Wednesday, December 04, 2024 - 3:10 p.m. to 4:10 p.m.
Morse Hall, rm 401 -OR- Zoom
Speaker:
John Dorelli, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Full title:
The Magnetosphere Aurora Reconnection Boundary Layer Explorer (MARBLE): Understanding How Magnetic Reconnection Generates the Aurora
Abstract:
Understanding the connection between magnetospheric dynamics and the aurora has remained one of the most challenging problems in Heliophysics for the last fifty years. One of the more exciting developments in the last two decades was the discovery that Alfvén waves play a significant role, comparable to static electric fields, in accelerating magnetospheric electrons to energies capable of generating auroral arcs during periods of high auroral activity. This discovery has revealed a direct connection between the universal process of magnetic reconnection and the generation of the aurora, but understanding this connection poses some significant challenges for global magnetosphere models.
Presently, there does not exist a magnetosphere model capable of simulating the coupling of magnetic reconnection to Earth’s ionosphere on a global scale. The MARBLE project will fill this significant gap by developing a new “collisionless Hall MHD” model capable of following plasma particles and waves from their birth at reconnection sites deep in the magnetosphere all the way to the auroral zone in Earth’s ionosphere. To achieve this goal, MARBLE will be designed from the ground up to make optimal use of the most advanced computer hardware, including large clusters of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). MARBLE will also embrace Open Science principles at every stage of its development.
In addition to being released to the community under an open source license, MARBLE will establish a community driven development approach with transparency, inclusivity, collaboration, and reproducibility as core values. A key goal of the project, consistent with NASA’s Open Science initiative, is to make it possible for non-experts in computational plasma physics to play a meaningful role in the development and validation of the most advanced global magnetosphere models.
Free drinks and refreshments will be provided in Morse Hall.
Schedule:
Check out the rest of this season's Space Science Seminar Series, as well as previous recordings.
