Marco Malaspina 2026-11-05
Marco Malaspina is a science writer and interviewer whose signed work for Media INAF communicates research in astronomy and space physics. In a 2018 interview with Roberto Bruno, he discussed the physical questions behind measurements of the solar wind and turbulence, alongside the researcher's professional recognition.[ref]
The article is a communication contribution, rather than a claim that Malaspina performed the spacecraft experiment. It gives readers access to the researcher's account of why irregular plasma fluctuations are scientifically interesting. Keeping that distinction explicit separates the writer who explains an observation from the investigators who measured and analyzed it. His bylined interview is also a useful identified source for Bruno's discussion of his research, with its original date preserved.
Roberto Bruno 2026-11-05
Roberto Bruno is a physicist who studies the solar wind as a natural laboratory for turbulence. INAF's 2018 institutional interview documents his work on nonlinear processes in space plasmas and the American Geophysical Union's recognition of that work.[ref]
His 2024 first-authored study examined proton and alpha particle populations measured by Solar Orbiter. Instead of characterizing all particles by one bulk value, the team used clustering to separate core and beam populations within the velocity distribution. That distinction changed the interpretation of temperature and its directional dependence, because two populations moving relative to one another can appear broader when combined.[ref]
An illustrative calculation shows the issue. Two equally populated, individually narrow groups moving at and have combined mean , but their relative drift contributes to the combined variance. Treating that whole width as random thermal motion would hide the organized relative motion. Measurements of a full velocity distribution can therefore reveal physics that one average speed cannot.