Behold the first complete simulation of a sunspot, the product of a new 76-teraflop supercomputer that’s allowed scientists to model the sun’s magnetic processes in unprecedented detail.

The beautiful virtual sunspot (see video below) was built using new observations about the structure of the sun. It represents an area 31,000 miles by 62,000 miles to a depth of 3,700 miles. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research used a wealth of equations that describe the interactions of particles in the environment to calculate the dynamics of the sunspot at 1.8 billion individual points.

“Advances in supercomputing power are enabling us to close in on some of the most fundamental processes of the sun,” said Michael Knoelker, director of NCAR’s High Altitude Observatory and co-author of a paper on the work appearing in Science Thursday. “With this breakthrough simulation, an overall comprehensive physical picture is emerging for everything that observers have associated with the appearance, formation, dynamics and the decay of sunspots on the sun’s surface.”

Sunspots, which wax and wane in roughly 11-year cycles, eject massive amounts of plasma into the solar system, sometimes causing disruptions of terrestrial communications and power grid infrastructure. We’ve been studying them for a 100 years, but it’s only recently that keener observations and expanded computing power have enabled us to begin to really understand them.

Still, there is a lot left to learn. Over the last year, scientists have been trying to explain the abnormally low number of sunspots. The normal cycle appeared to have been disrupted, which would have required a major rethink of the sun’s internal dynamics.

This week, though, a team at the National Solar Observatory announced at an American Astronomical Society meeting press conference that they’d pinpointed the cause: a laggard jet stream. Sunspots are generated by jet streams that originate at the sun’s poles every 11 years and migrate down to the latitude of 22 degrees. Over the past few years, a jet stream moved more slowly towards the equator than previous ones. Now that it’s finally in position near 22 degrees, we’re starting to see increased sunspot activity.

Still, really basic questions remain. For example, why did the jet stream move more slowly? Or even, why do jet streams form at all — and why the seemingly random interval?

“We still don’t understand exactly how jet streams trigger sunspot production,” said Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Nor do we fully understand how the jet streams themselves are generated.”

With the new supercomputer sunspot model, solar researchers could gain a deeper understanding of these powerful, mysterious and important phenomena. That’s good news because as sunspot activity kicks back up towards its maximum, experts warn the Earth’s electrical and communications networks could be in very serious trouble.

“If you want to understand all the drivers of Earth’s atmospheric system, you have to understand how sunspots emerge and evolve,” said Matthias Rempel of NCAR’s High Altitude Observatory, lead author of the Science paper. “Our simulations will advance research into the inner workings of the sun as well as connections between solar output and Earth’s atmosphere.”

The video shows the computer simulation of the complex magnetic fields that form sunspots. The black-and-white images show the sun’s surface, with black representing negative polarity and white positive polarity. The color simulation reveals what’s happening deep in the sun; the lighter colors in the subsurface simulation indicate greater magnetic field strength.

See Also:

Image and Video: Matthias Rempel, NCAR/UCAR.

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and book site for The History of Our Future; Wired Science on Facebook.