Ready set action our Sun takes center stage in simulation advances

Ready set action our Sun takes center stage in simulation advances
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 22, 2024

NASA's supercomputers are providing unprecedented insights into the Sun's dynamic and complex behavior. Drawing on data from a suite of solar observation spacecraft, researchers are using advanced simulations to deepen understanding of the Sun's turbulent inner processes.

The latest visualizations highlight the strength of turbulent motions within the Sun's inner layers. These motions resemble the chaotic dynamics of boiling water or a swirling school of fish, with material continuously churning to the surface and diving back down.

"Our simulations use what we call a realistic approach, which means we include as much as we know to-date about solar plasma to reproduce different phenomena observed with NASA space missions," explained Irina Kitiashvili, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley and a leader in the study.

For the first time, the team replicated the intricate structures of the Sun's subsurface layer, as observed by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

"Right now, we don't have the computational capabilities to create realistic global models of the entire Sun due to the complexity," said Kitiashvili. "Therefore, we create models of smaller areas or layers, which can show us structures of the solar surface and atmosphere - like shock waves or tornado-like features measuring only a few miles in size; that's much finer detail than any one spacecraft can resolve."

These advances help scientists explore the Sun's behavior and understand the forces driving its activity. The Sun-Earth connection influences seasons, weather patterns, climate, and phenomena such as auroras and radiation belts. Insights from this work are also critical for space weather forecasting, which supports NASA's Artemis program and ensures astronaut and spacecraft safety by mitigating space radiation exposure.

This year has been particularly eventful for the Sun, with significant milestones like annular and total eclipses and its progression into the solar maximum phase. In December 2024, NASA's Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach yet to the Sun, furthering efforts to study space weather at its source.

"The Sun keeps surprising us," Kitiashvili added. "We are looking forward to seeing what kind of exciting events will be organized by the Sun."

The simulations were conducted on NASA Ames's Pleiades supercomputer, requiring weeks of computation and generating terabytes of data.

NASA is showcasing 29 of its computational milestones at the SC24 supercomputing conference, held Nov. 17-22, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia. For more technical information, visit here.