I think people rarely have the opportunity to make such a small contribution to the entire human knowledge, but this is a very interesting thing.

The third is that all things are connected, because astronomy is a very broad subject. You will learn about exoplanets and alien civilizations. These things are one end of the story. The other end of the story is the entire universe. All these celestial bodies have certain connections between them, so when you are able to establish these connections, it is also a very interesting thing.

Guangming Online: Who is suitable for a career in scientific research?

Li Ran: First of all, you can’t hate the subject too much, such as mathematics and physics. You should find it interesting to figure something out at a certain stage in your life. If you think that you don’t want to figure out anything and just want to get by, then it’s probably not suitable for you to study astronomy.

Another very important thing is that you need to have a certain degree of tenacity. In two aspects, you need to be able to persist when you encounter difficult problems or difficulties. Our research is often not smooth sailing. You need to have a relatively tenacious spirit and a certain degree of concentration. When you do something, you can focus on doing it. For you, life is more about getting things done, rather than comparing with others. I think these are of course very important for studying astronomy.

Review expert: Li Ran National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Interview and editing: Song Yajuan and Cai Lin

Poster design: Tu Ziyi and Wang Jiawei (internship)