Astronomers Couldn't Explain This Ancient Star's Chemistry. A Lab Experiment Just Did.

Everything from the gold in your smart phone to the calcium in your bones was originally created in a star. But for a long time there has been a question about the levels of one particular element - strontium, which makes fireworks burn bright red and is used in glow-in-the-dark paint. A new paper published in Nature Communications Physics from a large group of researchers led by Caley M. Harris, a graduate student at Michigan State University, thinks they have found an answer for why that particular elemental level was skewed - and doing so required some very elaborate laboratory testing.

For decades, astrophysicists believed that there were two pathways to creating what they call “metals”, which means any element heavier than helium. One was the slow “s-process” that happens in dying stars, and one was the rapid “r-process” that happens in explosions like supernovae.