User:Art Carlson

Wikipedia:Babel

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This user is a physicist.

for-3

This user is an advanced Fortran programmer.

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This user is an expert coffee drinker.

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This user is an advanced MATLAB programmer.

This user is an Experimental Physicist.

This user understands the science behind climate change and makes efforts to mitigate the problem.

This user believes it is a waste of time to format his user page for aesthetics.

I am a Ph.D. physicist raised in Oregon and Mississippi and living since 1986 in Munich, Germany. I spent most of my career doing research on fusion energy before leaving to do software development with a dot-com start-up. After free-lancing a while in plasma technology, technology assessment, and project management, I worked several years on grid computing and astronomy, originally in AstroGrid-D at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, then in various D-Grid projects at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, and finally at the University Observatory Munich. I did image processing at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry for a while and then several years of mass spectrometry-based proteomics (MaxQuant) there. Every day I work in biology, I am reminded how easy physics is. My hobbies (not all currently pursued) include various forms of mountaineering and snow sports, tennis, and piano. I am married to a German journalist and have four adorable children.

I have made sizeable Wikipedia contributions on plasma physics (especially Langmuir probes), fusion energy (especially aneutronic fusion), on sundials (the Equation of Time). I have also dabbled in things like homeopathy, modern geocentrism, and astrology.

In summer of 2009 my interest in field-reversed configurations as a potential basis for fusion power plants was rekindled. I would like to build up a comprehensive source of information on this possibility somewhere on the Web. Certainly expanding the Wikipedia article is a good way to start, and worthwhile independent of what other portal might be created. To provide a workspace for this, I am creating the sub-page /Expansions of FRC article here. You are encouraged to contribute. (Note: This project has gotten drowned by more pressing concerns. It's still a good idea, though.)

I toyed a bit with the physics of the Powerball. My notes are here.

I have become less active in Wikipedia in the last few years, but that is bound to change again someday.

		The Original Barnstar
		For a long, enviable and inadequately appreciated record of contributions to Wikipedia. Joke 04:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

		The Original Barnstar
		For a voice of reason in cosmology wars. Art LaPella 05:14, 20 May 2007 (UTC)