User:Art Carlson

Wikipedia:Babel
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This user is a physicist.

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)