Our civilization might stop if the Sun changed its output by 1 percent either way. You sure would like to know what's operating this machine. Toomre and his colleagues have used the CRAY C90 at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to simulate gas movement and energy transfer in the Sun's outer regions. These computations have revealed details about turbulence in these regions that otherwise can't be observed, and they have helped to reconcile observations with theory. The relatively calm granular pattern of convection cells at the surface disguises the highly turbulent interior.
Dark colors represent cool, downflowing gas, and light areas are warm and upflowing.
This computational box represents one instant in time from simulation of the turbulent convection zone. The enstrophy, or vorticity squared, is shown as a colored region, where each value is assigned an opacity and color according to the field's intensity. Distinctive vortices are present, with sheets and tubes of vortices near the top of the convection zone evolving into convection cells. In the intense turbulence at greater depths, the vortices are less organized. Juri Toomre and Nic Brummell, University of Colorado, Boulder .