Origins of gold discovered in space

In August 2017, an explosion was spotted by scientists in a previously obscure galaxy called NGC 4993. The observation of that cataclysmic explosion has helped to explain the origin of gold on Earth.

According to scientists, the burst of gravitational waves with tiny ripples in the fabric of space was an ultra-powerful collision between two neutron stars. Those collisions are in fact the cosmic forge in which gold and other precious metals are made, before being flung out into the universe.

"It was so exciting, the way we got the alert and found the light source corresponding to the gravitational waves," Kate Maguire of Queen's University Belfast told the Financial Times. She was one of more than 3,000 researchers around the world who took part in the project.

Maguire said they discovered that the debris from the stellar collision included gold during...