All the world's gold came from collisions of dead neutron stars.
Quote:
"We can account for all the gold in the universe from these collisions," said Edo Berger, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithson Center for Astrophysics.
Neutron stars are the dead cores of stars; in the past, they had exploded as supernovae.The neutron stars responsible for the event that Berger and colleagues studied are each thought to be about the size of Boston, but with about 1.5 times the mass of the sun.
Smash two of them together at close to the speed of light and you can expect fireworks,"
Platinum and uranium also come from this collision process, Woosley said. All of these elements swirl around between stars, as gases, and eventually become part of subsequent generations of stars, like our sun.
More than 200 million years after the planet was formed, a shower of meteorites hit and brought with them gold, which stayed in the planet's mantle.
Think about that the next time you wear a gold wedding band or other piece of jewelry. Now there's a fascinating thing about your bling.
|
Not surprised in this finding but I'm still amazed at the weight of a neutron stars material, crazy.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/18/tech/i...html?hpt=hp_t2