National Center for Computational Sciences

Principal Investigator: Nikolai Pogorelov

Affiliation: University of California–Riverside

Machine: Cray XT4

Allocation: 850,000 processor hours

Research Summary: The solar system, tucked inside a bubble created by the continuous stream of charged particles being emitted by the sun, is drifting through a thin cloud of gas that permeates our neighborhood of the galaxy. This project uses a carefully crafted combination of computational techniques to examine the bubble (known as the heliosphere) as it interacts with the cloud (known as the Local Interstellar Medium), focusing on changes in the relationship throughout the sun’s 11-year activity cycle.