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 ...

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 ...

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 ...