Episode 66: Blue Stragglers: The Stars That Shouldn’t Exist, with Alison Sills

Feature Guest: Alison Sills   It’s a phenomenon so mysterious one astronomer wondered if it could be evidence of an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence. Meet blue straggers, the black sheeps of the stellar family. Today we're joined at The Star Spot by Professor Alison Sills to learn all about the stars that shouldn’t exist. Current in Space Dave mesmerizes us with the carnival funhouse like effect around black holes, where the warping of space and time is so intense you can see the front and back of blackholes simultaneously. Celine discusses an upcoming unmanned mission to drill the moon for lunar samples and establish the viability of a future human outpost. And while you may have heard of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, Tony wonders if the entire spot is red, why it's red and why so little else on the gas giant shares the iconic colour. Finally Yonna brings us news of Europe's first space plane set to launch shortly.   About Our Guest     Alison Sills is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She received her PhD from Yale University and held postdoctoral positions at the Ohio State University and the University of Leicester in the UK. She studies weird stars in odd places, utilizing computation tools to model the evolution of stellar populations. Along with researchers from Canada, the US and Europe, she is an active member of the MODEST collaboration, which stands for MOdelling DEnse STellar Systems.