The Cosmic-Ray Observations of December 4, 1957
A RECENT communication from Legrand and Helary1 reports an increase in the total component of cosmic radiation at Paris on December 4, 1957. The increase amounted to about 18 per cent and extended over three hours with the maximum occurring at 2245 U.T. A small increase in the nucleonic component at Thule preceded the Paris event by about three hours. Optical and radio data indicate a flare of importance 1 on the western hemisphere of the Sun at 1657 U.T. (ref. 2).
Ionospheric Disturbance at the Time of Cosmic Ray Increases
IN a recent communication Legrand and Helary1 have reported the occurrence of an anomalous increase in the intensity of the total cosmic ray component at the Paris Cosmic Ray Survey Station on December 4, 1957. At about the same time an increase was also observed in the intensity of the nucleonic component at Thule, Greenland. This cosmic ray event was further described as being analogous to one which was observed at Paris on January 21, 1957 (ref. 2). It has been suggested that these events are manifestations of the precipitation into the Earth's atmosphere of high-energy protons which emanate from the disturbed Sun.
Creating the Virtual Universe
Simulation software is important to our understanding of the universe. The intrinsic multiphysics aspects are spiced with a range of temporal scales and spatial scales, both of which cover more digits than are available in the standard hardware. This, together with the intrinsic chaotic nature of many physical processes, poses quite a challenge. To meet this challenge, researchers developed the Astronomical Multipurpose Environment (AMUSE). Instead of writing a suite of multiphysics solvers from scratch, AMUSE's developers coupled existing solvers for each physical ingredient. The result is a highly inhomogeneous collection of dedicated solvers with a homogeneous protocol that scales to supercomputers.