For years, space physicist Robert Clauer would trek off to Greenland once or twice a year to gather data on the upper atmosphere. He would fly four or five hours in the back of a cold cargo plane to reach a site where he would sit for days in a trailer crowded with instrument displays. When he wasn't busy observing, he could step outside to admire the aurora borealis or watch a passing herd of caribou. The experience was rugged, and sometimes exhausting, but it satisfied his soul and his scientific curiosity.

Today Clauer does the same kind of research, but he doesn't have to go to Greenland to do it. Rather than travel physically, he is now linked via computers in an experimental "electronic collaboratory" project with other space physicists. The electronic links enable them to initiate experiments from their desktops and study data collected from radar instruments in Greenland, Canada, Norway, and the United States and from space-based satellites. Through chat boxes on personal-computer screens, the researchers can put their heads together to interpret data and compare real-time observations to theoretical models generated on supercomputers.