A little star dust is about to fall on Utah. We'll talk about it this week on planetary radio. Radio. Hi everyone and happy New Year.

Welcome to Public Radio's Travel Show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan.

Well, last July, the Deep Impact Mission provided us our first look at the interior of a

comet. And now on January 15th, the Stardust Mission, will bring back to Earth the very first sample collected from Comet.

That's Andrew Dantzler, Director of NASA's Solar System Division, he was first up at a recent press conference

held in anticipation of an unprecedented event in space exploration.

We'll devote most of today's show to that event the return to Earth of a spaceship

carrying particles dating back to our own origin in the universe.

Not to worry, Bruce Betts will also drop by with a brand new space trivia contest in his pocket and stars and planets in his eyes.

Emily is concentrating on the ears this week as she lets us listen in on a couple of cosmic metronomes.

Here she is.

I'll be back with lots more about Stardust in just a minute. a The listener asked, how do scientists create sounds from data about stars and magnetic fields?

As charged particles move around the magnetic fields of stars and planets, they generate radio

emissions.

Many scientists study how the frequencies of these radio emissions vary with time

in order to understand the changing nature of the magnetic field

or to measure the rotation rates of giant planets and pulsars.

These frequencies may be much lower or much higher than the human range of hearing.

But it's easy for scientists to shift the frequency to a range that humans can hear,

producing pretty bizarre sounds, like these from Cassini's recording of Saturn's

Kilometric radiation. Do these sounds represent anything real or are they just art made from science data?

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