He is a member of a research team whose work is shedding new light on “pre-solar grains,” microscopic particles found on Earth that could be remnants of stellar explosions billions of years ago. Image credit: NSCL.To learn more about this 5-billion-year-old question, Wrede and his team at the NSCL carried out an experiment in which they created and studied the exotic radioactive nuclei that have the greatest influence on the production of silicon isotopes in novae.