A ship can be put in a bottle, but can the sun be stuffed in a box?
University research scientists are trying. For the past five years now, Tamas Gombosi, professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences, has been assembling a team of astronomers, engineers and computer programmers to do just that.
The teams goal is to create a simulation of the sun's heliosphere, the outermost layer of the sun that encompasses the entire solar system.
The model is considered a computing and applied physics masterwork. With it, astronomers can forecast the solar wind to predict how far the heliosphere extends past the solar system.
The heliosphere itself is a sea of protons and electrons that emanate in currents from the inner layers of the sun. Within these currents, magnetic fields push and pull the particles.
Gombosi compared the dynamics of the heliosphere to a moving piece of electrical circuitry.
"Just imagine that the whole electric circuit is moving. It is on a truck," Gombosi said. "You can describe what happens to the electric circuit (individually). What we are doing is describing the electric circuit and the truck together."
The model becomes tricky when interaction between the two systems is considered.
"Now imagine an electric truck, where there is interaction between it and the circuit," Gombosi said. In the heliosphere, the magnetic forces obeyed by the currents are in part created by the flows of particles within them. The complexity of the systems' interaction compounds itself.
Researchers needed enormous computing resources for a project of such proportions. The University maintains an IBM SP2 supercomputer with 48 processors on campus that was used to conduct partial simulations and simplified heliospheric models, but for the complete version, NASA lent the use of a juggernaut 512 processor Cray T3E.
Darren DeZeeuw, Physics research scientist, said University computing resources are just enough to partially operate the heliosphere simulator.
"We're kind of pushing the limits of computing resources here on campus," he said.
The NASA computer was sufficient to run the program in January; however, the program has continued to grow.
"The code is continually evolving," DeZeeuw said. At present, the program only takes into account the solar system as far out as the orbit of Mercury. Later versions should include effects on the entire heliosphere.
The program will eventually expand to include every planet and its individual magnetic field.