Without the sun, life on Earth could not exist. But the sun also has a dark capacity to disrupt or even destroy the very life that it so delicately sustains through what is called space weather. Earth has an invisible shield consisting of a magnetic field which can deflect damaging solar particles. However, this shield can be infiltrated and the result can be a disruption of power grids and communications networks, and harmful radiation to living things . Researchers using supercomputing power at the National Institute for Computational Sciences are creating a topological map of Earth’s magnetosphere for global kinetic simulations, allowing them to closely study how space weather affects our magnetosphere. To read the complete story, visit NICS website.
Without the sun, life on Earth could not exist. But the sun also has a dark capacity to disrupt or even destroy the very life that it so delicately sustains through what is called space weather. Earth has an invisible shield consisting of a magnetic field which can deflect damaging solar particles. However, this shield can be infiltrated and the result can be a disruption of power grids and communications networks, and harmful radiation to living things . Researchers using supercomputing power at the National Institute for Computational Sciences are creating a topological map of Earth’s magnetosphere for global kinetic simulations, allowing them to closely study how space weather affects our magnetosphere. To read the complete story, visit NICS website.