astrophysicist
Americannoun
-
astrophysicists
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Explanation
An astrophysicist is a scientist who specializes in studying space, stars, planets, and the universe. If you want to be an astrophysicist one day, you'll have to pay close attention in your physics class. Today the terms astrophysicist and astronomer tend to be used interchangeably — if you make a career of being an expert on space, you'll need to know a lot about the physics of celestial bodies. The prefix astro- comes from the Greek word astron, "the stars," and physicist is rooted in physics, or "natural science," from ta physika, "the natural things" in Greek.
Vocabulary lists containing astrophysicist
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astro, aster
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"I have Sir Isaac Newton's personal assurance that it did indeed hit the moon, there's no way for it to have escaped," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and space analyst, told AFP.
From Barron's ● Aug. 5, 2026
A new model from Caltech theoretical astrophysicist Jim Fuller suggests that this transformation may be far less orderly than it appears.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 21, 2026
Snyder drove to the nearby home of Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, who went outside to his front porch to see what was going on, according to a Los Angeles County district attorney’s office news release.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 28, 2026
A research astrophysicist and a gifted science communicator, Katie Mack moves lightly across these deep waters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 2026
In addition to being the mission's chemist, he was also an accomplished astrophysicist.
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
The “NOVA” presentation, bookended by takeoff and splashdown footage, isn’t for astrophysicists.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 14, 2026
He hired astrophysicists, cryptographers and speech-recognition experts — no Wall Street experience allowed.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 15, 2025
With his passing on Tuesday, India lost one of its most celebrated astrophysicists.
From BBC ● May 23, 2025
To answer this question, our team of astrophysicists looked back in time across the universe’s 13.8 billion-year history to track how supermassive black holes have grown from the early days to today.
From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2024
It took a long time before astrophysicists came to agree that our universe was finite—that it did, in fact, have a beginning.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
