E-Mail IMAGE: An artist's conception of coronal mass ejections and magnetic reconnection above photos of PPPL physicists, from left, Masaaki Yamada, Hantao Ji, and Jongsoo Yoo view more Credit: (Astrophysical inages courtesy of NASA / headshots and collage courtesy of Elle Starkman) Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have received three awards from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) totaling over $2 million to conduct research that could help predict the potentially damaging effects of blasts of subatomic particles from the sun. The three-year awards will fund research into a process known as magnetic reconnection, the coming together and explosive separation of magnetic field lines in plasma, that occurs throughout the universe. Scientists conjecture that magnetic reconnection helps cause the blasts, which produce vast amounts of electrically charged subatomic particles known as plasma. The onrush of particles, part of what is known as space weather, can interfere with communications satellites and electrical grids on Earth.