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Meet a Scientist: Dr. Gabriele Cugno
UZH astronomer Dr. Gabriele Cugno is one of a few researchers in Switzerland working with data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), one of the most powerful space-based telescopes ever built. In this interview, he talks about his work detecting moon-forming disks around young exoplanets and using molecular mapping to study their composition, shedding light on how moons and giant planets form and what this tells us about the origins of planetary systems like our own.
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Probing supermassive black holes: simulations reveal a new pattern in torn-apart stars
Supermassive black holes are among the largest objects in the Universe, yet most of them remain effectively invisible. Now, simulations conducted by Lucio Mayer’s team at the University of Zurich, together with colleagues in Italy, the UK, and the US, on CSCS’s Alps supercomputer using the new GPU-based code SPH-EXA, show in unprecedented detail how a star is torn apart by a black hole, producing a signal that can reveal its presence. The results also identified a previously unseen pattern that may help detect these hidden giants in the future.