Reported By:
| Edited By: Jayanti S Ravi |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 21, 2013, 01:44 PM IST
The golden-orange sun that emerged from the clouds inspired me as I recollected an incident in the Ramayana. Rama is despondent and depressed, in the midst of a raging battle with Ravana in Lanka. Sage Agastya appears and urges Rama to ardently pray to the Sun – Aditya, for strength. Rama gets instantly transfused with new energy.
He is brimming with confidence and power and goes on to slay Ravana. Sun has indeed been the source of life and energy on earth. Today, as the world scrambles for energy, a safe yet sustainable futuristic source of energy, nuclear fusion, the process that happens on the sun, is what emerges as the answer.
This energy scores on fuel availability as it mainly requires deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, which is abundantly found in seawater. It is relatively mishap-free, fail-safe, less radioactive and is non-violent. Moreover it rules out the possibilities of cartels holding countries to ransom!
Tucked away on the banks of Sabarmati, with elegant buildings nested amid lush verdures, the Institute of Plasma Research (IPR) has been trying to crack this problem of recreating the sun in the lab!
Being a new technology, this demands lots of efforts, huge resources and a dedicated pursuit of ‘plasma physics’ to be able to eventually see light at the end of the tunnel, literally and figuratively! The IPR, a mini universe, is immersed and filled with research and studies on plasma. Interestingly, most of the universe is filled with plasma, the most prevailing state of matter.
“Plasma is a hot ionized gas consisting of approximately equal numbers of positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons.”
It is a matter of national pride that India has very recently joined China and South Korea as nations that have the capability of ‘firing’ a Steady State Superconducting Tokamak (SST). The scientific edifice and brilliant minds at IPR brought back the ownership and pride I experienced as a young scientist working at the Nuclear Science Centre, New Delhi.
The IPR team works on varied research issues, also knocking on the question of how our universe was created. Nurturing the young minds has been like growing a family, says Prof Abhijit Sen, who has been here since its inception.
He shares the joys of building things from scratch and creating new knowledge powered by curiosity. Science is increasingly a very exciting career path, with technological advancements and international collaborations, transforming bright scientists into thought leaders, he says.
IPR is India’s lead institute participating in the world’s largest scientific project today – the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (ITER) project – a collaborative venture with the European Union, U.S.A., Japan, Russia, China, India and Korea. ITER will simulate sun’s core and pave the way for constructing full-scale reactors and comercialization of fusion power.
Prof Kaw, the emeritus scientist who earned his PhD at IIT Delhi when he was all of 18, is an institution builder here. He speaks of the huge resources spent by government on the facility, and that it would take about 20 years for migration to reactors and commercialisation. He speaks of the team’s journey in creating an enduring scientific cathedral with grandeur an inspiration and a boon for posterity.
The powerful narrative of IPR reminds me of the inspiring lines of the poem, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ in Khaled Hosseini’s book. I was delighted to have a peek of the pulsing plasma discharges in the ADITYA Tokamak at IPR - a mini-recreation of plasma conditions at the sun’s surface - a process they have repeated 2800 times to date. My mind’s eye conjured up the image of that many ‘splendid Suns’!
