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

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Feature Guest: Alison Sills

sillsIt’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.

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Current in Space

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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.

Links

Alison Sills Website

Globular Clusters Are Real Oddballs (University Today)

Clusters May Unlock Secrets of Star Formation (SpaceRef)

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