Scientists have found the answer to a decades-long mystery, in the middle of two colliding stars.
For the first ever time, a newly made heavy element called strontium was detected in space after two neutron stars crashed into each other.
The discovery definitively confirms that heavier elements in the universe can be made in the mergers of neutron stars, at last helping answer the puzzle of how chemical elements form.
Since the middle of the last century, researchers have understood how physical processes create the elements that make up the world around us. They went on to find the places in the universe where these are found – with the exception of one.
"This is the final stage of a decades-long chase to pin down the origin of the elements," said the study's lead author Darach Watson from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark
The element that researchers saw being formed, strontium, is found naturally in the soil. It is probably best known for providing the salts that allow fireworks to include red colours
For the first ever time, a newly made heavy element called strontium was detected in space after two neutron stars crashed into each other.
The discovery definitively confirms that heavier elements in the universe can be made in the mergers of neutron stars, at last helping answer the puzzle of how chemical elements form.
Since the middle of the last century, researchers have understood how physical processes create the elements that make up the world around us. They went on to find the places in the universe where these are found – with the exception of one.
"This is the final stage of a decades-long chase to pin down the origin of the elements," said the study's lead author Darach Watson from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark
The element that researchers saw being formed, strontium, is found naturally in the soil. It is probably best known for providing the salts that allow fireworks to include red colours
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