Preliminary Results for Experiment at WiPPL

The Sun, being an active star, undergoes eruptions of magnetic fields and charged

particles that reach the Earth and cause the aurora near the poles. Some eruptions may

be more powerful than others, resulting in an Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejection

(ICME) that can cause major damage to our modern electrical systems without warning.

We want to form a better understanding of how the ICMEs interact to create a more

predictive model for them to more effectively defend our systems from a potentially

devastating ICME. To explore solar phenomena, we use the Big Red Ball (BRB) facility

at the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory (WiPPL). The BRB is a 3-meter diameter

plasma confinement system equipped with around 200 ports for diagnostic acess. Using

the BRB, we can explore the interactions between an ICME and the Earth's field by

using a spherical permanent magnet as the analog to the Earth, a light background

plasma as the analog to the interplanetary medium (IM), and a compact torus (CT) of

plasma as the ICME. My presentation will detail the desired parameters as well as

describe preliminary results of the upcoming experiment.