Scientists have known that colliding neutron stars create gold since 2017, when they first observed the gravitational wave signal from a collision.
Neutron stars are rare since they are the collapsed cores of exploded supernovae. It’s even rarer for them to find each other in the vastness of space and collide.
The beautiful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), its mirror coated with pure gold, has long-wavelength capabilities that can perform spectroscopy, identifying the characteristic absorption and/or emission signatures unique to specific heavy elements.
If a gamma-ray observatory, such as Fermi or Swift, can localize the burst created by a collision, then JWST should be able to find what elements were present in its remnant. In 2024, JWST detected the signatures of several heavy elements in a gamma ray burst.
Carl Sagan said, “We are all star stuff.” The lighter elements are made by nuclear fusion in stars from hydrogen created in the Big Bang.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06759-1
But the precious heavy metals, whose nuclei are loaded with neutrons, are made during the cataclysmic collisions of neutron stars.
I enjoy thinking about this when I wear my gold jewelry. Billions of years ago, long before the Earth was gathered together from cosmic dust, the dust was seeded with atoms of gold from a neutron star-neutron star collision.
Wendy