With Professor Leo Blitz of the University of Maryland, we witness how astronomers actually gain information using powerful radio telescopes. We join him and his colleague Eugene Degues in remote Hat Greek, California to gather observations on the origins of stars. Reseach such as this reveals how nuclear fusiun is the match which lights a star.
In a moment of a great discovery, we also travel to Australia to witness something new under the sun: a dazzling supernova, exploding with a force a billion-billion-trillion times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb. Our guides to understanding this rare explosion are astronomers Mike Dopita, David Allen and Richard Machester. Each reveals a different way to study this event, from analyzing visible light, to studying infrared waves, to searching for a "pulsa" - a repetitive radio signal that may arise from a collapsing star.
Through STARDUST we come to understand that in the birth and death of stars are the seeds of all life. With a wit and eloquence so often characteristic of astronomers. Mike Dopita puts the importance of the subject in perspective:
"If it wasn't for supernova explosions, we wouldn't have the elements that we need to build planets...and life. It really is true that the whole of the earth, and everybody on it, is just a product of stardust."