William Simpson is a student at the University of St.
Andrews, Scotland. He completed his MPhys. in Theoretical
Physics and Mathematics in June 2010. In June 2009, Mr. Simpson began an
REU project
with the Montana State
University Physics Dept. This website presents his journal,
and details some of the results of his work during this time.
This research is concerned with the relationship between magnetic reconnection, x-ray
emissions and the behaviour of solar magnetic fields. The focus of this project has been to appropriately model an active
region that gave rise to a solar flare and discover and locate any areas of increasing stress in the
coronal magnetic field, prior to the instances of (stress-relieving) magnetic
reconnection that (presumably) power the flare. These reconnection events are believed to be associated
with hard x-ray emissions (occuring at the footpoints of reconnecting separator field lines), which can be
detected (and located on the sun) by a satellite called RHESSI.
The presentation slides from
the lecture that was given for this project work are now available, as well as a poster
summarising the work that has been carried out during these ten weeks.
Please note that none of the data or articles currently available for viewing on this site
should be regarded as finalised, and some of the material may still be in draft
form.
Throughout the nine weeks of research, a journal was maintained, detailing the progress that was made and the problems that were encountered along the way:
$dates = array();
$dates[1] = '1st June - 5th June';
$dates[2] = '8th June - 12th June';
$dates[3] = '15th June - 19th June';
$dates[4] = '22nd June - 26th June';
$dates[5] = '29th June - 3rd July';
$dates[6] = '6th July - 10th July';
$dates[7] = '13th July - 17th July';
$dates[8] = '20th July - 24th July';
$dates[9] = '27th July - 31st July';
for ( $i = 1; $i < 10; $i++ ) {
echo('