🇮🇹 🇧🇷 🇪🇸

We all share one planet.

I study cosmic Black Holes

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You can contact me at:

mgiustini (at) cab.inta-csic.es
margherita.giustini (at) gmail.com

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I am a postdoctoral researcher working in the Galaxy Formation and Evolution Group of the Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA), in the ESAC campus near Madrid, in Spain.

I have the privilege to routinely use data collected by large X-ray telescopes such as XMM-Newton to investigate the inner regions around cosmic black holes, pinpointing distant sources in the Universe that show interesting characteristics, and studying their physics using the knowledge that we have collectively gained here on Earth.

I am particularly interested in the activity of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN), where powerful winds can be launched from the vicinity of the black hole event horizon. What drives these winds? how do they fit into the AGN structure? How do they evolve together with AGN across cosmic time? — are some of the big questions I aim at helping answer with my research. Since their discovery at the end of 2018, I am also actively investigating X-ray quasi periodic eruptions (QPEs), a still enigmatic cosmic phenomenon associated with massive black holes that has drawn the attention of astronomers worldwide. What causes QPEs? Why are they so rare? Are QPEs the electromagnetic counterpart of gravitational wave extreme mass ratio inspirals events? Are there winds in QPE sources? — are instead some of the questions I ask myself when researching QPEs.

Should you be interested in more details on my research on cosmic black holes, you can check my general Research page, or the specific Black Hole Winds or QPE pages.

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Before starting my postdoctoral position at the CAB, education and research have brought me all around the globe. I was born in Italy, where I got a Ph.D. in Astronomy at the University of Bologna; I have then lived and investigated black holes in several countries: the Netherlands, where I worked at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON); the USA, where I spent almost a half of my Ph.D. studies, first at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and then at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), and where I returned as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC); and Spain, where I have been Research Fellow at the European Space Agency (ESA). The countries I have visited to go giving and listening to scientific talks include Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, and South Korea.

It is immensely humbling and gratifying to live a life with such privileges, and to be a living bridge between the vast knowledge that is in the Universe and our little beautiful blue planet. I spend a good part of my time in Cosmic Awe.

I am the product of a generation of humans who were able to widen so much their horizons on the Universe in such a short time. It seems surreal to live in an epoch that feels at the verge of a global collapse, but that is real. We — humans, in general — seem to have severely lost our way here on Earth; we live most of our time as if we were disconnected from her. A global perception of our position in the Cosmos is missing. Perhaps by sharing a bit of the knowledge that I have gained in this short terrestrial life, someone might feel inspired to widen their horizons as well and to get to see all the other humans for what they truly are: fellows who share with each other a very short and often difficult life on a unique and uniquely beautiful planet, able to protect us all from the perils of the Cosmos: planet Earth.

We all share the same planet.

…and I am convinced that there is a way to live all together, thriving, on this unique and uniquely beautiful blue planet.

We have big challenges all around us, and these challenges must be solved together.

Madrid, September 2024

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Research

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