Heavy duty: artist’s impression of a kilonova releasing r-process elements into the cosmos. (Courtesy: ESO/L Calçada/M Kornmesser) The mystery of where heavy elements such as gold and silver come from ...

For the first time, astronomers have definitively ID’d a specific heavy element forged by a neutron star merger. Theories of physics have long predicted that about half of the universe’s heavy ...

Carl Sagan once famously said: “We are made of star stuff.” He was referring to the origin of many elements — like the calcium in our bones and the iron in our blood — that are forged in the last ...

Violent explosions of massive, magnetized stars may forge most of the universe’s heavy elements, such as silver and uranium. The ancient star’s elements aren’t from the remnants of a neutron star ...

In an ejection that would have caused its rotation to slow, a magnetar is depicted losing material into space in this artist’s concept. The magnetar’s strong, twisted magnetic field lines (shown in ...

Many space-lovers know the phrase “We are all made of star stuff.” And it’s true — our planet formed from the dust cloud left over from the formation of our Sun, and from the planet, all life. That ...