Collision of Two Neutron Stars Billions of Years Ago Made Enough Gold and Uranium To Fill Earth's Oceans, Says Study

Billions of years ago, deep down in the cosmos, two neutron stars began their destructive journey toward each other, an event so mighty that it shook space to its core. These dead stellar cores, fragments of once-massive stars, spiraled inward in a lethal dance, moving faster with every step until they finally collided in an explosion so glimmering it would have outshone the entire night sky. Such an event, known as a neutron-star merger, is one of the most deathly occurrences in the universe. But beyond its raw energy, experts have something else to say now—they believe that one such incident may have provided our solar system with its most valuable elements, including gold and uranium, stated Space.

According to a study, a neutron-star collision that occurred approximately 80 million years before the birth of our solar system produced an ample amount of gold, uranium, and other heavy elements to match the mass of all of Earth’s oceans combined. These precious elements, which are just so common in the present day, from jewelry to nuclear reactors, were once seeded into the gas and dust cloud that eventually formed the Sun and planets. Imre Bartos, an astrophysicist, shared, "The first directly detected neutron-star merger happened 130 million light-years away, which may sound like a large distance, but was much closer than anticipated…This made me and my colleagues think about how close to us such events might happen. Could they happen near the solar system?" stated Space.

To quench the curiosity, Bartos and his team deeply analyzed ancient meteorites that date back to the formation of the solar system, around 4.6 billion years ago. These space rocks contain traces of radioactive isotopes, which act like cosmic fingerprints, revealing the origins of the elements they contain. By further assessing the decay patterns of these isotopes, the esports determined that a single neutron-star collision was probably responsible for bestowing our solar system with such precious elements. Bartos remarked, "We didn't expect that one event would contribute most of the heavy elements found in the early solar system…in each of us, we would find an eyelash worth of these elements, mostly in the form of iodine, which is essential to life…the gamma-ray burst would emit more energy than the sun will radiate during its entire lifetime," via Space.

Another intriguing point to note is that if you own a gold ring, a small fraction of it likely originated from this neutron-star crash 4.6 billion years ago. Bartos explained, "The meteor contained the remnant of radioactive isotopes produced by neutron star mergers…While they decayed a long time ago, they could be used to reconstruct the amount of the original radioactive isotope at the time when the solar system was formed," stated Live Science. If Earth were in the direct path of the gamma-ray burst—a lethal beam of radiation emitted from the newborn black hole—the repercussions could be unimaginable.

Bartos continued, "A nearby gamma-ray burst would result in a mass extinction…Luckily, neutron-star mergers only happen roughly every 100,000 years in the Milky Way, and ones that happen nearby do so less often, so we are not in any immediate danger in any way." Luckily, chances of such an event occurring near Earth anytime soon are incredibly low, stated Space.