New computer models can help protect Earth against dangerous solar storms, scientists say

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. A new study conducted by Columbia University researchers demonstrates a supercomputer model that will help scientists better understand how these energetic particles form in the Sun, and are expelled and accelerated toward the Earth. “This exciting new research will allow us to better predict the origin of solar energetic particles and improve forecasting models of space weather events, a key goal of NASA and other space agencies and governments around the globe,” Columbia astrophysicist and study co-author Luca Comisso said in a statement. But in work published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Dr Comisso and his co-author Columbia astrophysicist Lorenzo Sironi detail their work with a super computer model that can simulate the turbulent atmosphere of the Sun, where gas is so hot, it exists as plasma, a soup of electrons stripped of their atoms and the charged ions that remain of those atom’s nuclei. By using the new supercomputer model along with data from missions such as Nasa;s Solar Parker p’robe, which is currently making extremely close passes of the Sun to learn more about its atmosphere, Drs Comissio and Sironi believe it will be possible to better understand how, why, and when solar storms will occur, which could help provide early warnings.