Cool Space Jobs - Solar Physicist

The scoop: Dr. Mario Bisi, a solar physicist and post-doctoral scholar at the University of California, San Diego, gets to study wiggling comets and distant twinkling quasars every day. Discovery Space producer Ian O'Neill finds out why Bisi has a very cool space job.

Ian O'Neill: Hi Mario! It's Ian O'Neill with Discovery Space. How's your day going?

Dr. Mario Bisi: Hello Ian! So far, my day is going well, thanks. It's somewhat hectic, but that's not too different from most days ...

IO: Oh good, how's the weather? I hear San Diego isn't as hot as it is up here in LA.

MB: There's a lot of cloud today, and yes, the weather is cooler here than it is in LA. You're in a better place if you like it hot and sunny.

IO: Ah, better pool weather up here by the sound of it!

Where are you at the moment? Is your office actually on campus?

MB: Okay, so, I'm actually at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS), on the main La Jolla campus at UCSD. My building is known as the SERF building which stands for the Science and Engineering Research Facility and is where the science members of CASS are based.

IO: I understand you are working on solar wind research, and I saw a publication you did on comets. That sounds like fun to work on.

MB: Ah, yes, our comet paper. I was indeed a co-author of a paper primarily looking at possible reasons why comet tails "wiggle" when traveling through the solar system.

IO: Hold on. Comets wiggle their tails? Why do they do that?

MB: Indeed they do! We used data from the "Solar Mass Ejection Imager" (SMEI) to study the comet tail wiggles and the final conclusion was that they are likely caused by solar wind speed variations.

Also, a university student and I devised a way to measure solar wind speed directly from the comet tail images - very cool stuff!

IO: That is cool. Are you still focused on comets?

MB: Actually, I'm now working on a paper focused on the study of "twinkling" far-off radio sources (quasars) using Ooty Radio Telescope in India. This is known as "interplanetary scintillation" (IPS), when solar wind plasma from the sun passes in front of the distant points of radio causing them to twinkle just like Earth's air movements make stars twinkle in the night's sky.

The data is then used to create 3-D images of the structure of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) as they propagate away from the sun to the Earth. This is important as it helps us understand how these CMEs interact with the Earth's magnetic field, creating aurorae and causing solar storms.

IO: Wow, sounds like exciting research! So what would you consider to be the coolest part of your job?

MB: To be honest, I love everything I do. But if I had to choose, then it's the fact that I get to travel the world for meetings, workshops, conferences, and collaborative work. It's great for getting to meet people and to interact with them -- something which I enjoy very much. Of course the big bonus is that I get paid to travel!

IO: Awesome, so you're not scared of flying then?

MB: Definitely not! This is a little strange given that the first time I flew was in 2003 and since then I've flown on over 130 aircraft!

IO: Nice, I wish I had the travel budget for that!

MB: Well, I wouldn't say we had a great travel budget, no-one in academia does really, but we're very clever with what little we have.

IO: So have you always had a passion for the sun? Or is it just general space science you're passionate about?

MB: Actually, my original passion was for cosmology; at least until I came across the Ph.D. option at University of Wales, Aberystwyth in the UK to research the solar wind. Since then, my passion has certainly been for the wider scope of space physics -- although I do like to dip into cosmology from time to time.

IO: Wales to Southern California, that's quite a change! Do you think it's nicer to be studying solar physics in a location where you can actually see the sun?

MB: Hmmm ... I don't know that actually seeing the sun is necessarily a good thing -- you certainly shouldn't look at it directly!

I guess California has a lot going for it in terms of the weather, but I still prefer Wales. Besides, I use data from radio telescopes and spacecraft, so they don't care if the sky is cloudy.