Some light may have been shed on the blue straggler problem by recent Hubble observations of a blue straggler in the globular gluster 47 Tucanae shown below.
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This star was found to have a very high rotation rate, about 75 times faster than our Sun. This suggests that the blue stragglers are formed by fusion of a rapidly rotating close binary pair of stars (or in some other type of stellar encounter). Since this could take place any time after the globular's formation, the blue stragglers would naturally be younger than the general globular population. Generally, it is believed that blue stragglers are stars whose evolution has been altered by interactions in binary star systems.