From 60 to 60,000 miles above our heads, the earth's magnetic field is king. In this region, known as the magnetosphere, geomagnetism dominates the physics of the processes that take place. But, as any chess player can tell you, a king often lives and dies at the caprice of other subjects. A queen can sweep across the expanse and really crimp his style. Our solar system is no exception, as our matriarch, the sun, constantly influences the earth's magnetic field.

Magnetospheric substorms, brought on by solar activity, can dump quadrillions of joules of energy into the earth's upper atmosphere in about a half an hour. And these substorms occur two or three times a day.

Using the Alliance's SGI Origin2000 supercomputer at NCSA, a team of physicists is modeling the fine points of this cosmic chess match, building facsimiles of real substorms based on data from earth-bound and space-borne instruments. The team includes Michael Wiltberger and John Lyon of Dartmouth College, Charles Goodrich of the University of Maryland, and Tuija Pulkkinen of the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki. Their work is delivering some of the first realistic global views of substorms in progress. It will also prove critical in the ever-progressing field of space weather forecasting.

Access Online | Posted 5-22-2001