Episode 4: The Afterlives of Stars, with Victoria Kaspi

Our guest today is Victoria Kaspi, the Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics, the Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics and Professor of Physics at McGill University. She earned her PhD working under nobel prize winning astrophysicist Jospeh Hooton Taylor, Jr. and went on to work at MIT, the California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before joining the faculty of McGill in 1999. Dr. Kaspi is a Fellow in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences. Her research expertise is in observational studies of neutron stars and pulsars, McGill Pulsar Group. Among other distinctions, she has won the John C. Polanyi Award from the NSERC, the Rutherford Memorial Medal of the Royal Society of Canada, and the Prix Marie-Victorin, the highest scientific award of the province of Québec. 
Dr. Victoria Kaspi joins Justin Trottier at The Star Spot to discuss the wide range of exotic afterlife experiences a star may enjoy, including neutron stars, pulsars, magnetars, and quark (or strange) stars. The two also discuss upcoming missions like NuSTAR which will study black holes, supernova explosions, and active galaxy nuclei, as well as SWIFT, primarily concerned with mysterious gamma ray bursts. Dr. Kaspi shares her passion for discovery, why her work connects to the average person, and what new possibilities the future might hold. In Current in Space, we discuss the case for ancient oceans on Mars, The Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE), and why two researchers think the safe bet that life exists beyond Earth may need to be rethought. Visit www.starspotpodcast.com for more details. Links http://heasarc.nasa.gov/docs/swift/swiftsc.html http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Media-Media/2minutes-2minutes/Kaspi-Kaspi_eng.asphttp://www.technophilicmag.com/mag/qanda/victoria-kaspi http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/home http://heasarc.nasa.gov/docs/swift/swiftsc.html http://www.cifar.ca/victoria-m-kaspi  http://www.hep.physics.mcgill.ca/~vkaspi/new_web_site/en/index.php http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~pulsar/