The Mysteries of the Universe: Where Does Gold Come From?
Have you ever wondered where does gold come from? How does the Universe create this precious yellow metal that we love to use in jewelry?
Scientists believe that gold can be produced in the Universe by a supernova explosion or the collision of two neutron stars. However, a team of scientists from GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, together with colleagues from Belgium and Japan, believe to have cracked another one of the mysteries of the cosmos.
They have concluded that gold could also form in the swirling chaos that rings an active newborn black hole as it swallows down dust and gas from the space around it, according to Science Alert.
In these extreme environments, the high neutrino emission rate should facilitate the conversion of protons to neutrons, resulting in an excess of neutrons needed to make heavy chemical elements such as gold, silver, thorium and uranium.
New Discovery About The Origin Of Gold
"In our study, we systematically investigated for the first time the conversion rates of neutrons and protons for a large number of disk configurations by means of elaborate computer simulations, and we found that the disks are very rich in neutrons as long as certain conditions are met," explained astrophysicist Oliver Just of the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research.
All the heavy chemical elements that exist on Earth today were formed under extreme conditions in astrophysical environments, such as inside stars, in stellar explosions and during neutron star collisions.
So these heavy particles produced by extreme cosmic energy events were released and travelled through the universe, including Earth.According to another study by Harvard University's Edo Berger, neutron stars are exotic remnants of "collapsed" stars, very dense cosmic objects that weigh at least 1.4 times as much as the Sun.
The American astronomer's findings show that the gold accumulations in the Earth's crust occurred about 4.54 billion years ago.
