Almost all the gold on Earth — every wedding ring, every coin, every gram in every bank vault — was forged in the collision of dead stars billions of years ago, in events so violent that a single one
Astrophysicists have confirmed that the collision of neutron stars is the primary source of heavy elements like gold and platinum in the universe. Data from the 2017 GW170817 event provided the first observational evidence to support long-standing theories of stellar nucleosynthesis.
Why it matters
This discovery solves a fundamental mystery in astrophysics regarding the origin of precious metals and heavy elements on Earth.
On 17 August 2017, two neutron stars in a galaxy called NGC 4993, about 130 million light-years from Earth, completed a spiral inward that had taken them millions of years and ended in a collision lasting fractions of a second.
The article is a factual report on scientific research with no political or social agenda.
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