At the SETI Institute, Rebecca Robinson follows the thread that connects everything — all the way to the Sun

There is a particular kind of scientific mind that finds its way to the Sun by first touching ice. Rebecca Robinson — heliophysicist at the SETI Institute and MUSE Outreach Lead for NASA’s forthcoming Multi-slit Solar Explorer mission — arrived at solar physics along a path that ran through Icelandic glacier cores, seismic datasets, and aurora-lit Norwegian nights before it ever pointed at the corona. Michigan born, Norwegian transplant, now stateside to lead the public voice of one of the most ambitious solar observatories ever built: the itinerary is unusual, and that turns out to be exactly the point.

Her formation is an exercise in disciplinary convergence. After earning dual bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Astrophysics at Michigan State University, Robinson completed an MSc in Geophysics at the University of Iceland and a PhD in theoretical astrophysics at the University of Oslo. Along the way she drilled ice cores in Iceland, modeled solar MHD simulations from a flat in Norway, served as resident astrophysicist at Badlands National Park, and sailed the Norwegian coast with HX Expeditions as an onboard solar and aurora scientist. The common thread across all of it: the conviction that everything in nature is connected to everything else.

In this installment of SKYCR Dialogues, Robinson speaks with candor about the unsolved mystery at the heart of solar physics — why the corona burns thousands of times hotter than the surface below it— about the spectroscopic revolution MUSE will bring to coronal observation, about the very real and underappreciated danger of a Carrington-class space weather event in an age of satellites and interconnected power grids, and about the legacy she intends to leave: one measured not only in papers, but in people.

The interview

What first drew you toward heliophysics? Was there a specific moment, observation, or mentor that transformed astronomy from curiosity into vocation for you?

I was a very strange 11-year-old who knew she wanted to be an astrophysicist, but I wasn’t quite sure what that meant in detail. All I knew at the time was that I liked space, I liked thinking about things that were bigger than me, I liked the idea of far-away mysteries to solve, and I loved the idea that everything was connected.

Eventually, I learned that the Sun’s magnetic field stretches far beyond the orbits of the planets in our solar system — it’s a boundary that defines the solar system itself. This meant that we are not only surrounded by the Sun’s influence, but that we have a special, physical magnetic connection between the Earth and the Sun. That connection brings energy to us in so many different forms. I became fascinated by the aurorae and by magnetic field interactions, and I took all of these interactions as evidence that everything in nature is indeed connected to everything else. It’s a tale as old as the universe, and one that keeps spinning the narrative forward as we explore and learn more.

You trained in geophysics and glaciology before completing your PhD in astrophysics at the University of Oslo. How did your background in Earth processes shape the way you now understand the Sun and solar–terrestrial interactions?

During my glaciology training, I learned so much about computers that hadn’t clicked for me before. I learned that computers break big problems down into tiny steps and iterate them forward — or backward — one moment, one step, one little piece at a time. We describe nature using differential equations, equations that describe how a system moves and changes, and by learning how to break those equations into tiny steps, I learned how to use computers to understand nature.

As it turns out, modeling glaciers is very similar to modeling solar plasma. It’s just different initial conditions, different boundary conditions, different assumptions, and a lot more magnetic field lines in the Sun. Learning computing skills by modeling glaciers informed my ability to use and understand models of solar plasma. My understanding of our Earth system is that everything is intertwined, connected, and either a cause or an effect — more likely, both a cause and an effect.

Touching ice helped me learn how to touch the Sun in a new way, and it helped keep me aware of the connections that exist between our planet and our closest star.

During your doctoral research, what fundamental question about the Sun most captivated you, and what was the most intellectually transformative aspect of that period?

One of the long-standing questions about the Sun concerns the temperature of the corona, the Sun’s diffuse upper atmosphere. While the core measures in at over ten million degrees Kelvin, the solar plasma has cooled to almost 6,000 Kelvin at the surface. How, then, can we observe temperatures soaring to one, five, ten, even twenty million degrees in the corona? There must be another energy source generating such a jump in temperature. This is the Solar Coronal Heating Problem, and it’s a puzzle that requires extensive research, observations, and models to solve. Right now, we think the solution lies in a combination of wave physics and magnetic field physics — each can move and convert energy into heat.

During my doctoral work, I analyzed a simulation of the solar corona called Bifrost. After a while, we noticed an interesting blob of heat in our simulated corona, measuring at almost 1.5 million degrees. We spent a long time trying to understand how our simulated magnetic field could’ve generated such temperatures, and we found that we had accidentally simulated a tiny solar flare called a nanoflare. By tracing the individual magnetic field lines in the simulation, we found that this nanoflare happened because of interactions between magnetic field components that self-consistently evolved. As they evolved, they stored enough magnetic energy to eventually power the nanoflare and heat the corona. This shed light on how magnetic fields could evolve in the real corona, and provided a case study supporting older magnetic field theories that hadn’t been modeled before.

The entire process was eye-opening: running the simulation, noticing something unexpected, working through the likeliest explanations, combing through the data to figure out the physics behind our simulated nanoflare. I learned how to ask the right questions to the right people, I learned how to persevere, and I learned that real research questions don’t always have straightforward answers. Creativity is crucial for doing research, and I love that.

As MUSE Outreach Lead for NASA’s Multi-slit Solar Explorer, how would you explain why this mission is crucial for advancing our understanding of coronal heating and solar dynamics?

NASA’s Multi-slit Solar Explorer is designed to carry technology we haven’t used before to observe the Sun. To analyze the fingerprints of sunlight and figure out the physics behind what generates the light, we traditionally use spectroscopy. Spectroscopy gives us information like the temperature, speed, and turbulence of the solar plasma by splitting sunlight into spectra — like how a prism splits white light into a rainbow.

MUSE’s big sister is IRIS, NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, which has been in space since 2013. IRIS is a single-slit imaging spectrograph — its spectrograph is a tiny slit that scans as much of the Sun as possible. With that one slit, IRIS has captured enormous amounts of spectra, but not simultaneously, not enough to give us the spectra of the entire field of view at once.

MUSE will be different. Building on IRIS technology, MUSE is designed as a 35-slit spectrograph, taking spectral measurements of its entire 170″ × 170″ field of view simultaneously. This means researchers can finally track the physics before, during, and after dynamic coronal events — solar flares, coronal mass ejections — continuously, from ignition to aftermath. If we can measure the physics during every step of a solar flare, we can understand a lot more about how they work.

You work at the intersection of high-level research and public communication. What are the biggest challenges in translating complex solar physics into narratives that remain scientifically rigorous yet accessible?

Some of the biggest challenges in translating complex physics into accessible narratives concern our audience’s beliefs about themselves. If someone comes to one of my lectures, activities, or internships with a self-belief that they aren’t smart enough to understand what is going on, then I must meet them there to help them challenge that belief.

Making science fun is actually the easy part. We can do kinesthetic activities, create art projects, watch videos from scientific simulations, enjoy hands-on crafts, and play games to communicate a concept. The real challenges are ensuring that every person feels welcome in that space and fostering a sense of belonging. I have found that we can start building that belonging by forming genuine relationships with the people we encounter, however briefly, and remaining accessible to as many folks as possible. That way, the negative self-talk becomes a little quieter, and a sense of belonging — and maybe even a STEM identity — can start to take root.

In your view, how underestimated is global space weather risk? Are we scientifically and technologically prepared for a Carrington-level event?

The risk of space weather events is fairly well understood, but the details are fuzzy. Our ability to predict space weather events with any precision is just not there yet. A Carrington-level event would be catastrophic for today’s economy and technology from ground to space — satellites, energy grids, communication infrastructure. The good news is that the science community is working together with industry to ensure infrastructure updates are more robust against large geomagnetic storms, and we have safeguards and protocols in place.

Scientifically, I see a bright future for space weather prediction. The MUSE era will help us better understand the dynamic corona and the origins of the solar wind. Missions like NASA’s Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH), ESA’s Solar Orbiter, and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe give us detailed perspectives on the outer corona and solar wind. NASA’s SOLAR-1, now sitting at Earth’s L1 Lagrange point, is our first continuous space weather monitor. With these datasets combined with new and improved space weather models, I believe we are entering a golden age of space weather prediction capabilities.

You have served as an onboard solar and aurora scientist with HX Expeditions along the Norwegian coast. How does witnessing auroral phenomena in situ reshape one’s perception of magnetospheric physics compared to studying it through data alone?

Both in-situ observation and data collection are important — we cannot tell a complete story without either. But witnessing a live auroral display is beyond imagination. Pictures alone cannot convey the delicate dance of undulating curtains of light; solar particles interacting with atmospheric particles to release vibrant colors, superheated plasma following magnetic field lines to create vertical columns hundreds of kilometers tall.

When solar magnetic fields collide with Earth’s magnetic field, the resulting explosion of light and color reflects both the intensity of the Sun’s magnetic power and the steadfastness of Earth’s magnetic shield. We are both protected and dazzled by this interplay of physical forces — how fortunate are we to live on such a planet?

From your perspective, how can regions such as Latin America strengthen their role in heliophysics and space weather research?

Latin America plays a crucial role in heliophysics research, particularly through the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil, the Jicamarca Radio Observatory in Peru, and the ALMA Radio Telescope in the Atacama. By committing to prioritize solar and atmospheric observations, and by continuing to monitor GNSS systems during space weather events, Latin American observatories can make an even larger contribution to the datasets we need to understand the Sun in every observable wavelength.

What do you believe will be the most transformative development in heliophysics over the next decade?

I truly believe that we are so close to understanding how to solve the Solar Coronal Heating Problem. We have many of the puzzle pieces, and by continued communication and collaboration — combined with faster supercomputers and more sensitive satellites — we can begin putting them together. Doing so would also help us better understand the solar origins of space weather and provide better coronal and heliospheric boundary conditions for space weather models. I’m so encouraged by the developing technology and the willingness of our field to work together toward common goals.

If you project yourself 15 years into the future, what kind of scientific legacy would you like to have built?

My scientific legacy will not just be about my contributions to understanding solar magnetic fields, but about the young people who will make so many more contributions than I have. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and the next generation owes it to me to go farther than I have, just as I owe it to my predecessors to run where they could only walk. We pave the way for one another, we pay attention to what we need as a field and as individual researchers, and we make sure we’re talking to as many folks around the world as we can. This is how we solve problems; this is how we build communities that can overcome obstacles and thrive.

If I can inspire just one person to banish their negative self-talk and believe that they belong in this field, then I will have done my job.

Editorial reflection

What strikes me most about this conversation with Rebecca Robinson is not the density of the science — though the science is formidable — but the coherence of her worldview. From the moment she describes a glacier as a pathway to the Sun, to her insistence that belonging is a prerequisite for discovery, she is articulating something rare: a heliophysicist who understands that the human problem and the solar problem are, in some fundamental way, the same problem. Both require breaking complexity into manageable steps. Both require tolerating uncertainty long enough for the picture to form. Both require someone to look at an unexpected result and decide it is worth following.

Her work on MUSE represents one of the most consequential observational leaps in solar physics in a generation. A 35-slit spectrograph capturing its entire 170″×170″ field simultaneously — not scanning, not sampling, but recording the full spectral picture of a region during the most violent events the Sun produces — is an instrument designed to let the Sun narrate its own story. Like IRIS before it, MUSE will stitch together a full-disk mosaic from multiple observations; what is revolutionary is that the simultaneous spectral sampling happens across that entire field at once. That story, told at last in full spectral detail, may well contain the answer to the Coronal Heating Problem. The fact that the person leading its public narrative once learned the language of differential equations by drilling ice cores in Iceland says something deep about how scientific intuition is actually forged.

For those following heliophysics from Latin America — and for those who look at institutions like Jicamarca, INPE, or ALMA and wonder what our region’s role in the next chapter could be — Robinson’s vision is not abstract. It is a direct invitation. The puzzle pieces exist. The field wants more voices. The only prerequisite is the belief that you are allowed to touch the Sun.