Discovery of the largest gold 'mine' in the universe

Scientists have been searching for the origin of Earth's most precious metals, including gold, silver and platinum, for nearly six decades. Precious metals have high atomic masses and are formed in a process called rapid neutron capture, or R-process, which requires a lot of energy. Their appearance in the universe remains a big mystery.

However, the discovery of an ancient dwarf galaxy called Reticulum II, located about 98,000 light-years from Earth, may help solve this mystery. Reticulum II contains stars with unprecedented amounts of precious metals. "Understanding the formation of heavy elements such as gold, silver, and platinum is one of the most difficult problems in nuclear physics," said physicist Anna Frebel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The origin of gold and precious metals is a controversial question.

In 1957, physicists Hans Suess and Harold Urey hypothesized that massive stellar explosions and neutron star collisions, where critical conditions and an extremely large number of neutrons exist, would drive the R process. To date, researchers have not been able to verify this hypothesis and the origin of the R process remains unclear.

Illustration of a pulsating neutron star. Photo: NASA.

In the early stages of the Reticulum II galaxy, numerous neutron star collisions occurred and triggered the R process. As a result, a large amount of precious metals were formed, confirming Suess and Urey's hypothesis about their origin.

Regarding the appearance of all precious metals, products of the R process such as gold, silver, uranium, lead, platinum, on Earth, researchers believe that they were created in the explosion of neutron stars. They mixed into the surface of the star or planet at that time, then were brought to Earth.

According to VNE