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SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATIONS

Visualization showing unstable tongues in a star's magnetosphere

Numerical Investigation of Young Stars

Cornell University is using NASA’s Columbia and Discover supercomputers to investigate matter distribution around young magnetized stars. Simulations show that accretion to a magnetized star may be in a stable or unstable regime, depending on parameters. Here, high-resolution numerical simulations show that unstable “tongues” penetrate between the field lines (red lines). The equatorial slice shows the density distribution, with red indicating the maximum, and blue the minimum.

Credit: Research by Marina Romanova, Cornell University.

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