Supernovas are stellar explosions from stars that can be up to hundreds of millions of light years away. And while studying these events might seem trivial to some, senior staff scientist Peter Nugent of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that one reason they’re important is because we are made from the elements they create.

“Everything around us is the product of a supernova explosion. That’s how you convert hydrogen and helium, which were made during the Big Bang into everything else. Carl Sagan once famously said “we are star stuff”. So, the calcium in our bones, the iron that’s in our cars, the gold that we have in our rings – all of that comes from a supernova explosion. So, if you want to understand why there’s what we call nucleosynthesis products in a supernova, why our world is made up of the materials that’s in it, it’s related to a supernova explosion.”