UNAM astrophysicist Susana Lizano enters the National College

Mexico, Oct. 16 (Notimex) - Estela Susana Lizano Soberon, from the Radioastronomy and Astrophysics Institute, under the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, for its acronym in Spanish) will join The National College as a new member. The academic, considered one of the most outstanding astrophysicists in the country, who studies the formation of stars in the Milky Way, joins the 40 members of the institution. In a statement, the highest house of studies highlighted the trajectory and contributions that the specialist has made to science, as she has conducted studies that help the contemporary understanding of the phenomenon of stellar birth, from the theoretical point of view to the observational. Her research includes theoretical models of how within large galactic clouds of dust and gas small dense nuclei are formed, as well as how they condense and collapse by their own gravity to form a star or a group of stars in their centre. Susana Lizano, who was born in Mexico City, holds a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley, and after a postdoctoral stay at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory in Florence, Italy, joined the UNAM Astronomy Institute. She has been distinguished with the 1996 Scientific Research Academy Award and the 2012 National Science and Arts Award. She is currently vice-president of the Mexican Academy of Sciences (2017-2020). Her lines of research include the study of the powerful bipolar winds that are produced in the suns in formation, more powerful than those of the Sun, and that destroy the maternal cloud. Lizano Soberón, the sixth woman to belong to this group, is also interested in the formation of dust and gas disks around the stars, called protoplanetariums; which are produced because the material of the cloud is in rotation. They are the origin of planetary systems, such as the Solar System. Around the stellar birth, she explained that a lot remains unknown. For example, the mechanism of the formation of massive stars is not well understood. Bipolar disks and winds have been found around some of them, so there is a possibility that this process is a scaled version of low-mass stars. It may also be that there is no single process. Upon entering The National College, Lizano emphasized "it is an enormous, unexpected honor, and an opportunity to do a more intense activity of spreading science. Joining prominent personalities from the exact and natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities, it is a very big distinction. NTX/MSG/LCH/PAP