Speaker: Ben Lynch

Affiliation: UCLA, EPSS

Date: Friday, May 29, 2026

Time: 3:30 PM

Abstract

The eleven-year solar activity cycle manifests itself in a variety of spectacular and interdependent ways. For example, the spatiotemporal distribution of the emergence of bipolar active regions (ARs) impart a spatiotemporal dependence to the response and re-configuration of overlying large-scale, closed-flux helmet streamer belt. Additionally, specific AR–background field configurations can arise that form new, intermediate-scale closed-flux systems surrounded by single polarity open fields, such as coronal pseudostreamers, which also inherit the underlying solar cycle-dependence of their photospheric flux distributions. The global magnetic structure of the solar corona, in turn, determines the entire solar wind stream and magnetic sector structure of the inner heliosphere. The cusp region of the coronal helmet streamer belt extends into a dense, slow solar wind plasma sheet that contains the heliospheric current sheet (HCS), separating the open fields of opposite polarity. The equivalent heliospheric extension of pseudostreamer outflows along the outer spine-line or spine-fan, result in slow, plasma-sheet like solar wind embedded in a single open field polarity.

In this talk , I will present an overview of the ways in which coronal magnetic field topology, open-closed flux system boundary layers, and their dynamic evolution can determine the resulting solar wind properties and structure of the inner heliosphere. As an illustrative example, I will discuss recent remote-sensing and in-situ observations made by Parker Solar Probe (PSP) in the context of the Casillas et al. [2026] magnetohydrodynamic simulation results. For example, the PSP Encounter 24 observations appear to have captured certain aspects of the Casillas et al. scenario of a global-scale pseudostreamer–to–helmet streamer transition and the generation of outflow transients associated with the opening-up (and closing-down) of a large-scale pseudostreamer flux system which creates (or destroys) the parasitic-polarity solar wind streams and their associated HCSs.

Speaker: Zesen Huang

Affiliation: UCLA, EPSS

Date: Friday, May 22, 2026

Time: 3:30 PM

Abstract

Large language models, and the agents built on top of them, are beginning to change how research is done, yet the core ideas remain unfamiliar to many scientists. In this talk, I will explain them from the ground up, assuming no prior background: what a large language model is, what an AI agent is, and what an “agent harness” — the tools, memory, and feedback loop that turn a passive model into something that can act — actually does. I will then turn to why this matters for Earth and space sciences, where reaching a scientific result often means first spending months learning each mission’s data formats and conventions, and describe an effort to build a shared, community-owned skill repository that lets agents handle this competently across subfields. The broader argument is that agents are poised to transform not only everyday scientific work but how people work more generally — and that building the right scaffolding now is what determines whether that promise is realized.