SUNVIZ: A Real-Time Visualization Environment for Space Physics Applications

Real-time physically accurate simulations are difficult to create because of limited computational power available on a CPU. General purpose computing on the graphics processing unit (GPU) can provide a significant increase in performance. We are able to investigate the flow characteristics of a cloud of charged particles, which is one of the first steps in our goal of generating a real-time Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) simulator. Preliminary results show a sustained 60 Hz visual simulation with approximately four million particles and a non-visual simulation of 16 million particles at 30 Hz. The simulator provides a novel way to investigate a CME in real-time, and it has the potential to predict when a particular CME is geoeffective, i.e. an event that could damage electrical infrastructure such as satellites, space stations, power grids, etc...