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As it were, I finally dreamed up a direction to explore and write something about, but just like every other time, I noticed someone senior has written has already explored the line of thought. In Physics, it seems as if there is practically nothing novel that I can explore. I know in part that may be it is just that I am not able to think fast enough.

If I am thinking about exploring something, and realize someone has already explored it, then decide to completely independently explore it without reading their work, and arrive at something similar or different, is this something that I can still put out there with my name? The thing is I have not written anything yet and have no reputation, and so I am hoping that I can put something may be simple but hopefully different and a bit new, even if it is silly. The problem is that as far as I can tell and after trying for a bit, it is looking like the chances of me doing something not completely explored might be even lower than I thought.

I am a serious scholar though not in any program at the moment, and have quite a bit of time. Any suggestions as to what the right approach is would be great.

Wrzlprmft
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1 Answers1

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What you are writing is pretty much exactly the reason why non-senior researchers in academia have advisors:

  • It is very hard to have a complete overview over a field, including which lines of thought have been explored, and where the open problems are. Many open problems are known to researchers in the field without this being obvious from the papers.
  • In order to perform meaningful research in a field that is not brand-new, the best way to get started is to focus on something small but interesting. Developing a completely new theory in Physics is, for example, probably not the right way to start. Coming up with research questions that are small enough so that they are unexplored yet interesting enough for meaningful research is not trivial and requires substantial experience.
  • To some extent, starting with research also means to refrain from too high expectations of what can be achieved. For example, as a computer scientist, you could reduce an aim to "build a 100% safe self-driving car" to "detecting a dog on a leash next to pedestrians that may jump onto the street from image data only". The latter is more achievable, yet fits into the big picture of building a self-driving car.

So my advise would be to get someone who is at the frontier of the field that you are interested in and who can give you guidance.

DCTLib
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