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 ...

Astronomers like to say we are the byproducts of stars, stellar furnaces that long ago fused hydrogen and helium into the elements needed for life through the process of stellar nucleosynthesis. But ...

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 ...

The characteristic luminosity of the kilonova is approximately equal to the radioactive heating rate at this escape timescale: A larger ejecta mass produces a brighter and longer-lasting kilonova; a ...

A: The lightest elements in the universe — hydrogen, helium, and a little lithium — were born shortly after the Big Bang. The heavier elements, up to iron, were forged later, in the hearts of stars ...

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 ...