Without the sun, life on Earth could not exist. But the sun also has a dark capacity to disrupt or even destroy the very life that it so delicately sustains through what is called space weather. Earth has an invisible shield consisting of a magnetic field which can deflect damaging solar particles. However, this shield can be infiltrated and the result can be a disruption of power grids and communications networks, and harmful radiation to living things . Researchers using supercomputing power at the National Institute for Computational Sciences are creating a topological map of Earth’s magnetosphere for global kinetic simulations, allowing them to closely study how space weather affects our magnetosphere. To read the complete story, visit NICS website.