Category: Research Experiences

Adding here various experiences that I gained during my research work.

How I got into Nuclear Fusion Research

This story goes back to 1981, when I had completed my Masters in Physics from Delhi University and was proceeding to USA to do PhD. I did specialization in Astrophysics and General Theory of Relativity during my MSc. During summer of 1981, I had worked with Prof J V Narlikar on Black Holes at TIFR as part of NCERT National Science Talent Search Summer Camp.

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How I became an “Accidental Experimentalist” !

To test my model, I have to become an experimentalist and there was no turning back! Of course, modeling activity continued too!

This long blog describes my successful foray into experiments to prove my model and my insistence on using only components available in the local market. It led to a unique development, improvement of machine to international standards and publication in top rated journal in spite of efforts made by colleagues to put barriers!

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Rural technology helps fusion reactor!

During 1995-96, while trying to run ADITYA Tokamak (Nuclear Fusion Reactor), we used to find that nearly 80% of the discharges fail to go through. This was due to the fact that power supply control system used to stop the discharge due to some malfunctions. ADITYA power supply system was controlled by a PDP-11 computer. It was popularly believed that software in the computer has some problems due to which the control system was malfunctioning. This was frustrating as lot of effort went into running the machine but there was very little output.

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Linus Torvalds and Me!

I came across this article on net http://liw.fi/linux-anecdotes/, written by one of Linus Torvald’s office mates at Helsinki. I have been a user of Linux since 1993-94 period. As I was reading this article I found few interesting coincidences and I thought I would share it in my blog.

1. Use of Sinclair

“Let’s go back to the spring of 1991. In January, Linus bought a PC. He’d been using a Sinclair QL before that, which, like much British computer stuff, was ingenious and almost unusably different from everything else.” Continue reading “Linus Torvalds and Me!”