Astronomers studying how elements heavier than iron were produced in the early Milky Way have identified a distinct series of epochs of galaxy-wide chemical formation. This evolutionary timeline, ...

Understanding the origin of heavy elements on the periodic table is one of the most challenging open problems in all of physics. In the search for conditions suitable for these elements via ...

Research by scientists in South Africa and India is shedding light on the nuclear processes that lead to the formation of heavy elements after the collision of neutron stars, and why those elements ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Magnetar flares, colossal cosmic explosions, may be directly responsible for the creation and distribution of heavy elements across the universe, suggests a new study. For decades, ...

For the first time, a freshly made heavy element, strontium, has been detected in space, in the aftermath of a merger of two neutron stars. This finding was observed by ESO’s X-shooter spectrograph on ...

For years, astronomers puzzled over the mystery of where the heaviest elements in the universe—like gold, uranium, and platinum—come from. Scientists understood that these elements had to form under ...

As massive stars collapse into black holes, powerful jets tearing out from their hearts may "dissolve" the stars' outer layers, providing the ingredients to make heavy elements. This is the conclusion ...

An international team of astronomers led by Andrew Levan (Radboud University, the Netherlands) has discovered heavy elements in the wake of a bright gamma-ray burst in a galaxy about 1 billion ...

An artist's illustration depicts how a rupture in the crust of a highly magnetized neutron star can trigger high-energy eruptions. - S. Wiessinger/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Astronomers have ...

"It's pretty incredible to think that some of the heavy elements all around us, like the precious metals in our phones and computers, are produced in these crazy extreme environments." Scientists have ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Dec. 7, 2023 — The elements above iron on the periodic table are thought to be created in cataclysmic explosions like the merger of two neutron stars or in rare classes of supernovae ...