Structural analysis
Berkeley researcher calculates molecules’ electronic structures, hoping to hasten development of new materials, designer drugs and other applications.
Cellular energy crisis
An Arizona State University scientist mines supercomputer simulations of protein dynamics for biological energy-conversion principles.
Steady as she flows
Aiming to boost aircraft safety, speed and fuel efficiency, engineers turn to Argonne’s Mira supercomputer to study supersonic turbulence.
The incredible shrinking data
An Argonne National Laboratory computer scientist finds efficiencies for extracting knowledge from a data explosion.
Science Highlights
Predicting magnetic explosions
Supercomputer simulations and theoretical analysis shed new light on when and how fast reconnection occurs.
Solar flares, coronal mass ejections and gamma-ray bursts are among the universe’s many explosive events involving ionized gas, called plasma, that are associated with magnetic reconnection. Reconnection breaks magnetic field lines and turns magnetic potential energy into kinetic energy of charged particles in the plasma. This energy conversion also causes what physicists call “sawtooth crashes” in tokamaks that are potentially damaging to electricity-producing fusion devices. Scientists may have found the trigger for these explosive events and, using supercomputer simulations, can predict when and under what conditions the events will occur.
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