A flash of high-energy radiation that rippled through space in December 2004 may have quietly rewritten part of the story for how the universe forges its heaviest elements — including gold, platinum ...

A brilliant flash from deep space once baffled scientists. But now, that mystery has been solved—and it reshapes what we know about the universe’s heaviest elements. Back in December 2004, a massive ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists may have finally ...

Some of the most extreme explosions in the universe are Type I superluminous supernovae. “They are one of the brightest ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A rupture in the crust of a ...

A sudden blast of gamma rays that swept past Earth in December 2004 is helping solve one of astrophysics’ biggest mysteries: where the universe’s heaviest elements—like gold and platinum—come from. At ...

For years, astronomers puzzled over the mystery of where the heaviest elements in the universe—like gold, uranium, and platinum—come from. Scientists understood that these elements had to form under ...

What can magnetized stars, commonly called magnetars, teach astronomers about the distribution of heavy elements throughout the universe? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical ...

You might owe that gold necklace around your neck to a moody, long-dead star from the universe’s ancient past. According to a new study, magnetars—a rare type of neutron star—may have forged some of ...

In an ejection that would have caused its rotation to slow, a magnetar is depicted losing material into space in this artist’s concept. The magnetar’s strong, twisted magnetic field lines (shown in ...

Scientists have finally gathered direct proof of how the universe forges its heaviest elements, a process that has remained a mystery for over half a century. A team from the Flatiron Institute in New ...