We all love gold. In all its wonderful forms, yellow; white; rose; we love to wear it, look at it...and eat it! But it's quite a surprise to discover that the wonderful metal was actually formed between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago when two stars cataclysmically smashed into one another...
The most recent clash in June of this year. And this has been deduced by the Harvard-Smithsonian centre for Astrophysics, no less. Unlike the carbon that forms diamond which is found deep within the earth, the formation of gold requires something very different - the clash of two neutron stars.
The collision will create a gamma ray burst that forms heavy elements such as gold. The amount produced can be as much as two moon masses, says lead author, Edo Berger.
A gamma ray is a flash of high energy light, usually in the very distant universe. At a distance of 3.9 billion light years from earth, the latest is one of the most recent to date.
"To paraphrase Carl Sagan, we are all star stuff, and our jewellery is colliding-star stuff," says Berger. So the gold we love and covet so much comes from outer space. Who knew? Here are some 'out of this world' gold and diamond rings from Monroe Yorke Diamonds.
