Superstars’ secrets
Supercomputing power and algorithms are helping astrophysicists untangle giant stars’ brightness, temperature and chemical variations.
Overcoming resistance
To revive antibiotics and devise new drug designs, Georgia Tech researchers team up with Oak Ridge’s Titan supercomputer.
Fine-tuning physics
Argonne applies supercomputing heft to boost precision in particle predictions.
Current developments
Supercomputing offers path for designing electricity-producing layered materials.
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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