Gold — atomic number 79, element symbol Au and the most widely beloved of the precious metals — might have its origin in extremely rare and violent explosions in the far reaches of outer space: The bling apparently begins with a "blam."
For many years, scientists had theorized that the heavy elements of the periodic table, such as gold, platinum, lead and uranium, had their origin in supernova explosions. But the source, scientists announced Wednesday, might be even more exotic — the collision of two ultradense objects called neutron stars.
"We now have kind of a smoking gun," said Edo Berger, an astronomer who led the research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.